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I have mixed feelings about this. It's easy to see what's to love: an open, honest, and collaborative hiring process with a boss willing to train employees. A

I have mixed feelings about this. It's easy to see what's to love: an open, honest, and collaborative hiring process with a boss willing to train employees. Awesome! But he also got about 30 people to spend four weeks building trading software for him. Collectively that's over two years of uncompensated work, the results of which the hiring manager may use for free. And from the perspective of the applicant, how many applications could they complete in a year if all were so time intensive? 12? 24? I suspect many top applicants would avoid this process entirely.

jimbokun 12y ago
But the interesting part is he found a way to help a lot of the people who didn't get the job benefit from the process, which is exceedingly rare. It was also interesting that there seemed to be a lot of collaboration among the applicants, even though they were all competing for one position.
slantedview 12y ago
I second this concern. The problem isn't the free work aspect of things - I don't mind working on things for free that I enjoy - it's the finite nature of time. I, and probably most good engineers, don't have this amount of time to spend on things such as this for a hiring that will probably not happen.
spott 12y ago
>But he also got about 30 people to spend four weeks building trading software for him. I don't think he did. He got 13 people to work on problems for 3 weeks. (I assume the rest of the 30 bailed at some point). They also weren't obligated to stick around (though it turned out valuable to them as well). And they picked up a new skill (APL programming). They also asked for it: "Twenty-seven of the applicants suggested I teach them all first and then make a hiring decision."
ars 12y ago
It didn't seem like that to me - the time wasn't spent building the software but rather learning APL. So it was valuable to the students.
scotch_drinker 12y ago
From a worst case cynical viewpoint, he got free labor and those people got free training. It wasn't like he chained them to a desk and then made them get jobs in PHP. Best case, it was a mutually beneficial relationship entered into rationally and with eyes wide open. Top applicants might avoid it but people trying to break in and show what they can do might jump at the chance.

jimbokun 12y ago

But the interesting part is he found a way to help a lot of the people who didn't get the job benefit from the process, which is exceedingly rare. It was also interesting that there seemed to be a lot of collaboration among the applicants, even though they were all competing for one position.

slantedview 12y ago

I second this concern. The problem isn't the free work aspect of things - I don't mind working on things for free that I enjoy - it's the finite nature of time. I, and probably most good engineers, don't have this amount of time to spend on things such as this for a hiring that will probably not happen.

spott 12y ago

>But he also got about 30 people to spend four weeks building trading software for him. I don't think he did. He got 13 people to work on problems for 3 weeks. (I assume the rest of the 30 bailed at some point). They also weren't obligated to stick around (though it turned out valuable to them as well). And they picked up a new skill (APL programming). They also asked for it: "Twenty-seven of the applicants suggested I teach them all first and then make a hiring decision."

ars 12y ago

It didn't seem like that to me - the time wasn't spent building the software but rather learning APL. So it was valuable to the students.

scotch_drinker 12y ago

From a worst case cynical viewpoint, he got free labor and those people got free training. It wasn't like he chained them to a desk and then made them get jobs in PHP. Best case, it was a mutually beneficial relationship entered into rationally and with eyes wide open. Top applicants might avoid it but people trying to break in and show what they can do might jump at the chance.