7 ms·

Hire by Auditions, Not Resumes

111 points by _pius 13y ago

pixeloution 13y ago
I've always found this theory of hiring interesting but I think it eliminates some of the best possible candidates. People who are really good at what they do don't need a 20+ hour try out to find outstanding jobs - especially not in software. If I have a choice between working for the company that wants to try me out ... at a rate grossly below market, and a company that can look at my experience and examples of code I've written - well it's a no brainer. I feel like a company that hires like this has no respect for the potential employee.
- nairteashop 13y ago
  You could look at this another way: you are trying out the company, and they are paying you to try them out. A few hour interview may not tell you much about the candidate, but as the candidate, it doesn't tell you much about the company either. The future boss/colleagues could appear pleasant for the hour you get with each of them, but could be real jerks when you actually work with them. Maybe they just have a different style of work than what you prefer. Or maybe they said "agile" when you asked them, but they are anything but. I could go on. For me, I really like companies that hire this way because it also allows me to try out what it's like to really work at that company. And get paid to do it. No one wants to be the guy who quits after 2 weeks coz the job sucks.
  - georgemcbay 13y ago
    "and they are paying you to try them out." But if you're a talented developer then opportunity cost comes into play. If they are paying me $X an hour to audition but I could be making $X*3 otherwise, the fact that they are paying me for the "try-out" isn't much of a positive factor.
    - nairteashop 13y ago
      Sure, but I see the payment as just icing on the cake. If you're a talented developer, you probably have a few offers in hand from pretty good companies. What better way to pick one than actually work 1-2 weeks at each to see what it's really like? It's a reasonable investment, given that you'll be there a good chunk of your life in the coming year, likely more. Edit: BTW, I disagree with the rate (flat $25/hour for everyone) mentioned in the article. IMO it should be closer, or equal to, what the candidate will eventually make at that position. Compared to what companies pay recruiters and the lost money/time on dealing with a bad hire, 2 weeks of full pay is nothing.
      - jiggy2011 13y ago
        If you agree to work for less than your regular rate then really you're paying them. Besides are you really going to get a good feel for a company by working remotely and are you going to be doing your best work at 9PM after a full day of work and other obligations?
  - kansface 13y ago
    The best people I've worked with have been recruited by friends. The interviews were perfunctory on both sides.
codex 13y ago
A shorter audition: ask people to write code on a whiteboard or a laptop during a day long interview.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Yeah no. I won't spend a day of my time for free, because you distrust my resume and references. Maybe if you paid me?
  - dsymonds 13y ago
    If you had seen lots of resumes and references, then interacted with those people later, you'd distrust resumes and references too.
    - alxndr 13y ago
      Out of curiosity, could tech screenings via phone/skype have helped in avoiding that situation? (Or perhaps they have already not helped?)
      - dsymonds 13y ago
        Yeah, phone screens help a lot. But people can still sound convincing enough on the phone for half an hour without being a good programmer, so that's just another filter layer before an on-site interview.
    - yohanatan 13y ago
      One can distrust without being so overt about it. If I get that vibe from a potential employer, I walk out. It shows that not only do they not trust me but they either a) also don't trust their own natural vetting ability/competency and/or b) are just assholes. Why not at least give the appearance of trusting while still making internal judgements and while holding some sort of casual conversation about technical topics with the candidate?
  - bquinlan 13y ago
latch 13y ago
It'd be nice if they gave an example of a trial beyond "work on engineering problems." What's the expected amount of time it should take to complete the trial? 4 hours? 4 days? 4 weeks? 4 months? There's a huge difference between "here's something that should take you a day or two, but take your time" and "come work for us for $25/hour, with no benefits; but as a perk, you don't have to quit your current job"
- rralian 13y ago
