Just looking at his two blog posts, I think that the company's hiring practice worked perfectly and weeded out someone who may be technically competent, but is toxic to the work environment.
His tone is aggressive and completely self centred - imagine trying to have a meeting with him where he sticks stubbornly to his opinion, refusing to listen to other opinions and potentially throws tantrums whenever he doesn't get his own way.
Secondly, the fact he refuses to pair program with a developer on the existing code base ' to see how he works within a team / on code - suggests that he probably would equally be unlikely to do anything outside of what he is technically being paid for.
I'm not saying anyone should work for free, but sometimes you have to help out, whether it's working a bit later or helping during a crunch time. He comes across like he only would want to work on things that interest him, during the hours he's paid and then be out the door.
I think the company that was hiring did a good job of filtering him out.
I disagree in part with your take on it - mostly with the idea that the hiring person expected to "spend the day" on the problem. I don't have a problem with working on open source or production code for 1-2 hours. But a whole day? If an employer asks you to work for free for a full day before hiring you, what does that tell you about how they value their employees' time? It tells me that they don't value it at all!
All programmers expect (or should expect) to have some demonstration somehow/somewhere. OP offered to demonstrate his skills but the hiring person was locked into their way of doing things (our code, our way, your time). The problem with this particular company is that they expected a whole day (or that's how he paints it at least).
Attitude aside, its clear from the story that they wanted him to make features for their company for free, without paying him.
I know the start up way is to push for more, but if you are hiring a person to make sure they stay late and work unpaid time, you have a manpower problem, it isn't a problem with the individual.
The real problem is that companies far past the start up stage continue with this belief that it is the employees responsibility to work late for the companies mistakes, and yet when it comes to raise time try to fit you into a rigid and small benefits/pay increase.
If there is supposed to be a give and take, where's the give?
> ... equally be unlikely to do anything outside of what he is technically being paid for.
"Technically" being paid for? There is absolutely no reason for anyone to do any commercial work unless being paid for. People are not slaves, they have their own lives and their own free time to do the stuff they want to do. To expect from anyone to work for free and complain when they refuse to is outrageous.
> I'm not saying anyone should work for free, but sometimes you have to help out, whether it's working a bit later or helping during a crunch time.
Yes, in fact that's exactly what you're saying--people should work for free. You're just calling it "helping out". The employee is not there to "help" you (do what? get rich?), they are there to do the job they're contractually being paid to do. If you need more work to be done, then arrange so. If you need free "helping out" feel free to call in your friends and family.
Part of being a developer is there's going to be some crap I can't shield you from as your manager, despite my best intentions. If I think you are going to suddenly turn barrack-room lawyer on me, or tell me it's not part of your job, or anything other than deal with it professionally and helpfully, you're a poor team fit.
And if you understand so little about how programming teams work, and think that you are going to - with no context of the codebase or problem space - significantly improve my Senior Developer's work such that you're worth your contracting day-rate for the interview (and are paranoid to think that the interview is a big scam to get you to work for free) ... you're probably delusional.
Thing is, as an employee, yes you should be able to deal with having to spend unexpected time on something. As a job candidate, the equation is a bit different. There is no commitment from the company or the candidate to each other, and the candidate may never get hired by the company in the first place. So why should the candidate give the company a day of work for free? And if a day of work for free is fine, why not 2 days, or a week? Clearly there is some point at which a job candidate should not be doing free work for a company.
It didn't sound like the company was looking for the interviewee to improve on the Senior Developer's work, it sounded like they wanted the interviewee to develop new features for deployment in a pair with the lead developer. Not the same thing IMO.
Maybe the company wasn't trying to concoct a grand scam, but there are certainly companies out there that would think nothing of doing so. And even if the whole 'write some deployable features' for us exercise was not devised as a scam, it doesn't change the fact that it is a bit unreasonable to ask a job candidate to spend a day writing code for you.
The guy even offered to write code for an open source project but the interviewer refused. What does that say about the company?
I share the same opinion. Appart from that, I'd love to have the opportunity to see and play with the actual codebase before signing up for a job. During my first days with a really friendly and somewhat generous company, I inherited a mind-blowing codebase (well I'm gonna call it "code", but I might as well call it absurd theatre). All the blubber that HR, product managers and team leaders feed you during interviews, gives you like 10% of the job description accuracy you would get from actually reading their code.
Anyway, I think attitude plays a really important role here. A candidate might be able to recite Linux Kernel code by heart, but if he doesn't show commitment or a bit of flexibility, I would never get him on my team. I'm not talking here about an 8 hour long test run. I bet the guy could have negotiated it to 4 hours or something. I gave away 8 hours of trial work once (+ 3 hours spent talking to managers during the other stages) and I never felt bad about it. I really don't get what the problem is here, I was always really eager to show what I can and to impress. It's all about being competitive. We're not pealing potatoes, we're writing code. Show some passion for Christ's sake. Or find a job that makes you happy even when you're not getting paid. That's the kind of job you'd like to keep for the rest of your life.
Say what you will about the guy's tone (impressions may vary), but I don't think the guy was being unreasonable about the heart of the matter.
> Secondly, the fact he refuses to pair program with a developer on the existing code base ' to see how he works within a team / on code - suggests that he probably would equally be unlikely to do anything outside of what he is technically being paid for.
I don't think that is the case at all, the guy offered to do some work on some open source code and the interviewer refused. It's not that he wasn't willing to pair program, he was unwilling to produce a day's worth of deployable code for free.
Programming is skilled labor, and doing skilled labor for free for a commercial interest devalues the profession. It's one thing for there to be occassional spikes in working hours, it's another thing to start out a relationship with the attitude of, 'You will do work that is valuable to me, but you will only get the chance of working for me in return'. That's what clueless people looking for programmers on Craigslist do.
Flip the situation around. Let's say the interviewee asked the company to provide a developer to spend a day developing an open source feature so he[the interviewee] could see the company's coding practices in action. What company would agree to that? Especially for multiple interviewees?
His tone is aggressive and completely self centred - imagine trying to have a meeting with him where he sticks stubbornly to his opinion, refusing to listen to other opinions and potentially throws tantrums whenever he doesn't get his own way.
Secondly, the fact he refuses to pair program with a developer on the existing code base ' to see how he works within a team / on code - suggests that he probably would equally be unlikely to do anything outside of what he is technically being paid for.
I'm not saying anyone should work for free, but sometimes you have to help out, whether it's working a bit later or helping during a crunch time. He comes across like he only would want to work on things that interest him, during the hours he's paid and then be out the door.
I think the company that was hiring did a good job of filtering him out.