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One Company's Week-Long Interview Process
jfruh writes "What's the longest tech interview you've had to sit through — two hours? Eight? Ruby on Rails devs who want to work for Hashrocket need to travel to Florida and do pair-programming on real projects for a week before they can be hired. The upside is that you'll be put up in a beachfront condo for the week with your significant other; the downside is that you'll be doing real work for a week for little or no pay and no guarantee of a job slot."
Is that you're programming in Ruby on Rails...
Where do I send my significant other's resume? I can use a vacation.
The longest for me is 5 hours but this is ridiculous. The only people that would be able to apply are people who are unemployed. As someone who has interviewed people for programming jobs, it really doesn't take more than 2 hours to figure out if someone is a good fit.
I've been through (and passed) a 2-day assessment centre before, when applying for my first "proper" job. That included exercises designed to simulate the work I'd be doing on appointment - but there's always going to be a degree of artificiality around exercises like that.
It's hugely important to get recruitment right, as a wrong call can have consequences that last months or years. We've all seen cases of the alleged saviour of the universe who gets recruited, only to turn out to be a mediocre employee who trundles along just above the point at which it's worth getting rid of him. Set against that, a week long scrutiny process like this has some merits.
The obvious downside is that by definition, it's pretty much limiting the pool of applicants to those not already in employment. People already working full time will likely struggle to vanish for a full week, particularly if they have family committments that place demands on their vacation time.
Violation of labor laws. This is illegal. They have people doing full time work for less than minimum wage. The fact that they call it an "interview" is hardly a reasonable distinction. I hope the idiots involved suck a nice 6 or 7 digit fine for this.
only to be told that I finished the project during the interview process and my services would no longer be needed. They then had the audacity to contact me months later to see if I wanted another go at working for them. Free labor is free labor, dont fall for it unless you REALLY need to.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
If you think about it. If you are currently at a job, you can get vacation pay, for that week, you get to see if the company is really a good fir for you. Also the company sees if you are a good fit for it.
Now if the company just doesn't hire people. Then there is a problem. Because they just found a way to get free labor. However I don't see that the case because it is really hard to do a lot of real work the first week.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I know somebody who did this, about 4 years ago.
The ironic thing -- or funny, I suppose, depending on your point of view -- is that Hashrocket did not hire him. He's one of the best programmers I know (I know a lot), and he was also quite familiar with their development process. He taught it in college.
I think it's a pretty good bet that Hashrocket made a mistake in his case. He went on to work for other prestigious companies.
It wasn't enough that the position I was interviewing for was for someone who got promoted out of it. And I knew him (but not that I was interviewing for his job, until I got there) we of course hit it off, but his boss was the one that needed convincing. I get showed around, described the job, I take some tests, where I ace them, save for the questions that were either asked poorly or the answers wrong (2 out of 20) and we all agreed I was an exact match, and even slightly over-qualified. We got this feeling early on, but they continued to grill me through the full battery of people and tests. After 6 hours (We get a1/2hr for lunch)
We finish up, call the recruiter it looks good... They elect not to make an offer because I would be too good for the job. never mind the pay was better, the location was better, the industry was better and it was a topic I was very interested in.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
We all have our preferences. If this were about PHP or Java or something, you would likely already have been modded as flamebait.
You are already bending over and taking it, before you are even employed. You are working hours you won't get paid for, and they already have the upper hand in this "relationship"
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I've been involved in a fair few hires for my previous employer, and it struck me that we *sucked* at making a fair assessment of the applicants' abilities. My experience at other firms have been no different, even though most do manage to weed out the obvious knuckledraggers or spot the shining genius. In contrast, observing someone at actual work for a week should give a far better insight in their abilities and soft skills. This is obviously of benefit to the employer, but also to the prospective employee. The only thing I'd hope is that the company already did a short assessment of the candidate to spot any obvious reasons why he/she woulnd't be hired, before asking them to commit for a week.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Unless the company pays way above market rates, why would I go through this? I can understand if you're fresh out of college trying to prove yourself, but otherwise, I would skip it.
It's not like it's a prestigious company.
a 20-60 min interview over the phone isn't enough. People can talk a good game and sound intelligent when answering my open ended "How do you solve/approach this asynchronous timing window?" questions. You may have spent 10 years in the industry, but you may not have the right mix of skills to get tasks completed. Then I go and waste months training them up and they just don't work out.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
but we pay them inflated contractor wages. For the most part, we don't hire anyone direct, but convert contractors to full-time.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Why are you feeding the troll?
With one-week sprints.
I had an interview for an out of city employer. It resulted in me being given a PAID two week contract to see if I'm worth hiring. I forget what it was I made, but I was paid $2000.
that $2000 was part of my moving expenses if I was hired, and if I was not, I still got $2000, because I signed a contract stating if I finished the work on time, I get $2000.
This seemed like a good way to do things and benefits both the company and myself. I get money, company gets proof I can not only code, but be professional (meetings on time, meeting deadlines, etc).
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
A week is nothing. When I went for the Marines, it turned out that the interview process was 3 months!!
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
They're not going to get a lot from a week, surely. Most companies would consider this to be ramp-up time.
Unfortunately, as an African, you apparently haven't spent enough time on Slashdot to realize that almost no good ever comes from reading comments by Anonymous Cowards, and this place is full of filth when you browse at that level. (Of course, it's still full of assholes even if you exclude all the AC comments, but it's not quite as horrible.)