  My trial was to add a drag/drop file upload UX to their (or now our) internal yammer-like communication system (basically a very customized WordPress site). It wasn't a big time commitment, was pretty low-stress, and I didn't mind it. Was nice to get a taste for working at what is a very unique company (everyone is remote, nobody uses email, no product managers). I didn't think of it as a crappy paid gig. If anything I thought of the payment as a little perk. Basically a way to make this little project approach legal. On the other hand I already had some good insight into the company, having a couple of good friends work there, and having chatted with Matt a couple times. So I was predisposed to think this is a good place to work and worth the effort. I was also really intrigued with the idea of a fully remote workforce and was very interested to learn how they manage that. So I actually saw value in doing the project beyond the payment or the whole "get a job" thing. I think the other key part is that they're not just evaluating you on the bit of work that you're doing. It's largely about your communication during the project. If you just took the project and banged out a perfect feature without talking to anyone or asking questions, I'm guessing you wouldn't get an offer. In order to make an all-remote workforce work, communication is incredibly important. "Communication is oxygen" is the mantra at Automattic. And the channels we use for it are IRC and our yammer-like system. We rarely talk to each other and almost never use email. That's really non-standard, and you can't easily get a feel for that in an interview or with pair-programmed fizzbuzz. In many ways, I think working at Automattic is somewhat similar to contributing to an open source project (to be fair, I haven't done a ton of this). And that makes sense, given its roots in and continued investment in open source. In fact when one developer asked if we could open source a particular component, Matt's response was that he was pretty much ok with open sourcing everything except our passwords. Given how open source works -- your voice in a project basically equals your investment and contribution to it -- I think the paid-project interview makes some sense in that light. Anyway, I'm kinda responding to a few posts here, but I hope that gives a little more background into the process.
ryanSrich 13y ago
$25/hour flat rate? Why? That's not even half the market rate for an average developer. I somewhat agree on having "auditions" or at least a quick try before you buy, if you will, but at least pay a decent wage. What would work best imo is to technically vet the candidate early on and over the phone. Perhaps a 30 minute pair programming session done in stypi where you're both working on some code. After that do a group skype chat session with some other teammates and the candidate to see how well a group conversation goes. Nothing extreme just a 30 minute to an hour pow wow about the job, the company, etc. If the candidate is still in the running then bring them into the office, if you actually have a physical office, and give them a couple hundred dollars to work on some code for 3-4 hours. See how they fit with the team and how well they perform in person. You'd be surprised at how quickly you can get a feel for someone. It doesn't need to take weeks. If you're remote you can do the same thing, in fact it'd be much cheaper without having to cover the candidates travel expenses. So how many people would even make it past the first round? 10%? lower? After that you've got a nice number of qualified candidates and plenty of opportunities to weed them out before anyone wastes their time.
- accountoftheday 13y ago
  >$25/hour flat rate? Why? That's not even half the market rate for an average developer. If over half the developers are worthless and you are buying an unknown quantity this seems equitable.
  - latch 13y ago
    In this case, that should be part of the hiring risk that the company takes on, else you're punishing the good developers, who presumably you want to join your company, for something they have very little control over. Tell your barber that you're going to pay him 1/2 from now on because half the other barbers in the city are worthless...
  - nl 13y ago
    It's equitable in theory, a great deal for useless developers, and a bad deal for good devs (the only ones you care about). You shouldn't care about the extra money, just finding the right developers.
simonsarris 13y ago
I am always fascinated by answers to the "hiring" question. (I don't claim to know any good ones, perhaps that's why it's so interesting and why we discuss hiring so much). You're still beginning by submitting a resume - they are replacing parts of interviews with auditions, though they suggest there are interviews too, so it's more of a supplement than a replacement. So Automattic is adding something to the process, something non-trivial in time commitment. I think I can show that this hurts them. ~~~ Employers need to keep in mind that there are some vast asymmetries between employer and the (prospective or not) employee. For instance, some common cases: * When an employee is fired, they are at 0% productivity until they find a new job. The employer on the other hand is at 99% or 100%[1] productivity. This is in short why we have things like unions, because negotiating power in terms of productivity lost to both parties (employer and employee) approaches equal when the employer has all employees at stake, not just one. * When an employer wants to fill a position, they have one spot and can try out several candidates (even with auditions) simultaneously. When an employee wants to find a job, they need to spend time choosing to fly out to places to interview. These decisions are hard, because there's opportunity cost involved: When you fly to place A to