The best programmers do apply. Whatever you think a work-hire test is, that wasn't it. A work-hire test attracts the best programmers. It doesn't repel them. It's a chance to demonstrate their skill. It's also far better: anything is better than the fake contests they're currently forced to endure. Which would you prefer? Spend a couple hours remotely fixing some bugs and adding a feature on a fake iOS app, or spend all day playing "dodge the bias" for a hit rate of ~60% at the cost of a vacation day?
Why do you think the programmer from your article didn't get a job when you "sat back to watch him get a job"? You didn't tune your test to what the company was looking for.
Any YC founders who are reading this: Refuse to talk to Triplebyte until they set up a work hire test for your company. Force them to do it, and force them to work with you to tune the test to the work you need. You will get a 100% hit rate. And you'll notice something else: Your retention rate will go way, way up. Want to not deal with firing people? Get them to show you they can do the work. Nothing else matters.
The test needs to be set up so that the candidate can demonstrate they can do exactly the same things all other employees do on a day-to-day basis, or it's not a work-hire test.
EDIT: I thought that sillysaurus3 was talking about a work trial period (days or a week), but it seems they are talking about asking question during that interview that are similar to actual work. I retract me objection :)
If only it were that easy. I am not at all opposed to work-trial tests. They are almost certainly more accurate. But a high percentage of programmer will never apply to a company that requires one. Read any HN comment thread about the topic. It's very controversial. Lots of programmers are against it. Work-trials require MORE time upfront from the candidate, and of course still often lead to rejections (by design a hiring filter rejects most people). A failed work trial burns an entire week of vacation. An unemployed programmer (who is being paid the work-trial) may like it, but someone working another job may not.
It's really frustrating when people are clearly talking around each other, and either failing to notice or willfully continuing to do it.
sillysaurus3: "Spend a couple hours remotely fixing some bugs and adding a feature on a fake iOS app"
ammon: "A failed work trial burns an entire week of vacation."
You're not talking about the same thing!
sillysaurus3 is talking about doing a small amount of work that is similar to what the company does, under conditions similar to those you would have as an employee. You seem to be talking about short trial period contract-to-hire. Yes, the thing you're talking about sucks and is a huge turnoff to candidates, but (mostly speaking for myself here) what sillysaurus3 is suggesting is massively appealing.
It seems like you're being forced into a false dichotomy of being either completely for work trials or completely against them, and that's unfair.
But if your biggest objection is that it will take additional time, that depends entirely on the nature of the trial. I was given a work trial at my first job and it took about 40 minutes. It didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped, but I would much much rather have done that than spent 40 minutes answering brain teasers in front of a white board.
If I'm already taking a day off, I don't care if the interview lasts three hours or five. I'd rather work on a collaborative task with my potential teammates to see if it's going to be worth radically altering my life to take a new job. I understand that there are many programmers who are opposed to work trials, and they can say "I'm opposed to work trials and would rather demonstrate my abilities in another way."
It seems like your research so far has been very comprehensive, why dismiss an effective technique because some people are opposed to it?
I think this is the best solution. It does raise issues of how you keep a consistent bar between the various options, but I think it's better than the alternatives. Currently we let people do a project track where they do a project on their own time, or an interview track where they answer interview questions. We also give them a choice of interview questions in a number of areas, to try to increase the probability that we see a strength.
I suspect that the flexible "unpaid vacation" scenario you're describing is much more rare than you think. If your team is pushing for a major release and you decide just not to show up, your days are numbered. If you spend the week working for another company, you are quite likely to be fired from the old one.
Ammon mentioned Weebly, above. They are one company that I've seen require an on-site week as a contractor. I know of a Weebly candidate who lost her current job because the employer considered the leave to be job abandonment. Thankfully, she got the job at Weebly. Perhaps Weebly's weeklong trial is effective for them at weeding out bad hires. But I suspect most good programmers would never consider giving up a week of their lives to an extended job interview.
Triplebyte does notionally allow you to apply (to Triplebyte) via a trial project. But it's in addition to the interview(s), and the feeling they get from you during the interview trumps the project. They gave me the following feedback:
> This was a tough decision and one that we were on the fence about. We really appreciate you taking the time to work on the take home project. We're aware this requires a substantial time commitment and we are really grateful that you invested the time in completing it. We thought you wrote a great, very full featured [trial project]. It was especially impressive how much you dug into the academics behind [the project].
> However we made the decision because we felt that while going through the project together during the interview, we didn't see the fluency of programming when adding to it that we had hoped for. While we specifically designed the take home project track to help overcome the difficulties of coding under time pressure with someone watching, we do still need to see a certain level of programming during the interview. This didn't seem to be the case here, where making changes to the project seemed to be slower and more difficult than we'd have liked.
tptacek had some advice for hiring-through-a-work-test that I (from my armchair) agree with, which is that it's important to give everyone the same work test so your applicants are comparable. There's a little bit of tension (I don't think it's unresolvable) between that and "The test needs to be set up so that the candidate can demonstrate they can do exactly the same things all other employees do on a day-to-day basis, or it's not a work-hire test".
