Timeline for Is my work on a developer test being taken advantage of? [closed]
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
63 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S Jun 7, 2015 at 0:22 | history | notice added | Thomas Owens♦ | Historical significance | |
| S Jun 7, 2015 at 0:22 | history | locked | Thomas Owens♦ | ||
| Jun 7, 2015 at 0:22 | history | closed | Thomas Owens♦ | Not suitable for this site | |
| Sep 23, 2014 at 12:55 | comment | added | Joeri Sebrechts | IANAL, but if you did not sign a copyright assignment document, I would think they are not allowed to distribute the codebase containing your commits without your permission. | |
| Sep 23, 2014 at 4:59 | answer | added | SeattleCplusplus | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 23, 2014 at 0:03 | comment | added | CodeWarrior | Yeah, I was certainly not expecting it. So long as it keeps other devs from making the same mistake I did. I had never encountered anything quite like this before and wad unprepared for it. | |
| Sep 22, 2014 at 23:13 | comment | added | John Mee | Your very own five minutes of fame - on arstechnica | |
| Sep 21, 2014 at 18:45 | comment | added | GordonM | You're being taken for a ride. Even if they do offer a job I doubt it's going to be one you really want. Drop them and make it very clear why. | |
| S Sep 19, 2014 at 21:15 | history | suggested | samthebrand | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Great question that will be featured at Ars Technica this weekend. I cleaned it up a bit for flow and grammar.
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| Sep 19, 2014 at 20:46 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Sep 19, 2014 at 21:15 | |||||
| Jun 21, 2014 at 3:52 | comment | added | 40XUserNotFound | FYI, I've heard of some companies that test candidates by assigning them a small task to be completed over 1 or 2 weeks (all paid for, by the way). It's something the 37signals mentions in their book REMOTE. However, in your case, if it was only supposed to take 6-8 hours and they wasted it with inadequate equipment, and they keep expecting you to put more work into it after the fact, then that does sound kind of strange, to put it mildly. | |
| Jun 18, 2014 at 7:15 | history | edited | gnat | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
meta stuff removed
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| Jun 17, 2014 at 9:53 | history | protected | Bart van Ingen Schenau | ||
| Jun 17, 2014 at 9:05 | comment | added | CodeWarrior | Yeah, I must say, I am kind of flabbergasted at the rate at which this has balooned. Kind of wish I had put it on my stackoverflow account instead. It has by far dwarfed all of my questions and answers there. Regardless, I felt that it needed to be aired out because it felt fish as hell and I did not think it was right. | |
| Jun 16, 2014 at 21:29 | comment | added | Panzercrisis | just 5 days...gold badges on both views and votes, plus on the answer | |
| Jun 16, 2014 at 20:58 | answer | added | Bob Bryan | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jun 16, 2014 at 4:49 | comment | added | Cody Gray | RE: Doorknob and "in jokes": meta.stackexchange.com/a/19514 | |
| Jun 16, 2014 at 2:45 | answer | added | jmoreno | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jun 15, 2014 at 21:10 | comment | added | CodeWarrior | I am unfamiliar with that one. Care to enlighten? I am always interested in "in jokes". | |
| Jun 15, 2014 at 17:40 | comment | added | Doorknob | Heh, it was just a little joke referencing the 6-8 weeks meme around SE. Don't mind me ;-) | |
| Jun 15, 2014 at 4:41 | comment | added | CodeWarrior | @Doorknob Really for this much functionality, I would expect a single developer to have at least part of a 2 week sprint to accomplish it. With anything dealing with UI, there are going to be changes, little nitpicky fixes, edge-case bugs, etc. All of that takes time and multiple eyes to catch and fix. The fact that they came back to me with bugs like that displays a bit of a lack of understanding of how much work goes into web UI stuff. Come to think of it, they never did get back to me on how better to change the SVG fill color... | |
| Jun 14, 2014 at 12:35 | comment | added | Doorknob | 6-8 hours? Surely you meant 6-8 weeks? | |
| Jun 13, 2014 at 15:21 | comment | added | Ramchandra Apte | @JohnR.Strohm Your advice is not specific to the U.S. | |
| Jun 13, 2014 at 13:31 | comment | added | Patricia Shanahan | In the future, I suggest putting a personal copyright notice in a comment in each source code file. If they are only using the code to evaluate your programming, they should not care. If they are thinking of using it as production code, they won't like it. | |
| Jun 12, 2014 at 21:28 | comment | added | CodeWarrior | @AaronDufour I did not sign anything regarding ownership of the code. If I were to pursue any legal action, I would likely have to retain a lawyer on the mainland (I live on the Big Island of Hawaii; not a lot of IP or software concerns out here) or may a neighbor island. I am living pretty tight right now (trying to pay bills with contract work) so I can't really afford to devote time or money to legal action. It will have to be in the future. | |
| Jun 12, 2014 at 21:22 | comment | added | CodeWarrior | The company in question is AGX. The remote work position has fallen off of Careers, but here is a different one: careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/58630/… | |
| Jun 12, 2014 at 18:39 | comment | added | Aaron Dufour | Did you sign anything giving them ownership of your code? It is likely that you retain it if not. Legally speaking, this puts them in a terrible position. | |
| Jun 12, 2014 at 17:32 | comment | added | Josh | Strongly agree with @Carlos. Also curious to know how that phone call you mentioned in the top answer went. | |
| Jun 12, 2014 at 10:11 | comment | added | Carlos | You need to name and shame this outfit. For the sake of everyone. | |
| Jun 12, 2014 at 8:07 | comment | added | Uooo | Related workspace question: What is the proper way to ask for compensation for pitch work? | |
| Jun 12, 2014 at 3:49 | comment | added | cHao | @JohnR.Strohm: Eh. Dishonest companies would happily remove the copyright notices without a second thought. If it's server-side code, you might never know. | |