interview, you're spending that time not looking for other, potentially better jobs and/or flying to place B. This ups the ante of the opportunity cost significantly. It's becomes an awkward gambit: "I'll pay you $25 an hour to pause your search for a job (you'll do our tasks instead), and after an indeterminate amount of time, perhaps offer you one." That would get some strange looks on a job board. It becomes an odd form of speculative work. You're trading a lot more of your time (that you could be spending evaluating other jobs) to hone in on this one, and then they may not accept you. It seems to be a good deal if and only if you're certain this is the job you'd prefer over the others you'd seen so far, or that you have hopes of seeing. Otherwise, this is the one prospective job you'd want to entertain last. So this might look good to Automattic since they are capable of handling the load, but they are forgetting that such a load is not preferable from the employee's perspective if you have many decent job offers. A shorter, more streamlined hiring process will probably win out, since they're likely to try interviewing anywhere else first (easier) and since the opportunity cost anywhere else is less. I'd like to think we're at least a little rational about this, at least those that feel somewhat time-constrained when job searching, like the currently unemployed. I think this gives other companies a slight edge against Automattic, at least for prospective employees who have options. I think by doing this they will lose good candidates, even ones who might (eventually) entertain their lengthy interview process. Am I off base here? Or does this seem sound?
MyNameIsMK 13y ago
Bad advice for small business.
thedufer 13y ago
> They can do the work at night or over the weekend, so they don’t have to leave their current job in the meantime. Based on many of the terms of employment I've seen for creatives (designers/developers), this suggests that you don't legally own parts of your code. That's kind of a dangerous position to be in. > Automattic employs 225 people...maybe 10 people leave the company, and another 25 or 30 we’ve let go Is the audition really working if you fire 10% of the people you hire? 10% feels really high. That said, the rate of people leaving is lower than I'd expect. Together, those numbers make me think its working for the employees but not the employer.
ronilan 13y ago
Article failed to mention that prior to Automattic's "auditions" they administer a fairly long refactoring take-home test. It is unpaid. But it is in PHP so at least you get to see a lot of $ signs :)
- nawitus 13y ago
  If there's something I want to do for free, it's refactoring PHP code for a Wordpress company.
jasonkester 13y ago
I like the idea of an extended audition, but not for peanuts. It needs to be my actual rate or a significant fraction thereof or we're not really operating as equals now, are we? I actually negotiated an extended audition as part of a recent contract. The decision makers were starting to say things like "we definitely want to hire you, but we need to flesh out requirements on the project" and "we'll get back in touch in a few months to get things kicked off". Code for "wow, that's a scary looking bill rate" perhaps, but certainly not the sort of talk that tends to lead to gainful employment. So I suggested that we do a quick R&D project at a reduced rate just to see if the thing they wanted to build was in fact buildable. We'll just run for a few weeks and see where we stand, then reevaluate whether we want to work together. The nice thing about doing it this way is that they get to see the "other variable" in the salary calculation. It's not just Bill Rate * Hours. It's Bill Rate * Pace. A fast, expensive guy can turn out cheaper in the long run, if the Fast bit outweighs the Expensive bit. 3 weeks to a Month is enough time to see whether a given dude is in fact good and fast; not just in bursts, but steady state. Granted, that's one datapoint. And it just happened to work out nicely. But I think it's a good way to prove to a company that you are in fact worth the rate you've quoted them.
001sky 13y ago
Hire by internship, not interview. This I agree with. But the model is not robust to many stages of career development. Crown jewel employees are not going to have the time or the supervisory freedom to do this (unless the rare case of them being uneployed or between jobs). True entry level jobs should be done with interns (paid, IMHO)...which are proper but short term assignments. That leaves what for ths use case here? Junior to mid-level peopel with time on their hands? I'm not sure that is either a real market or a segment that has the most problems. The biggest area of problems seems to be managing the funnel...and that takes throughput. Which means active auditions for multiple(s). Which takes alot of time and energy, and questions the coherence of applying this model to people where turnover is the issue. On the way-out...are these people going to slow down because of this? If not, what is the ROI on all of this additional time? Should you spend more time on a better funnel, better internship, or better "crown jewel" employees who can recruit previous colleagues? Its a tough question, because I like the notion and the approach, but the devil is in the (many) details.
