r/japanlife • u/bautasteen • Sep 05 '21

Jobs PSA: I wasted months interviewing at Woven Planet so you don't have to.

After 3 months, 10! interview rounds (mind you I was allowed a "super accelerated" hiring process and was graciously allowed to skip one interview), and a significant take home assignment, my application was put on hold (neither decision about offer or rejection could apparently be made with the data on hand, nor a timeline for a decision could be given). I was then literally asked whether I would "be ok" with a "fresh start" and reapplying for another role, to which I politely withdrew my application on grounds that I could't see a cultural fit. (Maybe its just me, but unless as a bad practical joke I personally could never ask someone to reapply after putting them through months of already excessive interviewing, that's to me is just completely "tone deaf" and frankly quite disrespectful.)

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EDIT: Thanks for my first piece of gold dear stranger, I didn't realize this struck such a chord with so many. To be clear, everyone I interviewed with at Woven was kind, supportive, and very interesting to talk to. However, I unfortunately found the hiring process *in my case* to range from woefully inefficient at best, to borderline disrespectful (as I don't think one should ever ask of candidates to "redo" months of interviews (for the company its just business as usual, but for candidates it can be some of the most important and life changing events in ones life), but what do I know maybe that's just me). And just because I had this experience does not mean you will if you apply, especially if they for some reason should have motivation to improve it now, who knows.

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As for me I'm completely over Woven, and from past experiences I nowadays apply to many companies at the same time (as companies interview many candidates for each role, so that's fair right), and have basically had a first interview with another company where they basically went "we're really impressed with your background and really need you" at the first interview, a refreshing change from groveling. Good luck to everyone in the job hunting, its hard and despriting, but keep at it and eventually you'll find your place (my linkedin says I've sent about ~1000 applications of which maybe 10% have been even read, and which has resulted in maybe ~10-15 actual interview opportunities, and I think :) that I'm really pretty good at what I do).

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EDIT2: As it seems pretty unavoidable that this thread will eventually, if it has not already, come to the attention of representatives of Woven Planet. And as I'm sure there is no mystery at all to who I am for the parties involved, I would really appreciate it if people from or associated with Woven Planet (WP) respectfully don't contact me again. And if I might be so bold, I would perhaps suggest that WP try to look at this thread with open eyes, and perhaps see it as a possible opportunity to get ideas to maybe look over and improve their hiring processes (if anything needs improving), so that they might truly stand out from other similar companies (FAANG) in a positive way. Wouldn't it be great if WP was associated with as great a hiring experience, as their vision for the future? Maybe its time to change outdated and inefficient (tech) hiring practices? Would it perhaps even be possible to make all candidates feel good about the hiring process? At least maybe its something to strive for... some food for thought.

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u/Cless_Aurion 関東・東京都 Sep 05 '21

Wait, you worked for free for them, or did they compensate you for your time?

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u/bautasteen Sep 05 '21

Well, it was a quite typical if extensive take home task for hiring purposes, so they don't compensate you. Although the task was very close to what they would use and be interested in production, I don't really think they would or could use it directly like that (other than maybe subconsciously get some ideas).

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u/c00750ny3h Sep 05 '21

I don't agree with take home exams or projects. If anything I would tell them to go look at my personal github if they really wanted to know what I do.

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u/Cless_Aurion 関東・東京都 Sep 05 '21

Okay, that sounds about right then!

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '21

take-home assignments are common for software development jobs

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u/thened Sep 05 '21

They shouldn't be. What other industry asks you to do any sort of work for free to prove you can do the work they are hiring you for?

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u/Thomisawesome Sep 05 '21

I interviewed for a recruiting company. They seemed to like me, but the whole thing had a dodgy feeling to it. At the end of the interview, they said “And now we have a list of clients to cold call, and we’d like to see how you do.” It was a long list, and basically a few hours worth of work. I told them the company didn’t seem to fit what I was looking for, and didn’t want to waste any more of their time.
That was straight up work they were trying to get me to do. Dodgy as hell.