| Jun 12, 2014 at 1:58 | answer | added | David Mulder | timeline score: 22 | |
| Jun 12, 2014 at 0:01 | comment | added | CodeWarrior | Heh, if they want to go down that route, I have the email chain where they explained that I needed to commit to source control. They gave me an account that had authorization, and the permission to do it. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 23:30 | comment | added | user541686 | Just make sure you don't get yourself into a situation where they could sue you for unauthorized access or modifications to their code. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 20:41 | answer | added | user136346 | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 20:38 | comment | added | Canadian Luke | Should post this on The Daily WTF | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 17:34 | comment | added | CodeWarrior | @PeterMortensen Just out of curiosity, the edit you proposed, is that mostly deletions of the double space after period instances? | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 16:47 | comment | added | CodeWarrior | @AfterWorkGuinness et al. Good idea about glassdoor; I will do that. In the end, I broke off the hiring process with them and left them with the buggy code. If they want it, they can have it bugs and all. I am chalking this up as a learning experience and that is worth the $300 dollars (that I likely would not have gotten anyhow). Either way, I have a couple more prospects that I am looking at already. | |
| S Jun 11, 2014 at 15:35 | history | suggested | Peter Mortensen | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Copy edited.
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| Jun 11, 2014 at 15:21 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jun 11, 2014 at 15:35 | |||||
| Jun 11, 2014 at 15:05 | comment | added | AfterWorkGuinness | You were put in a crumby situation, though I would not send them an invoice for the amount > the $300 they said you would be paid. since that was never agreed upon. They likely won't pay it anyways. I would post on Glassdoor about your experience with the company as a warning to others interviewing there. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 15:01 | comment | added | Adi | Yes, send an invoice. If they don't pay, report them immediately. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 14:49 | comment | added | nobody | Consider reporting this company to your state department of labor. Taking work for free is generally illegal. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 14:47 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jun 23, 2014 at 16:36 | |||||
| Jun 11, 2014 at 12:59 | comment | added | John R. Strohm | Here's a suggestion, for people in the US. Whenever a firm asks you to submit code samples, or do example work for them, every chunk you submit should carry a copyright notice: "COPYRIGHT (year) (your name). ALL RIGHTS RESERVED." If it generates code that will be run in a user's browser, make sure that the generator also generates a comment line containing that copyright notice. Honest outfits will have no problem with this. Dishonest ones will scream. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 12:20 | comment | added | Patrick Collins | > provided it met with their approval, I could be paid for my work on > it. As soon as they said this, you were taken advantage of. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 11:23 | comment | added | Den | The good old interview-driven development. There should be a "devabuse" tag. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 11:10 | answer | added | user281377 | timeline score: 11 | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 9:47 | answer | added | InformedA | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 9:33 | comment | added | toasted_flakes | You should send an invoice. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 9:20 | answer | added | AJFaraday | timeline score: 7 | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 9:06 | comment | added | SJuan76 | I would have rejected bug fixes. There is a bug or two? Well, that is a result of the test. They already have the data about how you program, so they can make their decission. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 6:40 | comment | added | liftarn | I reject all job offers that require you to spend 8-10 hours working on something for them. But then I can afford to do so. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 5:11 | comment | added | jwenting | yes, you were tricked into working for free. Live and learn. I'd certainly not agree to anything like that based solely on a phonecall or email. Maybe as the last stage in an interview process, after you've already made it to the final 2-3 candidates to come in for half a day or a day and work with them, get a mutual feeling for each other. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 4:23 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/476580500287418368 | ||
| Jun 11, 2014 at 4:03 | vote | accept | CodeWarrior | ||
| Jun 11, 2014 at 3:54 | comment | added | CodeWarrior | Yeah, I kind of felt the same. Initially the company sounded good. The test objectives seemed pretty clear and there was supposedly another candidate who was taking "the" test as well as myself. I now think that the other candidate probably was tasked with creating a user management page or something. This was a telecommute position, and I was expecting to have a workstation that I connected to the domain with via VPN, but that is not the case. I'm told that all work is done over RDP, and from Hawaii to East Coast, that is not going to happen. Test aside, that is enough to make me quit. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 3:14 | answer | added | Joel Etherton | timeline score: 168 | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 2:34 | answer | added | Arseni Mourzenko | timeline score: 46 | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 2:03 | comment | added | jmq | That's crazy. I think you were probably taken advantage of for free labor. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 1:59 | review | First posts | |||
| Jun 11, 2014 at 6:56 | |||||
| Jun 11, 2014 at 1:58 | answer | added | midfield99 | timeline score: 12 | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 1:41 | history | asked | CodeWarrior | CC BY-SA 3.0 |