jbb555 13y ago
I imagine they find it really hard to recruit. I certainly wouldn't put up this. It's WAY too much of my time for a job that I may or may not get.
awjr 13y ago
From what I gather the article seems to indicate an candidate is given access to their code base to 'do a fix' remotely. Is this a viable strategy initially? Learning the application takes time. Also there is some risk that the candidate will run off with the codebase. I'm sure they've thought of this, but I can see a situation where you default to a 'standard' audition task in it's own sand-boxed environment just to mitigate any theft issues.
- Clorith 13y ago
  The article stated you would be working in the area you wish to work in, so if you are a developer you will most likely be working on WordPress or something relating to it (I may be wrong, just a presumption). Considering that Wordpress is open source and any candidate applying at Automattic as a developer will most likely be familiar or know of it, the chance of having a developer not being familiar with it in one way or another are slim, even more so if it's someone actually wanting the job. If I was looking to be hired by a company working with open source, I would most definitely do my homework up fornt and familiarize my self with their "flagship product" as it were.
atmosx 13y ago
This topic is so subjective and has been so widely discussed (having github vs not github, having issued foss code vs not issued foss code, prior experience in the field vs non-prior experience in the field, etc) that I'm not sure if there's anything that can be taken for granted. Of course it's good to have experience, (good) github repo, foss contributions and so on. But which one is better and why I guess depends on the specific: If Google needs to deploy large private Git repositories, they will search and hire Git core-team members. No matter if they have experience or they are students. They are able to work hands-on, from day one. If MS wants to compile the universe, it hires D. Robbins, creator of Gentoo linux which has a soft spot for compilations (joking of course, but you get the idea ;-) ). So it's a case-by-case scenario, not some generally accepted truth that applies here. IT is a huge field with very diverse technologies coming into game (programming languages, frameworks, network structures, databases, robotics, etc.)
ZanyProgrammer 13y ago
Why don't we all be honest about programming interviews, and say that we don't care about resumes, references, or GitHub accounts/personal projects/etc (because interviewers on here have often mentioned they don't have the time to actually look at those). It always boils down to the whiteboard and asking algorithms and data structures (and maybe a few other questions) to potential applicants. And for larger companies, it can be a multi day process.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Most people say the best interview process is "the one I will do the best at."
- gaius 13y ago
  Github used to be a good signal, as in having a Github account alone told you something about the person before word got out, now everyone and his dog has one. Just as now "knowing Python" isn't a signal anymore. http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html
- vonmoltke 13y ago
  I still do not understand this attitude in the SV tech world. The rest of the engineering world doesn't care much for book knowledge (except for college hires), while SV thinks the ideal employee is a walking CS textbook.
usablebytes 13y ago
I appreciate that the auditions are actually paid ($25 an hour, irrespective of the position) and as they claim, you can complete the assignment at your convenience, sounds really reasonable. Where I feel hesitant is - they hire "all" their employees on contract basis. Wouldn't a great work place want their 'employees' be their 'people'? Would you feel like the product belongs to you? And the tone of the whole article also makes it a little dry - check out the comment by "Eugeny Brychkov" and may be you'll understand what I'm saying.
kasey_junk 13y ago
There is a lot to like about this style of hiring and it is similar to processes I have endorsed before. There is one unfortunate problem with it though. It rules out developers who have moonlighting clauses, which is a very large percentage of them (even if they don't know it). At the end of the day the only system I've been able to think of that gets around many of these problems is a contract hire (3/6 months depending on prevailing employment conditions) that at the end of it has a lump sum payout of the equivalent time (so a 6 month contract would end with a lump sum payout of another 6 months) regardless of if the contracted employee continues with the company (either by their choice or the companies). The advantage of this system is that it will not remove candidates from the pool who would normally not take on the risk of a contract position, yet allows for an honest assessment of the candidate/employer relationship. This seems expensive up front but is often just accelerating bonus payments for employees that are kept, and is a small price to pay for removing bad employees quickly.

