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Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

I am very surprised that the number of people who opt out of the trial week is only 5% -- clearly it's working for the company, but personally I'd be hard-pressed to give up a week's vacation time.

Still, if you were to do such a work-trial program, I can't imagine a better way to do it than this.

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That was my thought. Especially with a family, vacation time is too important to spend working. While everything they pay for and do is nice, I wouldn't be willing to give it up to try and get a job. (Just one job, that is. If I really wanted to leave, I might spend some vacation time interviewing at many places, but 1 place for 1 week seems a little reckless in that circumstance.)

This looks to me like a not so subtle form of age discrimination. The pictures on their job page do nothing to dispel that impression. E.g. http://www.weebly.com/uploads/1/_/1/167522_orig.jpg

A much easier form of age discrimination would be to simply not hire older people. Why bother with the hassle of setting up a trial program?

Because being too obvious is illegal?

In the United States, this is totally illegal.

Most age discrimination isn't overt or explicit. It's "cultural". They don't care if you're 45, but most of these VC-funded startups don't want to hire and promote people who (a) don't drink, (b) show up before 10:00 and leave before 7:00, (c) never discuss their sex lives and work and avoid others' disclosures thereof, and (d) aren't interested in moving into management, which being a 45-year-old programmer implies. But there are a few especially juvenile older people that I've seen fit in to the VC-funded culture.

Also, older programmers (even those who've declined management by choice) threaten the lie on which the VC-funded world stands, which is that being a subordinate engineer (and getting jack-shit equity) at 22 is a sure path to being an exec at 27, a founder at 31, and an investor (either an angel, meaning "rich", or a VC, meaning "given a soft landing") at 35. The brutal career age-grading comes from a need to exclude those who refute the lie of promised progress.

Because that engineering budget you just had now became your legal counsel budget.

While I wouldn't so hastily accuse Weebly of age discrimination, I think this raises an interesting discussion around hiring practice:

The logistics of certain hiring practices may be themselves biased in terms of age (or other factors), which is questionably ethical. This trial week seems to discriminate against those who cannot trivially sacrifice vacation time (employees with families, for example). There are others, too; I've heard other founders scheduling interviews with candidates late into the evening or night, even on weekends. With kids to tend to, that would be an incredibly frustrating situation.

Nothing is quite so black and white that these acts are themselves evil, but I do hope companies aren't becoming culturally biased. If you're flexible with your policies, then perhaps you'll do fine. With that said, there's something to be said to sticking to some conventions in the interest of not alienating candidates

We try to be as flexible as possible. We have plenty of people with families that work 8-6pm. If you had kids and couldn't make the trial week because of that, we'd figure something else out. But we've had plenty of people go through a trial week with families and it hasn't been a huge burden.

Especially when relocating their families, it's actually a positive -- you end up feeling much more comfortable this is a place you will be at for a while before making that commitment.

That's good to hear. This policy seems to come from a well-intentioned place; it would be a shame if it had some unintended consequences.

Not to nit-pick, but are your normal hours 08:00 - 18:00. I thought normal office hours is closer to 09:00 - 17:00?

there are no normal hours. some people come from 7:00 to 17:00, others come from 12:00 to 20:00. it's entirely flexible and there are no cultural pressures to work certain hours either.

Highly agree - vacation time is extremely valuable to me as a Marine reservist since I often have to spend it for my two weeks of annual training, so if a prospective company asked me to do that, I'd thank them for their time, and part ways unless they were willing to forego that requirement in their decision making. I believe it's unreasonable to ask that time and money of people unless they were willing to compensate me for the time missed at my job.

Are you asking that they pay you both for working for them and also for missed time at your job? According to the post they pay you for working for them for a week.

Which is often a breach of your current employment contract. How do they handle that situation?

I don't know. It isn't a breach of my employment contract so I would not be a very good source on this matter. You could contact them directly and see how they resolve it (or if they even can).

And that doesn't reimburse you for the forced vacation you have to spend. It also may be impossible depending on the contract, as it would be a breach of my current one.

Even if it weren't the case, you're still giving up a significant amount in a form you cannot get back. Paid vacation is not easily come by, and the company is asking the people to work during that time? It is a process biased against those who do not have the luxury of taking a week off on a whim.

By your response I think you inferred I had some follow up commentary prepared that I didn't (and don't) have. I really just want to know: What do you think would be reasonable compensation for the week of vacation spent?

Yeah I'm very conflicted by this.

I am personally willing to do a trial week at a company that I would really like to work for, because I don't like the traditional 1-hour stress-filled interview, and also because it'd let me evaluate the company and co-workers over a period of time. (Many companies are uglier on the inside that they would seem if you go by their web presence, and a few hour interview.)

But I can think of many awesome people I've hired over the hires who have other life commitments and would have passed if we'd used a trial-week policy for hiring.

So it's tricky, but I think you can pull this off if you're an "in demand" company with a good funnel of candidates; you would simply have to live with many excellent candidates passing on your company.

In larger companies, it's not uncommon to offer a 3 month contracting trial period. That gives the prospective employee a more stable income, and gives the employer a much better idea of work performance.

I've seen people that have been great in week 1, showing initiative, energy, insights into the problem, etc. But by week 3, their insights are gone, their initiative has shrank, and their energy is wiped - despite everyone working to support their success.

What I'm saying is, it's easy to put in one great week of work - especially when everything is new, and you're amazing people with the speed at which you pick things up. After 3 - 4 weeks, you'll see the real employee emerge.

Unless they aren't being upfront about their hiring process (in which case you could argue they are being deceitful), I imagine they number is greater than 5%. If you do not apply because of that requirement, you aren't getting counted.

I'm not sure that this is an issue, especially if the conversion rate is in the 70% range quoted in the article. You're getting double-paid for the trial week (from old job and new job), so just take a week of 'vacation' after you quit and before you start the new job.

The only issue is for those who don't get an offer or don't accept the offer, which is why this is (or should be) reserved for very late in the interview process.

I am curious how they figure that out - how many people 'declined to continue the interview process' but didn't say 'it's because you have a trial week'?

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