[grayfox]

Compose | Remote (Canada, US, UK)

What: Databases-as-a-service. We offer production grade, auto-scaling, automatically backed-up, add-on compatible MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, and more.

$: All roles start at 100k and scale up based on experience. MacBook Pro, pension match, health.

Hiring Process: Blind hiring! First, a light application. Second, all candidates who complete the application receive a work-sample resembling the work one would do in the role. No deadline. Final step is a paid work day ($500).

Compose has grown into a vibrant group where folks can feel comfortable being themselves, living a balanced life. We welcome you to enjoy comfort when taking risks, collaborate with spirited peers, and to unleash your creative and talented personality.

* Work from anywhere!

* Many neat conundrums to solve.

* Self-managing, distributed decision making. Choose your projects. We're deadline averse and quality focused.

* Hardly any meetings.

* Ruby/Go.

* Fizz: https://www.compose.io/articles/the-tool-we-built-to-help-us...

Roles:

* Platform Engineer / Application Developer

* Support Engineer

* Technical Content Creator ('Developer Advocacy' type of role)

To begin: https://compose.interviewed.com

[ITriedThis]

Anonymous review:

I tried this process because it sounded pretty fun and unique.

One warning I have for anyone interested is that there are some big waiting times involved. I'll share my timeline. Some of the lags were on my end, but I was assured I had as much time as I needed.

  - Day 0-6 - First contact
  - Day 7 - Assigned work sample
  - Day 21 - Submitted work sample
  - Day 62 - Work sample results returned
  - Day 72 - Paid work day
  - Day 79 - Work day report completed
  - Day 85 - Final decision

Overall there were 21 days where they were waiting on me and 47 days where I was waiting on them. This seemed to me like a lot of waiting but maybe it is normal.

I probably worked 15 hours on the work sample, 8 hours on the work day, and 8 more hours putting together the report after the work day.

[grayfox]

Oof, bummer. Your experience is slower than average. We ran into a grading crunch when we launched our Enterprise product. When you submit your work to us, your submission is anonymous. Three engineers grade each submission.

Platform Engineers will experience the greatest wait periods. The other roles tend to be quicker.

Expected time-frame:

* Proceed from application to work sample: 24 hours.

* Complete work sample: Up to the candidate. We build them to take 2-6 hours.

* Grade work sample: 1-4 weeks.

* Schedule work day: 1 week.

* Receive decision: 2-5 days.

Thanks for taking our time to try the process out, it is appreciated. The method is constantly under improvement.

[levemi]

It's hard to see how you can have much success with this method. Current recruiting strategies involve getting from recruiter telephone call to final decision within 2 weeks, or 1 if possible. The faster you move on a candidate the more likely they end up working for you. At my current employer initial phone conversation, telephone interview and on site were all within 7 days.

[kasey_junk]

While I'd never argue its a "good" thing to have a slower pipeline, in the past when I had pipelines with timing similar to this companies, it didn't have extreme negative impacts on the success of the pipeline.

I don't know why that was, but my suspicion was that our highest qualified leads were those coming from candidates that were "happy enough" at their current positions to not be frantically searching.

As long as we seemed like a good place to work, and we did a good job of communicating why back logs were happening, we didn't lose many of the candidates we were most excited about.

[freek4iphone]

my experience is that I am mostly happy where I am, and I am not in market when I am Happy, but when I am not happy, I want to get out asap and wait times as high as a month is a real turn off

[tostitos1979]

It seems you truly care about feedback and the quality of your process. FWIW: I'm glad you are making these timelines transparent so people can decide whether the position is a good fit or not for them. As someone who is in the field for over a decade, it strikes me that this timeline is really long and you run the risk of getting people who couldn't get a better offer from another top employer faster. In addition, I personally have stopped engaging any hiring process that has a take home exam. My view is that my degrees and track record are sufficient evidence of my competence. Also, my time is really valuable .. so engaging with companies who are forced to waste their engineer's time as well as mine seems fair. Just one person's opinion :)

[stray]

I understand why you do but I don't really care how long it takes -- because I don't need a new job.

The one I have is just fine.

But I'll probably take a shot at this one because that "blind" process won't care how many trips around the sun I've made.

[35bge57dtjku]

* Grade work sample: 1-4 weeks.

That's heinous.

[bogomipz]

Agreed. That's kind of ridiculous. I don't understand this whole "we are not interested in speaking with you as a real human being but 'here', here is some homework for you to do' Seems really silly.

[kafkaesq]

It has its tradeoffs. The point is, if they're going to go that route the assignment should be short and sweet, and the response should be quick. Especially since we can pretty much tell, like, right away whether we like someone else's code or not, now can't we?

Basic, common-sense considerations which a lot of places don't seem to appreciate, unfortunately.

And to not respond at all is just a gratuitous insult.

[mrkurt]

He's understating what he's done a bit. We're vastly more consistent with candidate feedback than we used to be, largely due to tooling + process changes that grayfox has put in place. It's improving, we'd like to turn evals around in <1 week for everyone.