It always surprises to me to no end when I see people get any real feedback from the interview. Do these employers not care about getting sued, like everyone els.
That feedback may not be hopelessly vague, but it's also totally unactionable. They wouldn't let me reinterview, and interviewing was the only problem they identified.
I don't know if I'm a "best programmer", but I definitely enjoy "add a little feature to our fake app" tests.
A friend of mine's company usually sends out a little canvas-based browser paint app with a bunch of features, and asks them to implement a few things, like flood fill. It's really enjoyable.
Favorite interview I've done was something similar to this; they gave me a small, pre-made project with tools they knew I was familiar with, asked me to implement some specific functionality, and then told me to "have fun with it for a few hours". So I did, and the project blew them away.
Unfortunately, they then flew me out to their office, whiteboard hazed me, and sent me home. Called me a few weeks later to tell me I didn't get the job, but that they sent me a hoodie in the mail (felt like a consolation prize).
It's a pretty comfy hoodie. They spent that VC money well.
"The best programmers" aren't all fixing bugs in iOS apps. The blog post perfectly outlined people who are motivated by other things. I don't want to work at a company where "realistic" work is me working alone on doing assigned tasks.
I identify with the "product engineer" concept they outlined, I want to talk UX and user testing in an interview not prove I can understand someone else's code base. Honestly many companies will get far more value of a programmer who has user sympathy and writes user-friendly applications than one who writes a fully tested, bug free and technically sexy app which users don't want to use.
This is absolutely true. Doing work-hire tells me if it's work I'm interested in doing as well as showing that I can do the work. Interviews are a crap shoot of bias avoidance as sillysauras3 says. Please actually work on fixing it.
> A work-hire test attracts the best programmers. It doesn't repel them.
I'm not the best programmer, but I'm comfortable I'd slot in the top quintile, probably top ten percent, of people that walk through a startup's door. And I'd never even return your call. No work-sample test I've ever seen would take less than four hours. That's a $550 opportunity cost for me at my standard rates. What the hell makes you think you deserve that for free? You aren't Google and you aren't Facebook. You need me more than I need you. And almost everybody else who's like you--and given the way you are acting, probably you too--will forget about me or blow me off at some point in the process, wasting my time even further.
On the other hand, an in-person, discussion-based interview isn't work and isn't priced as work; not only does it tells me about the company and whether or not I actually want to work there, but I enjoy meeting new people in a professional setting (there are multiple companies where I've turned them down, but have become friends with people I've met through the process!).
Look at my Github and decide if I can hack if you want, that's why it's there, but I don't work on effing spec.
If you're a top ten percent programmer who charges $137/hr then this whole discussion probably isn't oriented at you. By definition, most programmers are not in the top ten percent. They make money by sitting down and writing code, not by projecting confidence and machismo. So why shouldn't they prove their abilities and evaluate the company and it's general environment by sitting down and actually coding?
I'm very old and out of the loop, I have no idea what modern work-sample tests look like. I remember when I did one many years ago it was to the effect of "Write a script that checks to see if a URL returns a valid response code, and trigger an event if it does not". My prospective employer liked my coding style and I got hired. What was so wrong about that?
As I recall, they intended to modify the script and use it in production whether they hired me or not. I also don't care about that. It took less than an hour, and it seemed like a valid form of evaluation. Maybe it's a pride thing, but I had no problem with it and I think a lot of other people would have been ok with that practice as well.
eropple's entire spiel was in response to "A work-hire test...doesn't repel [the best programmers]", so saying that this discussion is irrelevant to a top 10% programmer doesn't really follow.
Because you shouldn't work for free. That holds true for writers, that holds true for artists, that holds true for web designers, and that holds true for programmers. And unlike those other professions, the creative has the power in this relationship. What these companies hate admitting but all know is true is that even a mediocre programmer, a sit-down-and-write-code programmer, needs these companies more than the programmer needs them.
If a company wanted to pay you for that work-sample test, that's different. But they don't, of course, because that costs them money instead of costing you. There's no need to let profit-seeking entities use you for nothing. You just don't need to be their monkey.
Most professionals do work for free, in small amounts relative to the amount of money at stake. If you clearly only need 2 hours of lawyer time, you pay for both of those hours. But if you're talking about maybe hiring a lawyer to do something complicated for you, the lawyer will give you an hour or two of time for free, in which they will use their professional expertise (i.e. do work) to assess whether or not your case will benefit from their services. But maybe you think law is a situation where the client has the power in the relationship? No worries, accountants do that too, as do architects and building contractors, as do SaaS companies, as do.... basically, as do members of every industry where the customer isn't obviously a penny pincher (i.e. retail sales does not do this).
You made this exact case yourself in a related comment, in which you called meeting people business development. I agree there's a non-zero distinction here between work-hire-test and consulting-about-consulting, but claiming that the issue is that "you shouldn't work for free" is misleading.
Also, you suggest that if they pay, that costs them instead of costing you. It already costs them more to interview than it costs you. But sure, if making sure they don't get any benefit out of their relationship with you unless you get benefit too, tell them you'll only do a work-hire if they make a donation to the EFF in the value of your hourly rate.
> But if you're talking about maybe hiring a lawyer to do something complicated for you, the lawyer will give you an hour or two of time for free, in which they will use their professional expertise (i.e. do work) to assess whether or not your case will benefit from their services.
Of course. That's the sit-down-and-chat "interview". But lawyers don't draft up a contract for you to demonstrate that they can write up a contract to your satisfaction. If you want a lawyer's expertise applied concretely to something of your direction, you pay. And while lawyers do have bar exams, they don't have a very detailed demonstration of their work up on Lawhub for your perusal!
> I agree there's a non-zero distinction here between work-hire-test and consulting-about-consulting, but claiming that the issue is that "you shouldn't work for free" is misleading.
I think it's misleading only if you consider the beneficiary of that work to be the same in both cases. I don't. The only beneficiary of every work-sample test I've ever been given was the company--it goes into some black hole and whether it was even good or not, to say nothing of any actionable feedback, has literally-literally never been forthcoming. On the other hand, I have very rarely not benefited in some way from sitting down and chatting with a technical leader at a company, whether it was directly about their problems (or their solutions!) or about tech in general. Both in a consulting-about-consulting capacity and an interview one.
> Also, you suggest that if they pay, that costs them instead of costing you. It already costs them more to interview than it costs you.
In an absolute sense, it definitely costs them more. In a relative one, it emphatically does not: they've got plenty of bodies that can parallelize. I can be interviewing with them, or I can be working, or I can be mopping my bathroom floor. I can't be doing all of those things at once.
I don't get why you perceive the realistic-work-sample test as "working for free", but the unrealistic-whiteboard test as "isn't work." They are both taking a similar amount of time and effort, serving the same purpose, and benefiting the same people.* The only difference is that one does a better job.
*The primary beneficiary being you, if you're a top-10% programmer: It gives you a better chance to accurately show off your ability, which is probably worth thousands of dollars in salary.
Work-sample tests, in my experience, are universally "do this crap and then maybe we'll talk to you." It's nothing you'll get serious feedback on, it's nothing you can open-source, it's garbage code and wasted time that benefits the company unilaterally.
But the alternative--it's not the whiteboard, it's the meeting people. Right now, I consult, but I do take interviews for "permanent positions". But we all know they aren't actually permanent positions. The last thirty years of corporatism have made this loud and clear: we are all expendable tools. and I go into them with that in mind: a W-2 doesn't mean I'm anything other than working for a client under a tax-advantageous status. Interviews are business development; I am effectively offering my exclusive services on retainer to a single company. So meeting people to discuss the gig (whether or not the whiteboard comes into play, the only interview I've been on in the last two years where I was both interested in the company and wrote code on the board was Google) benefits me, too: maybe it's not a fit, but maybe I meet somebody I'll remember as "hey, I'd like to work with them again." Or "hey, I don't want to work here, but I know somebody who will, so I can do them a solid and they can help me in the future."
So, yeah, it is work. It's just business development, which is a different, and valuable, kind of work. And it applies to everybody, not just consultants; it's the game we're all playing even if one doesn't realize they're playing it.
OK, I agree it's also really important to spend a few hours meeting people, and I would never accept a job where I couldn't do that first. But I am personally thrilled to be able to spend two hours demonstrating that I am a really good programmer in all of the ways that a different kind of test doesn't pick up. That seems to benefit me a lot, and it also speaks well of the future coworkers I will have if I work at the company in question. Google's process (for instance) makes me nervous about this.
(Disclaimer: I strongly prefer to quit my current job before looking for new jobs. If that weren't the case, I'm sure I would be more sensitive to anything that takes time, but I think I would still feel this way.)
You're OK with spending two hours doing something before you get anything out of it? 'Cause I'll readily admit that there are probably companies out there that do such a test afterwards, but I've never seen one personally. Instead it's the gate to protect their precious engineers' time. Yours, though? Yours doesn't matter, and that rustles my jimmies real fierce.
