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Comment by bleah1000 | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure you get good outcomes from this, but I'd be willing to bet you are completely weeding out whole classes of people. For example, most parents or caregivers (single or otherwise) don't necessarily have the time for this. Senior engineers are less likely to want to go through this.

I would guess that most of your hires are single young people. And you are already kind of teaching them to work nights and weekends, which sounds like you are, again, choosing people who would not have a problem with a bad work life balance.

I also wouldn't be surprised if your process isn't teetering on the illegal side. Not on purpose, but it might be accidentally favoring or disfavoring a race/gender. Probably not enough to get you in trouble though, because those things are hard to spot. And unless your company is really big, probably nobody cares.

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I think I'd like this even if I were married, as long as the trial period isn't too long and interview experience indicates that I should have a good chance of landing the job.

Contrast with the alternative: I'm a senior, considering switching jobs, but I have no real way to evaluate the potential new employer beyond word-of-mouth and interview experience. What if it turns out to be a place I don't like and I just gave up my former position for something worse?

Working a few evenings & weekends (and getting a little extra $$) to evaluate the new company sounds like a superb way to gain the confidence and jump ship without regrets. In best case, I get a new job I like. In best case, I get some extra money and keep my old job which is better than the new one proved to be. Win/win? What's the worst that could happen?

When we offer the trial option, this is the #1 reason most people are interested in it. They are just as concerned about evaluating us, as we are about evaluating them.

Not to say you’re wrong, but, as one data point, I’m a parent and would be very game for this. I’ve actually done things only slightly short of it. I’d rather go full bore working with the team than do these multi day projects in isolation or with just occasional contact with the hiring manager. Basically I find at a certain level (often reached by the time you have kids) all hiring processes tend to be time consuming.

IMO, it would be a ridiculous, unproductive perversion of justice/excessive impingement on freedom if this practice were illegal.

We don't require the trial period - it is offered as an option - we're not going to jeopardize a good candidate if they can't do a trial period.

Everyone we have offered the option has taken it, and they're usually pretty enthusiastic about it vs traditional interview process. We're working with them a lot during the trial period, and after if they get hired - lots of opportunity to find out how they're doing, and so far no negative feedback.

At the point where we move to the trial, we don't usually know age (because we haven't even seen the candidate) or family status. From what I've picked up, it's a mix of ages (usually a bit older - we've found some experience is necessary to be successful as remote-only), and mix of single, married, and families.

For those who have ended up hired - I think most are parents with younger families.

Other than the trial period, nobody usually works nights or weekends.

> I also wouldn't be surprised if your process isn't teetering on the illegal side. Not on purpose, but it might be accidentally favoring or disfavoring a race/gender.

Almost all processes do (though in this case, family status is probably the more relevant protected class it biases on.) That's not illegal, if it's sufficiently connected to the actual needs of the job, and they seem to have at least tried to evaluate that for their hiring process more than most places do, so they are probably less at risk of disparate impact discrimination than most hiring processes in tech.

Also, lots of companies have clauses against this in their employment contracts, or close enough, that candidates wouldn't risk it. Anti-moonlighting clauses and clauses about IP ownership, specifically.

This one is big and so often ignored. I am breaking my employment contract if I code for money or if I write code that will be used for anything. I have to get written approval for contributing to open source. Do you, as a potential employer, want to start our relationship with me violating employment contracts?

We wouldn't want someone to violate any obligation. When we offer the trial period option, we always have a discussion about whether that's something they're able to do, and comfortable doing - work-wise, family-wise, etc.

I suppose this could be done during the day? Taking a day off or two for pair programming is like taking time off for on-sites interviews.

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