[samstave]

Apologies,but this process feels really lame. I know that many companies do it, (like atlassian, for example) - but it feels as though one is interviewing for a slavery post. Let me explain:

You hire people. People have lives. But this type of process just illustrates that you're a Corp and not really having the best interest of the people you're hiring. The reason I state this is because corporations don't give a fuck about anyone who under performs and they shall fire anyone at will. You're not a family, you're (the corp) not going to put in nearly as much effort as the candidate did to get the job, in order to keep said candidate.

You make them take many weeks to apply and get the job, but even for trivial reasons (we lost that customer/contract or we don't have the funding) you'll kick said candidate to the curb without a second thought.

It's a one sided position in the favor of the corp, and for that reason I would never choose to work at any company with this method for hiring - and especially a company that has this example of how long that fucking process takes.

The point is, you think you're looking for "the best fit" but you're actually alienating people who would be a good fit.

[spyrosg]

Of course they're a 'corp', and of course they're looking after their own interests over yours. Looking after your interests is your own job, no one else's.

The employer-employee relationship is partly a fight. The best you can hope is that it be a gentleman's one, with no hits under the belt, rather than an all-out brawl or backstabbing.

grayfox is showing you cards that the average employer would hold back and would only release at gunpoint: salary range, internal details of hiring process, how long the process takes... seems this is gentleman's territory for now.

The long process selects for people who are happy with their jobs, which is the situation of most experienced and skilled people. I have seen worse.

Edit: I'm realising this is more aggresive than I like. I'll leave it as is, with the addition that I once thought like you, and this here is the state of mind I've come to have now that I've been on both sides of the recruiting fence.

[samstave]

That's a fair reply - thanks.

I still don't personally like it, but I'd say my bias is mostly that I am older and have kids...

I've been fucked over by so many companies in my 20+ years in Silicon Valley that I do not trust any HR team or "vision of a unicorn family"...

But I will say that this model would look ideal to any millennial person who wants to work at a "progressive" tech company/start-up

But said company shall become as ruthless as any as they mature.

Work is not your family. Either knock it out of the park, or get fucked. Success in our industry is binary.

[cookiecaper]

I sympathize with you and also dislike long evaluation times. I also have kids and a life outside of work. Personally I think 6 hours is too long to design a work sample around but it's not that bad, I've done work samples (early in my career) that took 3 days and that I would've billed out for $3k when I became a consultant later.

In grayfox's timeline, things really seem to hang up around the time it takes to evaluate the sample, asking for 1-4 weeks. This is another point in favor of minimalist work samples (smaller sample = less time required to review). IMO work samples should be a simple problem where the candidate demonstrates his basic awareness of the core skills needed to perform the daily work and the bulk of the hiring process should occur in a discussion between parties.

Anyway, I'd suggest that they tighten up this process by a) minimizing their work samples and b) making it priority to review work samples as they come in, which means adding more resources for this purpose if necessary. It shouldn't take more than a week to hear back at any step of the process.

[avip]

For balance: I also tried this process because it sounded fun and unique. Got the assignment within 1 day, all inquiries answered within single day.

I still think the process is fun and uniq, so I'll apply again now.

[webeng18]

I love the hiring process at Compose. I myself have applied here. I also love it how they understand the pain points in the hiring process and sympathize with potential candidates.

However, I am a little disappointed. Given the process they have and the ranking procedures, unfortunately, the process is very time taking. Been 8+ weeks after I turned in the coding exercises and haven't heard back anything (positive remarks or a rejection) yet. So far I have been to a decent amount of hiring procedures (have been extended 2 offers and declined), and the entire procedure is usually 6-8 weeks. But again those hiring procedures are quite "traditional" compared to how Compose is performing. I guess, patience is virtue :)

Anyways, overall I enjoyed working on the problems and exercises. Good luck!

[mrkurt]

8 weeks with no communications from us is wrong. Will you email me so I can go see what happened? kurt at compose.io

[webeng18]

I must correct myself here. @mrkurt apologies for misleading information. What I meant was I haven't heard about the next steps or about a rejection. However, I was notified that my submission is in queue and to expect a decision soon. I am 100% in support for the hiring procedures followed by Compose :).

What was disappointing was, overall the timeline has been 8+ weeks since submission of coding exercise and a decision on the same isn't available.

[mrkurt]

Yeah 8 weeks is terrible, and I'm pretty sure it means something broke. I'm happy to look it up (incidentally, people are very hesitant to email us and ask what's up because they're worried about seeming pushy. They shouldn't be, if a company thinks you're pushy for respecting your time you shouldn't work there).

[bogomipz]

Would you mind listing a few past projects and work samples have been?

[20years]

Your hiring practices and willingness to disclose pay are refreshing. It would be interesting to read a more detailed case study on how this works for you.

[chowes]

+1, would love for more info on your "paid work day" experiences

[ITriedThis]

For me, the paid work day was 8 hours in a Slack chat asking a lot of questions of 1-2 employees. My task was to get familiar with their existing systems by querying these employees. I was asked to prepare a report about what I found.

The guys seemed busy so for a lot of the day I was on my own, waiting for more information.

It was intense, but by the end of the day I had a pretty good sense of the internals. I think it was a good test overall.

