Raymond Camden is a experienced developer advocate and evangelist. His work focuses on APIs, the web platform, and generative AI. He is the author of multiple books on development and has been activel
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.