111 points by _pius 13y ago

I've always found this theory of hiring interesting but I think it eliminates some of the best possible candidates. People who are really good at what they do don't need a 20+ hour try out to find outstanding jobs - especially not in software. If I have a choice between working for the company that wants to try me out ... at a rate grossly below market, and a company that can look at my experience and examples of code I've written - well it's a no brainer. I feel like a company that hires like this has no respect for the potential employee.

nairteashop 13y ago
You could look at this another way: you are trying out the company, and they are paying you to try them out. A few hour interview may not tell you much about the candidate, but as the candidate, it doesn't tell you much about the company either. The future boss/colleagues could appear pleasant for the hour you get with each of them, but could be real jerks when you actually work with them. Maybe they just have a different style of work than what you prefer. Or maybe they said "agile" when you asked them, but they are anything but. I could go on. For me, I really like companies that hire this way because it also allows me to try out what it's like to really work at that company. And get paid to do it. No one wants to be the guy who quits after 2 weeks coz the job sucks.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  "and they are paying you to try them out." But if you're a talented developer then opportunity cost comes into play. If they are paying me $X an hour to audition but I could be making $X*3 otherwise, the fact that they are paying me for the "try-out" isn't much of a positive factor.
  - nairteashop 13y ago
    Sure, but I see the payment as just icing on the cake. If you're a talented developer, you probably have a few offers in hand from pretty good companies. What better way to pick one than actually work 1-2 weeks at each to see what it's really like? It's a reasonable investment, given that you'll be there a good chunk of your life in the coming year, likely more. Edit: BTW, I disagree with the rate (flat $25/hour for everyone) mentioned in the article. IMO it should be closer, or equal to, what the candidate will eventually make at that position. Compared to what companies pay recruiters and the lost money/time on dealing with a bad hire, 2 weeks of full pay is nothing.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      If you agree to work for less than your regular rate then really you're paying them. Besides are you really going to get a good feel for a company by working remotely and are you going to be doing your best work at 9PM after a full day of work and other obligations?
- kansface 13y ago
  The best people I've worked with have been recruited by friends. The interviews were perfunctory on both sides.

codex 13y ago

A shorter audition: ask people to write code on a whiteboard or a laptop during a day long interview.

JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Yeah no. I won't spend a day of my time for free, because you distrust my resume and references. Maybe if you paid me?
- dsymonds 13y ago
  If you had seen lots of resumes and references, then interacted with those people later, you'd distrust resumes and references too.
  - alxndr 13y ago
    Out of curiosity, could tech screenings via phone/skype have helped in avoiding that situation? (Or perhaps they have already not helped?)
    - dsymonds 13y ago
      Yeah, phone screens help a lot. But people can still sound convincing enough on the phone for half an hour without being a good programmer, so that's just another filter layer before an on-site interview.
  - yohanatan 13y ago
    One can distrust without being so overt about it. If I get that vibe from a potential employer, I walk out. It shows that not only do they not trust me but they either a) also don't trust their own natural vetting ability/competency and/or b) are just assholes. Why not at least give the appearance of trusting while still making internal judgements and while holding some sort of casual conversation about technical topics with the candidate?
- bquinlan 13y ago

latch 13y ago

It'd be nice if they gave an example of a trial beyond "work on engineering problems." What's the expected amount of time it should take to complete the trial? 4 hours? 4 days? 4 weeks? 4 months? There's a huge difference between "here's something that should take you a day or two, but take your time" and "come work for us for $25/hour, with no benefits; but as a perk, you don't have to quit your current job"

