Would never consider doing even a second interview let alone any ~~take home projects~~ slave labor.
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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I once had a company give me a take home assignment on bitbucket. Private repo. Got the work, made the API endpoint that did the thing.
Followed up with them. No response. Nothing for a week. Then suddenly I get an email that they merged my code and they forgot that I had access to the repo. I could see that they were selectively merging canadates code into their own system. When I asked them with a followup if they had any questions on the code, no response and suddenly I had no access on the git side.
Yeah they were crowd sourcing an app. I just did a bunch of free work. Never again. Nowadays I just reject jobs that require any coding outside an interview. It's a two way street, it's not worth giving people free work.
Did you waive your rights to the code anywhere? If not then it's still your code and they used it without obtaining the rights to using it - depending on your jurisdiction ofc.
Could you go to your Ministry of Labour about this?
*Laughs in American*
*sobs in americsn*
Why are we so backwards?
I once had a company give me an assignment that sounded very much like what you are describing. They said I should allocate 10h at once to implement a real-life task that they had and that their developers "already solved".
At that point I only wrote a handful messages with their recruiter and hadn't even spoken to a human there. I didn't even know anything about the team, my potential boss or the project at that time.
I didn't even answer back, just ghosted them. I'm not going to spend multiple hundreds of Euros of my time just for some assignent to maybe qualify for an interview.
That legit sounds like the most inefficient way to build an app wtf.
Vibe coding without Cursor
Companies get one interview, with a human being.
Anything else is a scam and we need to make it clear we aren't interested in wasting our time.
"If you want me completing work as a part of this application you need to pay me for my time."
Employers aren't enttitled to labor, they aren't entitled to make us jump through hoops, and we're at a point in labor dynamics where they need employees more than we need employers.
Keep putting them in their place
we're at a point in labor dynamics where they need employees more than we need employers.
What makes your say that?
Employees will always be more necessary than employers.
But you're right about there being a declining job market as we enter another big recession/depression
What about those online 2 hour coding challenges to qualify for an interview? Those aren’t hard problems, but mainly to weed out the unqualified. However, I failed my first 3 coding challenges across 2 years before I got an interview. It’s such a BS metric to make all the test cases pass before even considering them. I knew once I got the actual interview, I would be golden due to my experience, but it was still hell getting there.
Take home project? My rate is $250/hr with a minimum of 4 hours.
Say it with a straight face. This is business.
The funny part is that $250/hr isn’t even that crazy for freelance work, depending on where you live and what field you work in. Freelancers frequently charge anywhere from 2-5x their normal hourly rate, to account for the fact that they’re not getting full time benefits. They’re paying for their own liability insurance, their own healthcare, their own equipment, their non-billable hours, etc… The higher rate is to cover all of the things that an employer would typically cover.
And lots of managers don’t even mind paying it, because it comes out of a different budget than their payroll. I’ve seen some orgs where they don’t even bother following up on contractor invoices unless they’re at least 5 digits. $9000 bill for a contractor? Psh, that’s a drop in the bucket. Hell, that $9000 wouldn’t even cover a full 40 hour work week in some fields.
Source: Was a freelancer for nearly a decade. I worked with several companies that would sign off on my $8000 invoices without even double checking them.
You actually hear back from companies?
Bill’em!
Had this one interview that demanded a 1 hr presentation on why I was the best candidate and told me the night before. Hiring manager didnt even ask for it. I practiced all night....
You want a job? beg for it then we will see
Two. And that's only if I'm feeling it.
Office jobs in 2025