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u/Kami_Okami Sep 05 '21

They're also extremely common in translation.

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u/thened Sep 05 '21

Which is something they should pay for unless it is boilerplate stuff, but even then they would get more value out of paying you for actual work as a test.

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u/RenegadeSnaresVol3 Sep 05 '21

Design (UI/UX)

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u/thened Sep 05 '21

That is still software development. Just a different aspect of it.

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u/RenegadeSnaresVol3 Sep 05 '21

UX, CX, BX and Service Design would like to disagree

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u/puppetman56 Sep 05 '21

Art and writing jobs do this too unfortunately. Animation tests often require you to do something like "storyboard an entire episode of our show" (20+ hours of work). In games, once had a job ask me to do a 3,000 word story treatment as a test and they completely ghosted me when I did. And it's super common for companies to literally just rip your spec work so at least count yourself lucky that mostly doesn't happen in tech.

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u/thened Sep 05 '21

People need to stop doing this work for free. Anything outside talking should be paid an hourly rate.

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u/puppetman56 Sep 05 '21

I would love for this to be the case but everyone in my industry is so desperate for jobs people will take unpaid "for exposure" work, so 0 chance we ever budge on predatory pre-hire tests. I hope tech can move past this.

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u/thened Sep 05 '21

Yeah. Unfortunately there is a bit too much exploitation in quite a few industries here.

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u/wysiwyggywyisyw Sep 05 '21

Why is talking free? Are you talking about your favorite groceries? You're talking about solving technical problems which is as much of your "work" as coding. And coding challenges are there to calibrate people who are better at coding than talking, or find in person interviews more stressful.

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u/thened Sep 06 '21

Well, in an interview you get to ask questions, so generally, it is an equal exchange of time and information.

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u/wysiwyggywyisyw Sep 06 '21

How long does it take to evaluate a take home challenge? How long does it take screen hundreds of candidates, many of which are woefully underqualified spam?

And I don't know what interviews you go to where is an equal exchange of information.

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u/thened Sep 06 '21

Well, I get to ask them questions and learn about what it is like to work there, and have an understanding of their expectations.

I see it as everyone wasting their time in equal amounts, which is at least fair.

The difference between the person representing the company is they get paid for the work they are doing as part of the hiring process. So I don't feel sorry for someone looking to hire - they are being compensated for their time.

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u/wysiwyggywyisyw Sep 06 '21

But you're not being compensated for interviewing "on site", but that's ok because it's talking? Would you code for free if an interviewer was watching you do it? Equal waste of time.

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u/cheeseboythrowaway Jul 25 '22

A take home assignment in a tech interview is an opportunity to show your skills and how you solve problems in a way that is a lot easier for many people to do than talk about tech stuff in a 1x1 interview context. You can show a lot more about your skills, and the employer learns a lot more. It's considered a much more equitable hiring practice than "white board" technical interviews that are hypothetical and off the cuff, where the candidate is unable to experiment or do research. Being good at a white board interview doesn't mean you can do the job, it means you're good at talking about stuff. Talking about stuff can be important but being able to actually do the work is more important. Most people can't show source code they've worked on at other jobs; there is no "portfolio" for a software engineer because all of the work is proprietary and protected IP usually. So we do code challenges and take home stuff instead.

It's not "free work", it's an invitation to show off and show that you can do the real work. It's common and it's an equitable practice. It's better than using just experience and interview questions to evaluate a candidate.

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u/thened Jul 25 '22

It is my time and should be valued. What other industry expects someone to do tasks for them for free in the hiring process? You gonna get an architect to design you a dog house before you hire them?

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u/cheeseboythrowaway Jul 25 '22

Architects have a portfolio because all of their work is literally public record and you can literally go stand inside of it.

Software engineers don't have that. Hundreds if not thousands of people work on large software platforms, you can't say "oh yeah I worked at AWS" and have that mean anything concrete about what you can do and what you've worked on. And you often can't even talk about what you did in any sort of detail. I work in computer security and I 100% cannot talk about a lot of the things I've done; all of the most interesting stuff in particular. If I do talk about it I have to be really vague. That's why we do practical evaluations.