rralian 13y ago
My trial was to add a drag/drop file upload UX to their (or now our) internal yammer-like communication system (basically a very customized WordPress site). It wasn't a big time commitment, was pretty low-stress, and I didn't mind it. Was nice to get a taste for working at what is a very unique company (everyone is remote, nobody uses email, no product managers). I didn't think of it as a crappy paid gig. If anything I thought of the payment as a little perk. Basically a way to make this little project approach legal. On the other hand I already had some good insight into the company, having a couple of good friends work there, and having chatted with Matt a couple times. So I was predisposed to think this is a good place to work and worth the effort. I was also really intrigued with the idea of a fully remote workforce and was very interested to learn how they manage that. So I actually saw value in doing the project beyond the payment or the whole "get a job" thing. I think the other key part is that they're not just evaluating you on the bit of work that you're doing. It's largely about your communication during the project. If you just took the project and banged out a perfect feature without talking to anyone or asking questions, I'm guessing you wouldn't get an offer. In order to make an all-remote workforce work, communication is incredibly important. "Communication is oxygen" is the mantra at Automattic. And the channels we use for it are IRC and our yammer-like system. We rarely talk to each other and almost never use email. That's really non-standard, and you can't easily get a feel for that in an interview or with pair-programmed fizzbuzz. In many ways, I think working at Automattic is somewhat similar to contributing to an open source project (to be fair, I haven't done a ton of this). And that makes sense, given its roots in and continued investment in open source. In fact when one developer asked if we could open source a particular component, Matt's response was that he was pretty much ok with open sourcing everything except our passwords. Given how open source works -- your voice in a project basically equals your investment and contribution to it -- I think the paid-project interview makes some sense in that light. Anyway, I'm kinda responding to a few posts here, but I hope that gives a little more background into the process.

ryanSrich 13y ago

$25/hour flat rate? Why? That's not even half the market rate for an average developer. I somewhat agree on having "auditions" or at least a quick try before you buy, if you will, but at least pay a decent wage. What would work best imo is to technically vet the candidate early on and over the phone. Perhaps a 30 minute pair programming session done in stypi where you're both working on some code. After that do a group skype chat session with some other teammates and the candidate to see how well a group conversation goes. Nothing extreme just a 30 minute to an hour pow wow about the job, the company, etc. If the candidate is still in the running then bring them into the office, if you actually have a physical office, and give them a couple hundred dollars to work on some code for 3-4 hours. See how they fit with the team and how well they perform in person. You'd be surprised at how quickly you can get a feel for someone. It doesn't need to take weeks. If you're remote you can do the same thing, in fact it'd be much cheaper without having to cover the candidates travel expenses. So how many people would even make it past the first round? 10%? lower? After that you've got a nice number of qualified candidates and plenty of opportunities to weed them out before anyone wastes their time.

accountoftheday 13y ago
>$25/hour flat rate? Why? That's not even half the market rate for an average developer. If over half the developers are worthless and you are buying an unknown quantity this seems equitable.
- latch 13y ago
  In this case, that should be part of the hiring risk that the company takes on, else you're punishing the good developers, who presumably you want to join your company, for something they have very little control over. Tell your barber that you're going to pay him 1/2 from now on because half the other barbers in the city are worthless...
- nl 13y ago
  It's equitable in theory, a great deal for useless developers, and a bad deal for good devs (the only ones you care about). You shouldn't care about the extra money, just finding the right developers.

