[Ryel]

I've interviewed with dozens and dozens of startups in NYC. I'm an entry level Front-End Dev with passion for a lot of things I (in hindsight) probably should have gone to college for. For example, my current side-project is a completely client-side image metadata reader/writer that has forced me to learn new things like parsing Binary, Endianness, Meta and a lot of things about organizing JS because I've never built this large of a project completely by myself even though it is very, very small. A weekend project for most of you.

Throughout all of my interviews I've noticed one common trait.

Either I do exceptionally well on the personal questions during the interview, or I do really well on the technical questions. There is no in-between.

Most of my interviews could be broken up into 2 sections. The first section is usually where they open up and try to make things more comfortable. Asking me where I'm from, how long I've been writing code, what kind of side-projects I'm working on, etc...

The second part of the interview is when they try to figure out how much I know. Usually we start off by just talking about technology and this is where they try to figure out if I'm BS'ing my way through things. If you can maintain a fluent conversation about technology; you're good-to-go. After that they will generally try to slip in a few questions, usually about event delegation in Javascript.

The problem for me comes from when we switch from personal questions to technical ones, or vice-versa. I will pass either one with flying colors but I will rarely, if ever, pass both. If that particular day I can't sell my personal story very well, I do very well on the technical questions. If I do well on the personal questions, I do terrible on the technical questions. I believe there is a vast cognitive gap when you go from an emotional conversation talking about significant things in your past (like side-projects, old employers, hometown, etc..) and then jump to such rigid topics like code where there is no emotion, it's purely analytical thinking.

What I would prefer is for a company to pay me $100 to come into the office and work a half day. If I can keep up, I get the job.

[Matt_Mickiewicz]

Not one company has invited you to come onsite for a day-long interview to code alongside the team?

You should be upfront with the employer. "I think the best way for me to showcase my skills would be to come onsite for a day, and tackle whatever projects you're working on currently. After 8 hours, you'll have a good assessment as to whether or not it's a fit, and vice-versa."

[Ryel]

Not one company has asked me to write code on a computer.

Also important to note these are almost all fully funded companies with solid dev teams. I've had great offers that just never worked out due to fit (or rather lack of passion from the dev teams).

I've thrown the offer out there on several occasions but it's always refused or delayed to the point where contact drops. One time the senior engineer told me my offer to come in and code on my own dime was "nonsense" and If I knew better I wouldnt be offering my work for free, because that would hurt the "startup economy".

My faith in the NY Tech Scene is pretty much non-existent to the point I'd rather make hourly wage in manual labor and hack on projects in my own time, as opposed to burning myself out around people like noted above.

--edit-- Which is exactly what I do

[kethinov]

Offering to pay for it probably puts people off.

You're suggesting a quite legitimate (if not common) method of assessing your skills. You're already paying for it with your time, as are they.

If they think it's a novel idea and worth their time to give it a shot, they might go for it. Or possibly give you homework as a decent compromise.

But the upfront suggestion of money exchanging hands does add a certain ridiculousness to the idea on the face of it.

Just ask for a coding assignment or a trial day at the office on an actual problem to work on without cash and it might work better.