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Comment by nickwalton00 | Hacker News Reader

I've had companies straight up pay me for doing a take home project as part of an interview. I think that's the ideal way as it gets rid of the potential for exploitation/excessive burden that can come from take home projects.

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This can add a lot of overhead, and some candidates may have jobs that forbid them from accepting outside work.

A good middle ground would be to have the company make a donation to the candidate's choice of nonprofit.

>This can add a lot of overhead, and some candidates may have jobs that forbid them from accepting outside work

How is this enforceable? Even in the case that someone finds out about it, what’s the company going to do? Sue the interviewing company for the rights to a few hours of work?

Well, if the employer finds out you violated your employment contract in this manner they could sue you, or perhaps even the other party that paid you. But IANAL, I'm just saying that contracts forbidding side jobs are not unheard of.

>or perhaps even the other party that paid you

What are the damages?

As for suing you? Again what are the damages?

It’s almost certain there are no damages assuming you are just working on a take home project not something that they are going to actually use to compete with your employer.

Just because something is in the terms of your contract doesn’t actually mean you really need to worry about a lawsuit.

A company might fire you if they find out, but the chance that they fire you is to small to worry about.

And even if you don’t do take home work for pay, you don’t want your company finding out you are interviewing. Taking a token payment doesn’t change anything practically.

IANAL. I am just saying that some employment contracts forbid side work. I imagine many companies would prefer not to get in the middle of that, and so might be reluctant to pay people for work done in interviews.

Some people have contracts that forbid divulging any information or techniques they learned during their employment. This doesn't stop companies from asking questions about previous work projects, or asking them to solve problems on white boards despite that fact that some candidates are certainly violating the letter of their employment contracts to do so.

People have contracts with all kinds of stupid things in them. If they aren't practically enforceable, they can safely be ignored. Any company saying they don't pay for take home projects because of employment contracts is just using that as an excuse not to pay.

There are people out their with contracts that say they can't even interview at rival companies, how many companies out there refuse to conduct interviews because of this?

Or just offer both options. I certainly wouldn't eliminate the opportunity for unemployed people to get a little cash, just because of contract issues that gainfully employed people might have.

There are tax implications, for both employer and employee, to paying the candidate, at least in the UK. It would be quite a lot of headache for not a lot of money.

Donating to charity has tax implications for the company too, but they're much simpler.

I'm not a corporate accountant or anything, but I've been on both sides of this and it's very simple to pay people for outside work in the US.

And for that matter, giving real-but-unpaid work to do as part of an interview may be illegal. So paying for your time may be something companies are doing to protect themselves taxwise, not just for good will.

Yes, but...

Now one worries, is this itself a test? Are they judging my desire to donate.

Well there has to be some benefit to passing on the money.

It's kind of like at salary negotiation. You can impress them with how you really are there for your passion not materialism. Or you can get money.

Well, honestly - if I wanted to donate, I could do so myself after they pay me.

Then I'd be worried... are they watching to see whether I engage in hollow virtue-signalling?

No, they're watching to see if you're worried about whether they're watching to see if you're engaged in hollow virtue-signalling. :P

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