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.

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.

  • @SpaceNoodleEnglish
    37•3 months ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]English
      10•3 months ago

      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.

      • @SpaceNoodleEnglish
        6•3 months ago

        I don’t want them to see my hobby code, it’s far worse than my professional code.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•3 months ago

          I recommend having a public portfolio. You needn’t have all your hobby code be public, but I think having source you’ve written available is an advantage.

          When I was doing interviews, I definitely looked at GitHub (etc.) profiles of they were listed on the resume. I even found at least one indirectly – either from their email or LinkedIn.

          I like to point people at my accepted patched to open source software (Git and a Haskell library).

    • @bassomitronEnglish
      10•3 months ago

      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…