Look at the opportunity costs: what if you could spend the time they want you to give them, for free, building something not only personally creditable but maybe even generally useful on Github? If you're good enough to show off, as you suggest, then your time is valuable enough that it should be respected. (A work-sample test that's a useful, valuable problem and can be open-sourced? I'd be down for that. But that would be haaaaard.)
I just spent the past month looking around for interesting new work after quitting my last position. Two of the ten or so smaller companies I've interviewed with so far had work-sample-ish tests as part of the hiring process: Keybase and AltspaceVR. Both of them had already made my short list of potentially ideal companies to work at, and I had ample time to ask them questions and chat before doing the work sample project. (At Altspace I went and had lunch with the co-founder and the director of engineering, and also tried out their VR software.) I felt no compunction at all spending 2-3 hours doing a interview project after that. Afterward, it was clear that both companies read my work and judged me based on it.
If companies were cold emailing me on LinkedIn asking me to do their two hour project, I would not do it, but neither would I bother going to interview with them. Given that I'm already cherry-picking which companies I care about, I don't mind investing some time to make them care about me.
EDIT: I agree that it would be nicer to spend time doing something really useful. I hope that if I handed them a FOSS thingy that was representative of my ability, that these same companies would respect that in lieu of their work sample -- although standardization is valuable for evaluation purposes, so I can understand if they wouldn't. (I just did the projects they suggested because I thought they sounded fun.)
Yeah, I've never had that experience! I'm sure I could be flexible about that--after I've been sold on the gig in the first place. But I feel like that's maybe an inversion of what it's usually used for: to weed out the shitty applicants. Looking at my Github and my blog (both linked on any documentation a client or prospective employer would see) should be enough for that to not waste either of our time, but at many places The Process Shall Never Be Modified.
(Right now, I'm helping out a few days a week over at a fairly large Boston startup, and while they have a general work-sample test that they roll out, I never took it. I probably wouldn't have followed up past the initial phone call if a monkey dance was necessary to get in the door.)
Who said anything about working for free? The only work trial I've ever done was paid in full at the same rate as I would be making if I had already been hired.
It was fun, and more profitable than a free boring discussion-based interview.
Our culture is rejecting the one effective test we have.
Do we care about equality, or not? I tried not mentionining this aspect, hoping people would realize on their own. But a remote work hire test is also mostly anonymous. It doesn't matter whether you're black, white, male, or female. All that matters is whether you can do the work.
On the flipside, what you're saying is that you genuinely want to spend a vacation day meeting a new company instead of with your family or working on your own projects.
And it's like, if you think you're a good dev, why wouldn't you leap at the opportunity to show it off? I get that it's a little annoying to spend a few hours on it, but the standard interview is literally random noise. Why subject your future to a random process?
I don't know. I respect your view. I'm going to bow out now. Have a good week.
I get what you are saying. And equality is tremendously, spectacularly important; I have more than once been That Guy at companies, making management uncomfortable when asking why the whole place is White Dude Central. But I very strongly feel that your value prop isn't an effective one from the perspective of the employee. You are not telling me why I should give a damn about your work-hire test, as somebody you need to hire to make your company work. What are you offering, aside from Yet Another Startup with Yet Another Startup Problems and Yet Another Startup Under-Market Salary? Why should I be your monkey?
And, FWIW, when salaried, I not once have taken a vacation day to interview. I've said "hey, I'll be in late," and because this industry is so deranged as to think that 50+-hour weeks are normal, no manager has had the temerity to get mad at me for taking a morning off because invariably it will be cashed in when I have to pull a sixteen-hour day to deal with a problem. (The days around Heartbleed earned me some goodwill at that gig, if you follow!)
The typical cost of hiring a programer is way higher than that, more like $30k I'd guess so they could always try paying you $550 to do something semi real? I'm not experienced but I've got a friend who hires remote workers and he says the only way to tell if they are good is to actually hire them to do a small job.
"A work-hire test attracts the best programmers. It doesn't repel them."
Not really. The best programmers have other stuff to do besides your make-work silliness.
"Get them to show you they can do the work. Nothing else matters."
This is even more silliness. Suppose you have a diverse team, and the a candidate comes up, and passes the test, but is Donald Trump. Are you then going to say that only the work matters?
Why do you think the programmer from your article didn't get a job when you "sat back to watch him get a job"? You didn't tune your test to what the company was looking for.
Any YC founders who are reading this: Refuse to talk to Triplebyte until they set up a work hire test for your company. Force them to do it, and force them to work with you to tune the test to the work you need. You will get a 100% hit rate. And you'll notice something else: Your retention rate will go way, way up. Want to not deal with firing people? Get them to show you they can do the work. Nothing else matters.
The test needs to be set up so that the candidate can demonstrate they can do exactly the same things all other employees do on a day-to-day basis, or it's not a work-hire test.