Would never consider doing even a second interview let alone any
take home projectsslave labor.I once had a company give me a take home assignment on bitbucket. Private repo. Got the work, made the API endpoint that did the thing.
Followed up with them. No response. Nothing for a week. Then suddenly I get an email that they merged my code and they forgot that I had access to the repo. I could see that they were selectively merging canadates code into their own system. When I asked them with a followup if they had any questions on the code, no response and suddenly I had no access on the git side.
Yeah they were crowd sourcing an app. I just did a bunch of free work. Never again. Nowadays I just reject jobs that require any coding outside an interview. It's a two way street, it's not worth giving people free work.
Did you waive your rights to the code anywhere? If not then it's still your code and they used it without obtaining the rights to using it - depending on your jurisdiction ofc.
I once had a company give me an assignment that sounded very much like what you are describing. They said I should allocate 10h at once to implement a real-life task that they had and that their developers "already solved".
At that point I only wrote a handful messages with their recruiter and hadn't even spoken to a human there. I didn't even know anything about the team, my potential boss or the project at that time.
I didn't even answer back, just ghosted them. I'm not going to spend multiple hundreds of Euros of my time just for some assignent to maybe qualify for an interview.
That legit sounds like the most inefficient way to build an app wtf.
Vibe coding without Cursor
Take home project? My rate is $250/hr with a minimum of 4 hours.
Say it with a straight face. This is business.
The funny part is that $250/hr isn’t even that crazy for freelance work, depending on where you live and what field you work in. Freelancers frequently charge anywhere from 2-5x their normal hourly rate, to account for the fact that they’re not getting full time benefits. They’re paying for their own liability insurance, their own healthcare, their own equipment, their non-billable hours, etc… The higher rate is to cover all of the things that an employer would typically cover.
And lots of managers don’t even mind paying it, because it comes out of a different budget than their payroll. I’ve seen some orgs where they don’t even bother following up on contractor invoices unless they’re at least 5 digits. $9000 bill for a contractor? Psh, that’s a drop in the bucket. Hell, that $9000 wouldn’t even cover a full 40 hour work week in some fields.
Source: Was a freelancer for nearly a decade. I worked with several companies that would sign off on my $8000 invoices without even double checking them.
You actually hear back from companies?
Bill’em!
Had this one interview that demanded a 1 hr presentation on why I was the best candidate and told me the night before. Hiring manager didnt even ask for it. I practiced all night....
You want a job? beg for it then we will see
Two. And that's only if I'm feeling it.
Office jobs in 2025
