I understand your concerns, and we thought about it a lot ourselves. "Are we asking too much?"
We came to the conclusion that what we are asking should be fun for you to do. Something you might even do without us asking.
Also, it shouldn't take you more than a few joyful hours. If it does, you probably aren't the person we're looking for.
We gave the task to a couple of trusted folks beforehand, people who we would love to hire if they weren't already doing something they loved, and they said that the tasks were pretty straightforward and quick to do.
We already tried doing it the other way around, and we realized that it just didn't work. The guy that turned out to be the best was the one we almost rejected because he had a bad resume and cover letter.
We don't want to make that mistake again.
If you think it is too much to ask, well, I guess you just don't apply. <shrug>
>If you think it is too much to ask, well, I guess you just don't apply. <shrug>
This response seems to me thoughtless, cliche-ridden, and inordinately smug--rockstaresque even.
That "I guess you just don't apply" really doesn't seem to be the product of the thinking you claim to have put into this. Obviously there are people who might apply even if they think it's too much to ask on spec. Obviously there are people who might apply even if they are motivated by something other than mere fun. Obviously there are people who might apply even if it takes them a lot more than "a few joyful hours." Saying such people probably aren't the ones you're looking for is beside the point--beside the ethical point--except insofar as it's a pretty clearcut instance of your shirking all responsibility (it's all their fault if they underestimate their chances, or ignore the injunction to do it for fun) with the kind of callous indifference to the work and time of others captured neatly in your closing shrug.
> Obviously there are people who might apply even if they think it's too much to ask on spec.
First off, I don't think you know what spec work means. It means asking someone to do work and then paying them for that work if you like it. That is not what we are doing. We are asking applicants to implement things that will be of no use to us, because we already have them, as a demonstration of both skill and determination.
> except insofar as it's a pretty clearcut instance of your shirking all responsibility
What responsibility am I shirking? If you want the job, then you do the thing. If you aren't confident enough in yourself, then so be it. It isn't my job or responsibility to be your mom and encourage you to apply and tell you that you are good enough and you should go for it! You should know that already.
> with the kind of callous indifference to the work and time of others captured neatly in your closing shrug.
As I said, if you are doing the task, you are doing it because you enjoy it and maybe you can use it as a learning experience or on your portfolio. It isn't a callous indifference to work -- we're asking you to do different work. Instead of a resume and cover letter, we're asking you to program.
It may be too late in the game to reply to this nonplussing nonresponsive response, but what the hell...
>What responsibility am I shirking? If you want the job, then you do the thing.
Was "shirking" too severe? You disclaim, patently and unapologetically, responsibility for the effort that will be put into applying for the position by applicants who will not get the job.
You disclaim that responsibility by saying in effect "it will be fun, and if it ain't fun, don't do it, and if you do it and don't get the job it might be good for your portfolio, or good experience."
Your choice here was between devising an application procedure that actively and consciously tries to minimize the futile endeavors of most applicants or devising one that does not but instead leaves the responsibility for that minimization entirely up to applicants themselves.
You seem to like the second choice, suggesting it really is not at all your responsibility; it's all on the shoulders of the applicant. You're not (the applicant will be distressed to hear) his mom.
Yet elsewhere you seem to want at least a little to acknowledge that there is something to be said, at least publicly, for taking the first choice: You wondered whether you were asking too much. You advised applicants only to do it if it's fun and so on. It seems to me that that's an example of trying not to be callously indifferent to the work of others.
I was merely trying to point out that that's not good enough. It should be obvious, I think, that this, your, strategy for minimizing wasted effort on the part of applicants is not going to work.
The alternative strategy of many employers is to impose the more effortful parts of the application procedure only late in the process and only on applicants they are already interested in. They do this even though it's more time-consuming for them. They take that responsibility. You don't, and shrug.
But let me do you the honor of citing you again: "so be it." I'm certain you have no reason to worry about this. I'm sure Reddit will get its rockstars and continue to rock.
And if you ever want a lesson in supercilious condescension (the "I'm not your mom" stuff is embarrassingly amateurish), look me up. I take payment in advance.
P.s. I didn't use the phrase "spec work" and if I had I wouldn't have used it to mean, in accordance with your bizarre and presumptuously corrective definition, "asking someone to do work and then paying them etc..." Clearly that's nonsense. Spec work is the work, not the asking. I did use "on spec", and used it as a standard modifier to qualify the meaning of "work" as work which is done speculatively in hope or expectation of gain. In this (hardly broad) sense you are asking applicants to do work on spec. Joyfully.
you system is perfect to filter in people who don't value their time and ok to work in the company that doesn't respect their applicants (but supposedly starts to respect applicants the second they turn employees - some may believe that too). There is definitely a business sense in hiring such naive gullible people, no questions here.
Judging from jedburg's post, I'd argue that it allows them to hire people who would rather spend 3 hours up-front writing some code than spend 3 hours up-front writing a cover letter.
Which is preferable for the programmer, too, since the up-front, likely 'wasted' time is spent doing something enjoyable. The investment in writing a cover letter only comes after.
For the record, I was not casting stones just stating that I was not personally comfortable with the idea of asking people that have had little touch point with the company to write something as the opening touch point for an interview (i.e. I personally would not do it).
For me personally, portfolio would be the first filter. I would only engage people that I felt's portfolio reflected the qualities that I was looking for. If they don't have a portfolio then sure, they have to build something anyway just to prove that they can build something but that is a limited subset most that would be applying will have previous work that can be submitted.
As well I don't see how a few hours could provide anything beyond a very amateur quality mock-up. Sure a few hours and some jQuery UI elements could make something pretty, but I am assuming that you are looking for a little more depth than someone that can just throw some jQuery UI widgets on a page.
For me, I would be looking for someone that has deep dynamic language understanding, a deep understanding of event based programming and how events can be used to decouple UI elements and how that can create elements that can be dropped into a UI framework and auto wire itself up to data events. Someone that understands promises and it's relationship to asynchronous callback based programming constructs. I personally would be embarrassed to submit something that only had a few hours effort in it, because it most assuredly not going to cover all of those core aspects and the ones that are covered are not going to be fleshed out in a detailed level that one should be using to exemplify the state of their skill.
I wish you luck (i mean that with all sincerity), and I do hope the people that chose to engage in your interview do truly enjoy it. For me, it crosses to many personal boundaries to be comfortable with employing such recruiting tactics.
I would like to ask that you come back and give us a postmortem on how the exercise went and ask that any HN'rs that participate contribute to that conversation. I am generally interested in the outcome and the perception of the participants.
Actually, we won't really benefit at all. We already have tgrep, and a single user local storage frontend won't really be useful to us (and already exists).
We came to the conclusion that what we are asking should be fun for you to do. Something you might even do without us asking.
Also, it shouldn't take you more than a few joyful hours. If it does, you probably aren't the person we're looking for.
We gave the task to a couple of trusted folks beforehand, people who we would love to hire if they weren't already doing something they loved, and they said that the tasks were pretty straightforward and quick to do.
We already tried doing it the other way around, and we realized that it just didn't work. The guy that turned out to be the best was the one we almost rejected because he had a bad resume and cover letter.
We don't want to make that mistake again.
If you think it is too much to ask, well, I guess you just don't apply. <shrug>