This is obviously of benefit to the employer, but also to the prospective employee.
Not really, if you're a weak candidate you might get "lucky", if you're a strong candidate your true value will probably show faster by simply going to more interviews - in fact some of them may overvalue you as well. It's not nearly as bad for you to be passed up for a job that you "should have" gotten as an employer stuck with a lemon hire. The only reason I'd go with this is because I was really desperate that there was this job or no job or that I really, really wanted to work for this company. Since the latter is not the case, I suspect it's a lot of the former and those are not the good candidates. And that doesn't include the possibility of a scam, that they're only using you for free labor with no intent to hire.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
37signals does something similar, just without the beachfront condo part. However, I believe they pay you as a contractor while they audition you.
I don't see how this unpaid week-long stint is of any benefit at all to the employee. Sure, it'll help the employer avoid hiring poor performers or people who don't fit into the organization, but what does the employee get out of it? The only benefit for the employee I see is if the candidate is going to have to make a long-distance move to take the job; moving (esp. from out-of-state) incurs significant costs, which can take a while to earn back in paychecks. However, this is really something the employee should consider themselves; it's frequently a good idea to just rent a room or efficiency short-term while you're in your "probationary period" with such a new job, so if it doesn't work out (which could be for all kinds of reasons, not just poor performance on your part; maybe the coworkers are assholes or you find the city to be a cesspool and didn't realize until you had to live there for a while), you can quit the job and go back home without losing much, but still retaining the pay you earned. This goes double if the employer isn't giving you any relocation bonus (which is probably usually the case these days; these used to be common 10+ years ago, but not any more unfortunately).
I think this week-long interview thing is a pile of crap really. They're getting a week of free work out of the candidate in exchange for nothing besides the cost of renting this condo (which they've probably rented long-term to save on costs, and they just stick a new candidate in it every week) and airfare, and the candidate walks away with nothing if he doesn't get the job, except for week in a beachfront condo which isn't all that great when you have to spend all day at the workplace, and not at the condo. The candidate's significant other might be getting a good deal here, but only if they had nothing better to do than spend a week on the beach while their SO was interviewing; if they have their own job or don't want to burn their vacation time this way, it's not such a great deal at all. I think this would be fine, however, if they paid the candidate for their time on an hourly basis like any normal contractor, but this company is probably too cheap to do that. I'm surprised this is even legal actually.
Bravo! You have made the beginning of my day!
The title of my next newsletter:
Ruby: A language designed by programmers for non-programmers
Then followed by these illustrious titles:
Ruby: Non-programming for Programmers
Ruby: Unprogramming what you've learned about Programming
Ruby: Lobotomy required
Ruby: Brainfuck for the masses
Guess I can't interview there. My contract has one of those wonderful 'all IP created during your time here belongs to the company' clauses. If I create it during my interview my current company still owns it. I've never worried about interview code before since it's all toy problems and junk code anyway, but if I was doing something commercial as part of an interview process there could be some nasty legal implications if they try to release it.
Well, they did say this was in Florida. That state isn't exactly known for being good at protecting workers' rights.
I'm surprised this is even legal actually.
Consensual contracts entered into by adults?
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Violation of minimum wages laws?
Shachar
There are many flavors of corporate culture and certain personalities I would rather not be around, regardless of how interesting/exciting/well paying the actual job is. So getting to experience the environment before fully committing is of value, especially if you are considering a long distance move. With that said, a week seems slightly long, a couple of days should give both parties enough insight into potential future.
In the United States, there are whole categories of consensual contracts entered into by adults that are completely illegal, or at least have no standing in law.
Hiring all new people as contractors is the right approach for the extended/on the job interview. The overhead cost of contracting companies is worth it when you want to get rid of someone that can't do the job or doesn't play well with others. It's a great way to help the company evaluate the person and vice versa. Every company says they treat their employees well, but being a contractor will show you whether or not you'd still want to work there if you weren't paid by the hour.
Because he read some place that African trolls are starving?
I do a lot of work in Ruby, too. I notice that lots of Ruby gems contain C code. Someone competent is writing that.
Language fascists aren't generally as good at programming as they think. They'd understand where interpretive languages make sense, if they were.
Bruce Perens.
Remember that most of your stuff was cobbled together in a week by code monkeys of unknown skills and quality then passed on to the next code monkeys who never saw any of that stuff before.
What have Africans ever given the world?
Homo sapiens? That's good enough for me.
Ezekiel 23:20
Then you should probably not agree to an interview with this company. Because, you know, that's your right to do so. But remember, not everybody has the exact same interests and standards of value as you do.
Other people, for whom a week on the beach with SO (and perhaps a kid or two) in a city they really want to move to, or trying out for a company they really want to work at... might find it a far more compelling offer, and be thrilled to accept.
Obviously, if you're employed, it's difficult to take a week off for this sort of thing. But in interviews I've done that were out-of-state, I actually would have preferred a week "on the ground" to get a feel for the company, the city, and the area before making a move. The standard "fly out Sunday, interview Monday, fly home Monday night," dance doesn't give you much of a chance to see the area the company wants to interest you in moving to. I also suspect that they're probably not working interviewees 16 hours a day for the interview week, either.
well dont leave us hanging, did you find yourself a rich man
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju