Story time. I interviewed for a job at posthog. I knew that I really loved their communication style. But I hadn't used their product and didn't know a ton about them except that their writing is fantastic.
The 'product for engineers' focus that they is cool but when I had an interview, it was clear that I wasn't a 'product for engineering' person.
When they proposed the Super Day. I was like, I'm not sure because it's awesome to get paid for a day, but it's also not an unstressful event. And I sort of said I had some more questions before we moved on to the Super Day.
And they basically just said: we don't think it's going to work out. It was actually a pretty positive experience. I think that they correctly assessed the situation pretty quickly and my hesitation was a real signal to them.
(This is my recollection - I could have the details wrong.)
But yeah, super day is a day of very structured work in the role that they setup. And its paid.
I did a "trial week" at Linear a few years ago, essentially the same thing but for an entire week.
Nice to get paid, but even getting paid is stressful if you're used to working PAYE and not having to think about how to do taxes on foreign income. The process works out very well for Linear, but as a candidate... not so much. It was probably the most stressful week of my professional career. You can't really simulate a typical work day or week with the stress of a sword of damocles over your head.
The thing I was tasked to do was pretty simple on the surface, but had some unexpected dead-end avenues that ate up quite a bit of time. So ended the week with "you're not fast enough". If I'd hit on the correct approach from the start i'd have probably easily finished early, so it really felt like a coin toss to me.
Story time. I interviewed for a job at posthog. I knew that I really loved their communication style. But I hadn't used their product and didn't know a ton about them except that their writing is fantastic.
The 'product for engineers' focus that they is cool but when I had an interview, it was clear that I wasn't a 'product for engineering' person.
When they proposed the Super Day. I was like, I'm not sure because it's awesome to get paid for a day, but it's also not an unstressful event. And I sort of said I had some more questions before we moved on to the Super Day.
And they basically just said: we don't think it's going to work out. It was actually a pretty positive experience. I think that they correctly assessed the situation pretty quickly and my hesitation was a real signal to them.
(This is my recollection - I could have the details wrong.)
But yeah, super day is a day of very structured work in the role that they setup. And its paid.