Raymond Camden is a Senior Developer Evangelist for Adobe. He works on the Document Services APIs to build powerful (and typically cat-related) PDF demos.
Great article! One comment about these 'tests' and such. Since I'm quoted above I think folks know how I feel about it. However, I've had a few jobs ask me to do the following and I've been ok with it:
1) Write an article about our products
2) Give a presentation about one of our products
In both cases I was ok with it because a) I was given a LOT of time and b) I asked (demanded) to be able to share the stuff on my blog later.
So for me, while I was losing a bit of time even if I didn't get the offer (or it wasn't an offer I wanted), I at least learned something and got some content for my site.
Brian Rinaldi is a Developer Experience Engineer at LaunchDarkly with over 20 years experience as a developer for the web. Brian is active in the community running CFE.dev and Orlando Devs.
I have had some experiences like that as well. One company asked me to write a blog post about their product and, should I not get an offer, even said they'd pay for the time. I think that a blog post or presentation is perfect for a DevRel role, but if it were used for a standard developer role, I'd think you'd have to ensure it isn't graded on writing or presenting skills that are likely not part of the job requirement.
I am definitely not opposed to relatively short, relevant homework even for developers. I don't equate these with coding quizzes and whiteboarding. However, I do think companies need to be aware of the time demands of their homework and make sure they are reasonable. I also don't think companies should use this as an opportunity for some free labor by making the developer do actual job work (like fix an issue on a repo) as homework without compensation.
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Great article! One comment about these 'tests' and such. Since I'm quoted above I think folks know how I feel about it. However, I've had a few jobs ask me to do the following and I've been ok with it:
1) Write an article about our products
2) Give a presentation about one of our products
In both cases I was ok with it because a) I was given a LOT of time and b) I asked (demanded) to be able to share the stuff on my blog later.
So for me, while I was losing a bit of time even if I didn't get the offer (or it wasn't an offer I wanted), I at least learned something and got some content for my site.
I have had some experiences like that as well. One company asked me to write a blog post about their product and, should I not get an offer, even said they'd pay for the time. I think that a blog post or presentation is perfect for a DevRel role, but if it were used for a standard developer role, I'd think you'd have to ensure it isn't graded on writing or presenting skills that are likely not part of the job requirement.
I am definitely not opposed to relatively short, relevant homework even for developers. I don't equate these with coding quizzes and whiteboarding. However, I do think companies need to be aware of the time demands of their homework and make sure they are reasonable. I also don't think companies should use this as an opportunity for some free labor by making the developer do actual job work (like fix an issue on a repo) as homework without compensation.