Hey fellow devs! I've been assigned a take-home coding task as part of my interview process. The company wants a feature that resembles something they already have publicly, and they're looking for it to be 'ready to embed' into their site with full functionality. While it's not a huge project, it's definitely complete enough that they could easily use it in production without many modifications. They haven't mentioned any compensation or what the next steps are—just told me to send in the code when I'm finished.
I'm keen to demonstrate my abilities, but I feel uneasy about handing over a polished, production-ready piece of work without any sort of compensation. How would you handle this situation? How do you maintain professionalism while protecting your work? By the way, I requested this task myself to get the ball rolling after our second interview, but now I'm feeling a bit cornered.
5 Answers
This seems like a classic case of a company trying to get free code. They might even tell you they found a better candidate later. I'd be careful not to fall for it!
You could always offer to walk them through the project via a screenshare instead of just sending the code. If they really want to see your skills, this could work well without handing over your hard work completely! If they push back, that’s a big red flag!
Good idea! Plus, it shows you understand more than just the code.
Honestly, this doesn't sit right with me. If I were really desperate for a job, I might consider it, but I'd probably upload the code to GitHub with a restrictive license to prevent commercial use. That way, they can’t just take it and run with it!
Good plan! At least it gives you some level of ownership.
Exactly! Just keep control over your work while still showcasing your skills.
"Ready to embed" sounds like a huge red flag to me. Take-home tasks are usually just to test your knowledge, not to create something fully functional for production. If I were in your shoes, I'd probably just decline and move on, but if you need the job, you might just have to submit it cautiously.
That’s exactly my concern too. I feel like they might just be looking for free work.
Just thinking outside the box here, but maybe you can add a copyright notice to the code stating it’s for evaluation only. It’s probably not going to change much, but it might at least give you some peace of mind.
I was thinking about doing something similar! Maybe a live demo without sharing the actual code might work too.
I hope that’s not the case! They did seem nice when I met them.