simonsarris 13y ago

I am always fascinated by answers to the "hiring" question. (I don't claim to know any good ones, perhaps that's why it's so interesting and why we discuss hiring so much). You're still beginning by submitting a resume - they are replacing parts of interviews with auditions, though they suggest there are interviews too, so it's more of a supplement than a replacement. So Automattic is adding something to the process, something non-trivial in time commitment. I think I can show that this hurts them. ~~~ Employers need to keep in mind that there are some vast asymmetries between employer and the (prospective or not) employee. For instance, some common cases: * When an employee is fired, they are at 0% productivity until they find a new job. The employer on the other hand is at 99% or 100%[1] productivity. This is in short why we have things like unions, because negotiating power in terms of productivity lost to both parties (employer and employee) approaches equal when the employer has all employees at stake, not just one. * When an employer wants to fill a position, they have one spot and can try out several candidates (even with auditions) simultaneously. When an employee wants to find a job, they need to spend time choosing to fly out to places to interview. These decisions are hard, because there's opportunity cost involved: When you fly to place A to interview, you're spending that time not looking for other, potentially better jobs and/or flying to place B. This ups the ante of the opportunity cost significantly. It's becomes an awkward gambit: "I'll pay you $25 an hour to pause your search for a job (you'll do our tasks instead), and after an indeterminate amount of time, perhaps offer you one." That would get some strange looks on a job board. It becomes an odd form of speculative work. You're trading a lot more of your time (that you could be spending evaluating other jobs) to hone in on this one, and then they may not accept you. It seems to be a good deal if and only if you're certain this is the job you'd prefer over the others you'd seen so far, or that you have hopes of seeing. Otherwise, this is the one prospective job you'd want to entertain last. So this might look good to Automattic since they are capable of handling the load, but they are forgetting that such a load is not preferable from the employee's perspective if you have many decent job offers. A shorter, more streamlined hiring process will probably win out, since they're likely to try interviewing anywhere else first (easier) and since the opportunity cost anywhere else is less. I'd like to think we're at least a little rational about this, at least those that feel somewhat time-constrained when job searching, like the currently unemployed. I think this gives other companies a slight edge against Automattic, at least for prospective employees who have options. I think by doing this they will lose good candidates, even ones who might (eventually) entertain their lengthy interview process. Am I off base here? Or does this seem sound?

MyNameIsMK 13y ago

Bad advice for small business.

thedufer 13y ago

> They can do the work at night or over the weekend, so they don’t have to leave their current job in the meantime. Based on many of the terms of employment I've seen for creatives (designers/developers), this suggests that you don't legally own parts of your code. That's kind of a dangerous position to be in. > Automattic employs 225 people...maybe 10 people leave the company, and another 25 or 30 we’ve let go Is the audition really working if you fire 10% of the people you hire? 10% feels really high. That said, the rate of people leaving is lower than I'd expect. Together, those numbers make me think its working for the employees but not the employer.

ronilan 13y ago

Article failed to mention that prior to Automattic's "auditions" they administer a fairly long refactoring take-home test. It is unpaid. But it is in PHP so at least you get to see a lot of $ signs :)

nawitus 13y ago
If there's something I want to do for free, it's refactoring PHP code for a Wordpress company.

jasonkester 13y ago

I like the idea of an extended audition, but not for peanuts. It needs to be my actual rate or a significant fraction thereof or we're not really operating as equals now, are we? I actually negotiated an extended audition as part of a recent contract. The decision makers were starting to say things like "we definitely want to hire you, but we need to flesh out requirements on the project" and "we'll get back in touch in a few months to get things kicked off". Code for "wow, that's a scary looking bill rate" perhaps, but certainly not the sort of talk that tends to lead to gainful employment. So I suggested that we do a quick R&D project at a reduced rate just to see if the thing they wanted to build was in fact buildable. We'll just run for a few weeks and see where we stand, then reevaluate whether we want to work together. The nice thing about doing it this way is that they get to see the "other variable" in the salary calculation. It's not just Bill Rate * Hours. It's Bill Rate * Pace. A fast, expensive guy can turn out cheaper in the long run, if the Fast bit outweighs the Expensive bit. 3 weeks to a Month is enough time to see whether a given dude is in fact good and fast; not just in bursts, but steady state. Granted, that's one datapoint. And it just happened to work out nicely. But I think it's a good way to prove to a company that you are in fact worth the rate you've quoted them.

001sky 13y ago

Hire by internship, not interview. This I agree with. But the model is not robust to many stages of career development. Crown jewel employees are not going to have the time or the supervisory freedom to do this (unless the rare case of them being uneployed or between jobs). True entry level jobs should be done with interns (paid, IMHO)...which are proper but short term assignments. That leaves what for ths use case here? Junior to mid-level peopel with time on their hands? I'm not sure that is either a real market or a segment that has the most problems. The biggest area of problems seems to be managing the funnel...and that takes throughput. Which means active auditions for multiple(s). Which takes alot of time and energy, and questions the coherence of applying this model to people where turnover is the issue. On the way-out...are these people going to slow down because of this? If not, what is the ROI on all of this additional time? Should you spend more time on a better funnel, better internship, or better "crown jewel" employees who can recruit previous colleagues? Its a tough question, because I like the notion and the approach, but the devil is in the (many) details.

