Like hiring a plumber, call up anybody you know is a “coder” or “programmer” and say I need this and this and this. Company agrees to a price or hourly rate for the coder. It takes them 1-3 months (hourly, project-based, whatever) to see if it goes well, if they’re lucky.

Maybe it works out, maybe it doesn’t. You need a coder again.

You have 10 coders to pick from, how do you pick the best one?

You can go by price

You can go by previous experience

You can go by bias/culture fit/mutual understanding

So you create a process to filter so you have a best chance of hiring somebody who won’t waste 1-3 months

Over many years we ended up with phone screens (why?)

Design questions (why?)

Coding exercises (why?)

As a “coder” the value to a company you apply for is “you could save yourself 1-3 months by putting me through this process.”

“Would you be willing to pay $200 to have me go through this process? $200 doesn’t seem like a lot vs $20-$60k over 1-3 months. How many coders are you going to interview?”

They probably wouldn’t pay $200 for every candidate, would they? But at some point, they’d probably say ok I think it’s worth paying $x to make sure I’m not fucking up bad

What about the other way around?

Coder wants some $ to write code. Company approaches him, agrees. But turns out they want unrealistic deadlines. They don’t pay for conferences. They have a shitty tech stack. So coder starts asking those questions to companies

It’s pretty obvious now, but I had never gave it much thought. Understanding it better, I’m more comfortable asking for compensation for a take-home

Imagine a company (this has happened to me) as a first step sends me a take-home. What’s it worth to me to prove to them that I can do what’s in there? Potentially a job that pays a lot, yes. What’s it worth to them? $0? $20? It must be worth something? At minimum, it’s worth the time it takes for them to review the take home! Think about that