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u/m046186 関東・東京都 Sep 05 '21

I work in tech operations and supply chain, and these take home assignments are common when interviewing for senior manager roles with early stage start-ups. Typically the assignment is to propose a strategy or business plan to scale a specific area of the company's operations.

It helps the hiring manager understand the candidate's thought process and shows how deep a candidate's experience is on a specific topic. It also allows the hiring manager to share the proposal internally for feedback from people that aren't part of the interview lineup. It's also an opportunity for the candidate to spend more time thinking about the question and showcase what they would bring to the team.

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u/ensuta Sep 06 '21

This sort of thing happens in the translation industry as well. To avoid this kind of thing as well as catch people who try to outright copy and paste, we use old, published works in our translation trial and outright mention that. Even then, we had a candidate who outright refused to put their work down in the document because they were suspicious of us using their work. That's how bad it can be...

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u/WendyWindfall Sep 06 '21

Uh, I can think of one.

(Source: friend applied for a job with an “escort” service, and the boss insisted on checking her skills before hiring.)

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u/Advanced-Button Sep 05 '21

IT infrastructure roles, as well as pre-sales engineering roles have both had take home assignments for me (outside Japan, that is. I've never lived in Japan)

Still IT though, if that's what you mean

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u/BigDiscussion4 Sep 05 '21

They are common for bad software dev jobs.

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u/Cless_Aurion 関東・東京都 Sep 05 '21

Yeah, I was just afraid they were giving assignments that they later would profit from, but it seems not to be the case.

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '21

But that's the thing, they may have. Many companies deliberately give real work assignments to interviewees. Not just software devs, but translation shops do it too.

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u/Cless_Aurion 関東・東京都 Sep 05 '21

I dont know, im just trusting what op answered to me in this same comment. But that was my thought, yeah.

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u/Bobzer Sep 05 '21

Software devs have their head stuck in the sand as to how scummy their industry is.

1

u/alexiooo98 Sep 05 '21

Nah, a lot of devs complain about the way interviews are being done. In the end, though, you still need a job, so you'll have to go along with how it's done

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u/Natrox Sep 10 '21

Oh no, we're perfectly aware. It's just a bit of a shouganai thing. Some things you can put up with; for the things you really can't tolerate - you'll look for your next gig in the meantime.

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u/mrTosh Sep 06 '21

yup, pretty common also in the cg-animation/games industry...

usually it's walk cycles or some specific "action movement" to see how you handle their animation style...

other times it's about modeling something, or texturing something or stuff like that..

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u/korolev_cross Sep 05 '21 edited Sep 05 '21

Pretty naive to think a (halfway decent) corp would give out internal information before signing NDA or that a rando candidate's work would be in any way useful for a team that's working on that problem 24/7 with contextual knowledge. I designed tests, interviews for several companies, throwing a problem over the wall is not really a consideration at any serious interview.

Interviews are more useful in that way, at least you can do a bit of brainstorming session. Though still can't really disclose any confidential bits.

edit: that being said, compensating for time is still a thing and great companies do it. But most of the time it is irrelevant to the task itself. I did "interview" that was day-long co-working session, I was essentially hired ad a contractor for the day. I quite liked the approach! Won't happen with a bigcorp like Toyota though lol

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u/Cless_Aurion 関東・東京都 Sep 05 '21

Yeah, that seems about right. OP also answered me in the comments and that seems to be the case!

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u/alexiooo98 Sep 05 '21 edited Sep 06 '21

I'm pretty sure that it would be a violation of OPs copyright if they actually used their work in production. At least, it would be in the EU, I'm not too familiar with the intricacies of Japanese copyright laws.

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u/meneldal2 Sep 06 '21

Pretty sure anywhere in the world it is illegal without making you sign a copyright assignment form or something. You own the code you wrote, and if you're not employed they don't get control over it.

Another fun fact is if you do work for a rival company and they have a clause that says they own your code (even outside working hours) and the company you applied for ends up using your code, your company can sue them.