[mrkurt]

It sounds like it worked like we want, kind of! The work days should be more interactive than what you experienced, I think. The really good ones seem to be super busy for the first 4 hours, with 3-4 existing employees interacting. The latter half is frequently quiet if people are on the right track.

I can guess which position you were going through the process for, and it's something that we've been talking about a lot.

One thing we've noticed is that even when it's not perfect, the process we have helps a lot. You had an imperfect work day, but got a good idea of what the actual work is like. I'd rather you have a perfect workday though.

[kiloreux]

Can you please add that you are only able to accept candidates from US and Canada, I had my hopes up :( .

[grayfox]

Ah! Out of space in the main post. We are only able to hire those that can legally work within Canada, the US, or the UK.

Once hired, fully remote from anywhere.

[joeyspn]

By "legally work" do you mean "pay taxes"? Because AFAIK European people can legally work in UK and live or pay taxes in their origin countries (France, Germany, Spain, etc)

http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/work-abroad/index_...

[s_kilk]

Confirming, EEA citizens can work in the UK, so the hiring pool could technically include the whole EU.

[mrkurt]

It's tricky. The hiring pool can technically include the whole EU, but people need to live in the UK while they work here (I believe). We can't hire someone in Germany and have them be employed in the UK.

[joeyspn]

> people need to live in the UK while they work here

Not really. The only issue is where the employee wants to pay taxes (and get social benefits), in the UK or in the country of residence. This also applies for UK nationals living abroad in Europe.

Generally you're forced to pay local taxes when you spend 183+ days living in the same country (you automatically get resident status), but most of the EU countries have bilateral income tax agreements in order to prevent double-taxation. (you can live in Spain and request tax exemption/return from the UK or Spain gov) and viceversa.

It's trickier than simply hiring EU contractors but it's definitely doable (I know some cases) and opens a whole new talent pool for an UK company.

https://www.gov.uk/tax-uk-income-live-abroad

https://www.gov.uk/tax-uk-income-live-abroad/taxed-twice

[neopallium]

How about a Canadian citizen living in China? Is the requirement mostly about paying taxes?

[mrkurt]

I don't think we can employ someone living in China. We have a US citizen living in Japan, but China is a big bag of hurt all by itself.

[avip]

I've applied to Compose with equivalent circumstances and was assured that's ok. Good luck!

[kanetw]

Shame you're not hiring from EU proper :(

[scalesolved]

I voted you up, you gave great information to potential candidates and included a rough pay idea, hopefully you'll float to the top. Best of luck!

[BlackJack]

Same, I've upvoted everyone who provided a salary estimate. I saw this in action last month and think it's a great principle so I encourage others to do the same.

[pmarreck]

While I admire your "blind hiring," I've become increasingly aware that when it comes to team dynamics, EQ matters as much as IQ and social skills/empathy matter as much as ability... (Perhaps that accounts for your $500 "first day.") Has this method been working for you?

[grayfox]

EQ has proven to be of vital importance in growing healthy teams. There was that Google study: http://www.inc.com/robin-camarote/google-study-reveals-emoti...

The work-day would be where we assess EQ. It is difficult to stay objective and consistent when assessing soft-skills. It provides the risk that biases and could-be-wrong impressions dictate your hiring decisions.

Two things, in my eyes, have helped us find bright and 'good' people:

First, by using consistent criteria that are as specific (binary) as possible, we have been able to find people who are not just talented, but conscientious contributors.

Secondly, the way we write/pitch/communicate during the process sets the tone for both the people we want and the environment we want to create. If you go through an uncomfortable, even aggressive, hiring process, what would you expect from the environment and the people within that environment? We try for good-ness from word one.

[opendomain]

I always loved Compose - I am the founder of NoSQL.Com and developed a similar business model. They are a fantastic company.

However, my concern is that Compose is now part of IBM. What guarantee does anyone starting at compose will not be caught in the layoffs?

[johnward]

I take it you are still following your own hiring process and haven't been bluewashed yet?

[mrkurt]

Yes. Our process actually meshes with IBM's reasonably well, people still have to go through the IBM recruiting system (very late in our process) but it's not used for any screening / decisions.

[beeboop]

Even the support and writing roles start at 100k? Seems really high for both.

[grayfox]

Our Support Engineers and Technical Content Creators do real intensive technical work.

The role is not important at Compose. The system is built to best groom out 'core competencies'. A Support Engineer is a strong Ops/Systems Administrator with great communication and customer skills. A Technical Content Creator is a strong developer with excellent written communication skill.

Our Analytics is maintained, built, and improved by a 'Content Creator'. Our hiring, too, is ran by a 'Content Creator'. Similar folk contribute across the app, and apply skills in various areas.

It is a mature way to work. To get the best people, you need to offer competitive wages.

[spyrosg]

I'm not interested in applying, but very curious as to what kind of work sample you might have for a systems profile. Is it okay to 'apply' just for the sample?

[Bombthecat]

What about germany? Do you need a guy to do night shifts while it is day in germany? :)

[bogomipz]

What is "First a light application"?

[quantum_nerd]

sounds like an awesome place to work!