[mancerayder]

I agree with the statement "they cost money for both parties" but I disagree with "in that sense it's fair."

Individual consultant: loses 5 hours of interview time (and commute time) or take-home exam. Let's call it $800 for the sake of argument.

Company: loses 5 hours of interview time, plus the time it takes to "quiz" the exam.

Individual loses money that he / she uses to pay their mortgage.

Company loses profit because the time spent interviewing the candidate could have been spent working on feature Y of the application. So shareholders / VC's lose.

So you're saying it's fair that the individual contributor who loses half a day's pay in your interview process is equivalent (you DID use the word "fair" so that's an equivalence argument you made) to a company's loss of a few hours out of the many thousands of man-hours they rely upon? It's a .0001% of their profit, assuming the employers don't work a few hours more to make up for the lost time, because they will (they're salaried!)

[kayoone]

Consultants also do not get paid vacation, or paid sick leave. They also don't get any of the benefits that a lot of regular employees get. But that's part of the game, they have to account for all of that which is why they earn much more per hour. A lot of those "customer acquisition" tasks cost time and may not necessarily yield a return, but that's part of the extra risk consultants have to assume and why not everyone is willing to do it.

[mancerayder]

Maybe all true with regards to cost considerations, but it doesn't support the notion above that a candidate's wasted time and money (vacation time and sick time costs money for an FTE) and a company's wasted time are somehow .. 'equal'.