
Ask HN: Is it ethical to ask me to write software for free before an interview? - interx
https://github.com/surya-soft/Interview/commit/cc9da7af8a26871d2e252ef375deb8df6697d595
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PhilWright
Is there any other profession that would do something like this? Can you
imagine a lawyer or accountant spending several hours on a fake case/audit to
prove themselves.

I would be willing to spend several hours on a project for them if they spend
the same number of hours doing something to help me. Then see how many want to
put that effort in.

~~~
asmdev
Or imagine a surgeon being asked to perform a fake surgery before being
offered a job.

If my degree does not mean anything at all in the software field, I wonder why
we spend so much money on getting a degree!

------
asmdev
From their interview problem page at [https://github.com/surya-
soft/Interview/blob/master/WS.md](https://github.com/surya-
soft/Interview/blob/master/WS.md) :

"The point of this exercise is to benchmark your writing skills. Write an
approximately 500 word article about something you're passionate about that's
technology related."

The holier-than-thou approach taken here is sickening. Why does this company
expect a prospective employee to do all this without even a guaranteed date
for an interview?

They have invented a deplorable interview screening procedure where the
company has to invest zero time on the candidate but the candidate has to
dedicate a few hours to prove that you can read and write before they are
willing to engage in a conversation with you. This inequality is disgraceful.

------
foo101
In my opinion, this is unethical. If I spend a few hours developing software
for a client, I would earn about between $30 to $200 depending on where I am.
It is unreasonable to expect me to spend that time developing a purposeless
toy software without being paid and lose my roughly $100 of income.

I don't know much about Surya Software Systems but if you look at their
organization page, there are exactly two repos: The Interview repo of this
post link and SwiftUtils which they don't seem to have any intention of
maintaining.

It is ironical that they have not contributed anything to the open source
community despite owning a GitHub account but are gratuitously demanding a
software project to be developed for them even before you could apply for a
job there.

No, thanks! There are plenty of companies out there that are more respectful
to their employees.

------
SomeStupidShit
Reminds me of another prior discussion at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15275182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15275182)

I wonder why software companies these days take it for granted that
professional software developers who code for a living would spend half a day
from their schedule or work overtime for free.

Now, don't give me the argument that many developers do it anyway by writing
open source code. That falls in the category of "volunteering". Working
overtime and spending 4 hours on solving a toy problem is not volunteering.

------
SomeStupidShit
With the kind of poor reviews this company has on Glasdoor (
[https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Sahaj-
Software...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Sahaj-Software-
Solutions-EI_IE919928.11,35.htm) ), I am surprised that they want me to prove
my essay writing skills before even agreeing to meet me.

Can I ask them prove their management skills or ability to compensate me well
enough before I jump through their hoops?

------
acomjean
I've been asked to do a codility test (online 3 problem coding test) before
one interview and a short basic form processing code for another interview.
Both took about an hour. That seemed fair to me, though if it were longer I
probably wouldn't feel that way. It also was clearly not "real" work they
could use for production.

~~~
asmdev
A toy problem to be solved in an hour is quite reasonable. Anything more than
2 hours and I would expect to be paid by the hour!

------
chrisbennet
It doesn't seem _unethical_ to me. It does seem _unreasonable_ to ask someone
to spend 4 hours doing a test before you talk to them about the job. I
couldn't be sure when the "write some code" part comes in the interview or
application process.

