[hackinthebochs]

Homework is great, but only if a job offer is guaranteed if submitting a sufficient project. It is hubris to think someone will care enough about your company to spend 8 hours of their time for the small chance to be hired. Presumably you are giving the same assignment to a handful of other candidates. You are simply outsourcing much of the investment of hiring to the candidates. This is simply unethical (one of many tests for ethics is "if everyone did X, would the scenario be tenable"--in this case the answer is obviously no).

[bcantrill]

It's not a small chance at all -- and it only comes after a conversation where I have done basic vetting and where I have explained why the problems that we're solving are exciting to me. (That is, if you're not ginned up to do the homework, I haven't done my job -- or it's not a fit.)

And as an aside, your test for ethics is entirely asinine, as it renders anything of sub-infinite scale unethical. (Among its more obvious failings, anyone who chooses not to have children is behaving unethically -- as is anyone who has children, for that matter.)

[defen]

> And as an aside, your test for ethics is entirely asinine, as it renders anything of sub-infinite scale unethical.

That's not his test, that's Kant's Categorical Imperative :)

[mahyarm]

Homework is going to put a bunch of candidates off unless its a short amount of time (~5 hrs) and as an alternative to taking time off of work to go do an in person interview.

I know one guy who did 30 hours total of interview investment, where a bunch of it was homework and was eventually not hired because he wasn't 'passionate' enough about payroll software! You don't want to waste your time doing such shit so you quickly start refusing long homework projects. Your in demand and you have better things to do with your time.

[michaelt]

  And as an aside, your test for ethics is entirely asinine

To me, "if everyone did X, would the scenario be tenable" sounds like a less fancy way of saying "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."

That is to say, Kant's Categorical Imperative [1].

If you consider it asinine, I could introduce you to a lot of intelligent people you would think were asinine.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

[hackinthebochs]

Of course small is subjective, but I would consider, say, a 1 in 3 chance to be small in this case.

>test for ethics is entirely asinine, as it renders anything of sub-infinite scale unethical

I don't see how this is so. Explain?

>anyone who chooses not to have children is behaving unethically -- as is anyone who has children, for that matter

This is also not obvious. Of course tenable is poorly defined, but there is nothing contradictory/chaotic/unsustainable about everyone stopping having kids. Furthermore, it is not obvious to me that the statement "it is unethical to not have kids (if you're able)" is necessarily absurd.