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Comment by davidkellis | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the sentiment, but I noticed recently that TaxJar (I considered applying there at one point) mandates a trial period along these lines. From https://life.taxjar.com/distributed-team-hiring-process/, "... We hope a candidate is able to spend somewhere between 80 and 160 hours working with TaxJar during their trial. ..."

Presumably there are some people who are willing to do a trial, either concurrent with their existing employment, or on the chance that they will be hired after the trial.

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This company sounds terrible. You have to be hazed by all the other brogrammers at the end after doing 80-160 hrs of unpaid work, ridiculous:

https://life.taxjar.com/taxjar-traditions/

This is good to know, typically it should be in concurrent with the existing employment. If we plan to switch companies, we commit time apart from existing office work for interview prep anyway. This interview prep time is what we would end up committing to work on their tasks etc. I think working on a project or task from the prospective employer would be much fun than preparing / memorizing interview questions etc. What do you think ?

Most companies won’t allow such a thing, especially if the other company is a competitor. In any case, doing so would likely require me to take 1-4 weeks off from my regular job. Again, why would I want to blow all my vacation time working, just for the possibility of another job?

Okay my experience was, i didn't have to take leaves from my regular work. I had to simply dedicate a couple of hours post office time, to work on the task (the couple of weeks was given owing to time constraints due to my regular work). Post office hours, i would have to anyway commit to interview prep if i had decided to switch anyway is what i meant to say.

In any case, this is not the only method or approach that is the better alternative :) Maybe it will work for some and not for others. But evaluating alternatives is a good exercise. Currently we are stuck with this method because we do not have a better solution to the hiring problem.

TaxJar sounds insane. So after I go through up to 4 weeks of poorly paid work (while working my existing full-time job and raising a family), I get to participate in their hazing rituals!

https://life.taxjar.com/taxjar-traditions/

Try flipping it and looking at it from their vantage point - probably they are aware that not many would take this up, which would leave only the kind of people they want to work with showing up to their doors ? Maybe it's a clever hack to filter people out ?

Thinking more about TaxJar...I wonder if they are at any risk of employees of an existing firm doing work for TaxJar on the current company's time and equipment, which would in many cases make the TaxJar code the intellectual property of the former company.

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