> It's much more a two-way benefit, versus an assignment where only one party (the company) gets any information from the other (me).
> The equivalent in tech is asking for a portfolio, which I have an ample amount of on github. I'm more than happy to hand this over to potential employers for them to gauge my work. But, the idea that I could complete a 4hour assignment within a week is ridiculous.
These two statements made me think of something. Usually, (and from comments I've seen many times on HN) I'll hand in my resumé and it has my Github etc, and the hiring team don't really look at it. Perhaps if I'm given a coding test or assignment, I should pick one of my projects and ask them to complete an open issue, so that I can gauge their coding ability and how they use Git, respond in issues etc?
Fair's fair, and it would tell me a lot more than I get to know right now.
I don't have a very large open source portfolio, but I it's probably bigger than 95% of the people I work with, I don't think my open source work is particularly representative of my abilities.
Companies want to have a somewhat standardized hiring process so that they can evaluate candidates fairly, and most professional developers people don't do much open source work.
Someone having an impressive open source portfolio, might be a good signal that they are a great hire, but I don't think it's a good general strategy for hiring.
> When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd have to create one. It was very reasonably a non-negotiable requirement given that's what they'd be doing day to day.
The equivalent in tech is asking for a portfolio, which I have an ample amount of on github. I'm more than happy to hand this over to potential employers for them to gauge my work. But, the idea that I could complete a 4hour assignment within a week is ridiculous. My portfolio comes through constant, marginal improvements that make up a working system in sum. I've collectively spent more than 4 hours on most projects on GitHub, but they're done at my leisure, in my miniscule amounts of spare time, just spread over many years. But again, the idea of spending a solid four hours on any of them is just laughable. I have no time to do that.
Also, when you get to full day interviews, it's typically a sign the company wants you. Having been in both the hiring manager position and the candidate position, I've only once seen a full day interview end in a "No" and it was for particular circumstance.