Tech Job Interviews Are Out of Control::Tech companies are famous for coddling their workers but after mass layoffs the industry’s culture has shifted. Engineers say that getting hired can require days of work on unpaid assignments.
You must log in or register to comment.
Why do people agree to this? An hour assignment after speaking with someone is one thing, biut I had a couple of companies ask for homework before meeting anyone. Just didn’t respond. Teach them it’s not OK.
Some people are desperate for employment.
Many people…
Exactly. I was unemployed for several months and once the desperation kicked in, I would have done anything to get a job.
You’ve been unemployed for months, your bank account is almost depleted, and the thought of being homeless is becoming very real. It’s tough to stay being picky at that point.
This is by design
Can you please explain this idea—I’ve not heard it before? And who, specifically, has designed and implemented this?
Yeah, I ghosted at least one company because the pre-interview task was far too much effort. I’m all for having some writing of code as part of the process, though IME reading code is much more frequent/important.
I guess we all set our own limits, but I refuse to work more than an hour or two without (at least an expectation of) pay. Maybe that’s privilege talking, tho.
I had something similar. I didn’t ghost them, I specifically called them and said I wasn’t doing a day’s worth of their work for free.
They wanted me to write a bunch of unit tests and other stuff. There was a list to do. It would have taken all weekend.
Mind you, this was to qualify to interview.
I told them I wasn’t interested in working for free and said I’m terminating the interview process because of their ridiculous request.
deleted by creator
Send them an invoice at your expected hourly rate.
I had 5 rounds of interviews with a company last year. After the last round, HR said they got good feedback from everyone but they are cancelling that role because they dont have the funds. Thats 5 hours of time wasted for both parties. You can imagine how I felt after hearing that.
I’d probably just carpet-bomb their office for that.
I remember hearing google crediting every interview as 2-3 hours time per interviewer once to account for prep, scorecard filling, and discussions. They lost two days work on you for nothing.
And soon they all complain how top talent from other companies stay where they are and for some unknown reason don’t come to interviews anymore.
Also by design. Tech companies collude like this all the fucking time.
Paywall.
Six hour-long segments is pretty far from abnormal.
Homework - especially anything before the rest of the process - is absolute bullshit. If you’re not also investing any time in the interview, you can compensate me. My time is not less valuable than yours.
I did once spend an hour or two putting together a presentation for one prospective employer - it was attended by several engineers and managers over the course of a half hour, so there was still reciprocation - but I declined to perform the at-home coding exercise at the end of the process.
They still extended an offer.
Presentations and homework for interviews, wtf? I’ve been at my job for about 7 years now, and I don’t remember any prospective employers asking for this type of shit. Is this really becoming common? If so, I’ve been thinking about how vocational jobs don’t seem so bad these days in terms of pay…
Multiple hour-long interviews I’m actually fine with. It’s not ideal, but in that case at least the company is also spending resources on the process.
Homework / pre-interview projects that take more than a hour is unreasonable, to me. I have public repositories / commits I can share with you if you want to see how I write code.
I don’t want them to see my hobby code, it’s far worse than my professional code.
Paywall.
Paywall.
Reader mode on firefox shows the whole thing
Removed by mod
Nope.
Your loss my guy, enjoy complaining about a very fixable problem.
Seems like you failed to notice that my comment prompted someone to post a non-paywalled link, helping everyone.
Removed by mod
Imagine getting this worked up over someone who just doesn’t give a shit.
I applied to a small tech company back in late 2021, when everywhere was hiring like crazy. It was my first full time role, but I have my bachelor’s and had work experience.
Overall I had:
- a phone screen with the recruiter
- a video interview with the recruiter for the specific role
- a video interview with HR
- a cognitive aptitude test online
- a personality test online
- an interview with a team member from the department hiring
- a take home assessment that I completed then went over on a video call/interview with my would-be manager and the same team member
I also had my credit checked, and had to provide 3 references which were all called.
The job paid $36,000. Though it is definitely getting worse, these people have always been out of touch. My company was just ahead of the times, I guess.
When I left last year, they had just excitedly announced that they would be using video interview question submissions for all candidates going forward. The only feedback I gave in my exit interview was that I wouldn’t apply today with the required video interviews.
That sounds like a nightmare and tonne of work for a small and unknown company. Not to mention the low salary. It’s like that company’s HR read the latest hiring fad and decided to do it on a whim.
Are these folks sniffing their own farts?
I experienced this too, and landed at a smart company that paid me for the time I spent on the take home project. Yes, it’s less money than I might earn at a more prestigious company who abused my time, but I’ve also successfully selected for a company that has a good working environment.
They have an engineer for probably 30% less than what I demanded from another company with a dumb hiring practice. The dumb company was willing to give me the money too, but I was annoyed with their process so I told them I would not work for them unless they put a four day work week in my offer.
I had to take a 90 minute proctored exam only.for them to tell me the client didn’t think I had enough experience with a technology I had experience in. Screw you, Intellibus.
A weird thing I’ve noticed is that “tech job” is a big buzzword this last year or so, but its literal translation seems to be “software developers” specifically. It’s weird that so many of these articles are being pointlessly vague. Is it just clickbait, to reel in more readers than the articles apply to?