jbb555 13y ago

I imagine they find it really hard to recruit. I certainly wouldn't put up this. It's WAY too much of my time for a job that I may or may not get.

awjr 13y ago

From what I gather the article seems to indicate an candidate is given access to their code base to 'do a fix' remotely. Is this a viable strategy initially? Learning the application takes time. Also there is some risk that the candidate will run off with the codebase. I'm sure they've thought of this, but I can see a situation where you default to a 'standard' audition task in it's own sand-boxed environment just to mitigate any theft issues.

Clorith 13y ago
The article stated you would be working in the area you wish to work in, so if you are a developer you will most likely be working on WordPress or something relating to it (I may be wrong, just a presumption). Considering that Wordpress is open source and any candidate applying at Automattic as a developer will most likely be familiar or know of it, the chance of having a developer not being familiar with it in one way or another are slim, even more so if it's someone actually wanting the job. If I was looking to be hired by a company working with open source, I would most definitely do my homework up fornt and familiarize my self with their "flagship product" as it were.

atmosx 13y ago

This topic is so subjective and has been so widely discussed (having github vs not github, having issued foss code vs not issued foss code, prior experience in the field vs non-prior experience in the field, etc) that I'm not sure if there's anything that can be taken for granted. Of course it's good to have experience, (good) github repo, foss contributions and so on. But which one is better and why I guess depends on the specific: If Google needs to deploy large private Git repositories, they will search and hire Git core-team members. No matter if they have experience or they are students. They are able to work hands-on, from day one. If MS wants to compile the universe, it hires D. Robbins, creator of Gentoo linux which has a soft spot for compilations (joking of course, but you get the idea ;-) ). So it's a case-by-case scenario, not some generally accepted truth that applies here. IT is a huge field with very diverse technologies coming into game (programming languages, frameworks, network structures, databases, robotics, etc.)

ZanyProgrammer 13y ago

Why don't we all be honest about programming interviews, and say that we don't care about resumes, references, or GitHub accounts/personal projects/etc (because interviewers on here have often mentioned they don't have the time to actually look at those). It always boils down to the whiteboard and asking algorithms and data structures (and maybe a few other questions) to potential applicants. And for larger companies, it can be a multi day process.

danielweber 13y ago
Most people say the best interview process is "the one I will do the best at."
gaius 13y ago
Github used to be a good signal, as in having a Github account alone told you something about the person before word got out, now everyone and his dog has one. Just as now "knowing Python" isn't a signal anymore. http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html
vonmoltke 13y ago
I still do not understand this attitude in the SV tech world. The rest of the engineering world doesn't care much for book knowledge (except for college hires), while SV thinks the ideal employee is a walking CS textbook.

usablebytes 13y ago

I appreciate that the auditions are actually paid ($25 an hour, irrespective of the position) and as they claim, you can complete the assignment at your convenience, sounds really reasonable. Where I feel hesitant is - they hire "all" their employees on contract basis. Wouldn't a great work place want their 'employees' be their 'people'? Would you feel like the product belongs to you? And the tone of the whole article also makes it a little dry - check out the comment by "Eugeny Brychkov" and may be you'll understand what I'm saying.

kasey_junk 13y ago

There is a lot to like about this style of hiring and it is similar to processes I have endorsed before. There is one unfortunate problem with it though. It rules out developers who have moonlighting clauses, which is a very large percentage of them (even if they don't know it). At the end of the day the only system I've been able to think of that gets around many of these problems is a contract hire (3/6 months depending on prevailing employment conditions) that at the end of it has a lump sum payout of the equivalent time (so a 6 month contract would end with a lump sum payout of another 6 months) regardless of if the contracted employee continues with the company (either by their choice or the companies). The advantage of this system is that it will not remove candidates from the pool who would normally not take on the risk of a contract position, yet allows for an honest assessment of the candidate/employer relationship. This seems expensive up front but is often just accelerating bonus payments for employees that are kept, and is a small price to pay for removing bad employees quickly.