This concept is why I have a deep respect for DuckDuckGo as a company. When interviewing there for a SRE position, the round 2 and 3 interviews included coding challenges. They paid (IIRC) $75/hr based on the maximum time they wanted candidates to spend on each assignment. I ended up not getting the position, but they're the only company I made it to the final decision step with that I didn't feel was wasting my time.
this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
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That probably helps them waste less of their own time too. When bringing someone in to interview actually costs money, you’re mote careful about it, doing more to vet people in the earlier stages. Less “let’s bring them in and see.”
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Had an interview at a company. They asked me to do a coding challenge. Solve it without AI. The task was written in AI and requirements all over the place. Took me 6hrs+. I sent it and they wanted to see me in person. Took half a day off to make to the interview. Meeting went well. They call me and tell me my assignment was not what they expected.
There should be a hefty fine for this behavoiur.
What did they mean by not what they expected? Like they didn't expect you to solve it, or didn't expect the AI to give you an assignment?
They mean they are lying to the applicant's face, gaslighting them.
What they did was the equivalent of contracting out a coder to engineer some software for them, without paying them for it.
The job market itself is a fraud, a scam.
Saying 'its not what we expected' is simply what they are legally required to do in order to be able to frame the entire thing such that they can't be sued for getting useful labor while giving no compensation.
Its a framing device, frame it as a job interview. Its 'oh your test performance was not satisfactory', written on some kind of document somewhere. The actual point is to get free software engineering services.
Its a scam.
Think about if you tried to do this with physical, mechanical engineering or architecture: here, draw up some plans for this device or this part of a building... oh, we're sorry, that's not satisfactory... but anything you submitted during the job interview, thats the intellectual property of the company now.
You can also scam the job market itself by simply coordinating with a market research firm, have a set of companies issue an array of 'job openings' that are not real job openings, what they actually are is a way to do a survey of the job market itself.
Its all a complete fucking joke at this point.
Also, a metric companies report on, and then those reports get amalgamated into broad economic data... is just literally 'how many job openings did we post'.
So, if you wanna look like you are a growing company, for extremely little cost... just post fake job openings, that you'll never hire for.
Have 1/3 or so of all job openings by all companies look like this, idiot 'economists' who can't figure out what is actually going on, look at the aggregate numbers and conclude the economy is growing 1/3 faster than it is.
And there's also the classic 'we want to do an internal promotion, but for legal reasons we need to pretend its a competetive search through the whole job market, so here's a bunch of fake job openings where everyone other than our internal person will be unsatisfactory'.
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"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a professional interviewee."
Spending ten hours of spamming resumes to get one hour on an interview call sounds like a bad way to make money
If companies have to pay for every interview, I doubt they'd do as many so you'd have a hard time getting enough interviews to make that viable.
Companies already pay a ton of money to utilize indeed and all those sites. Any cash they'd pay you to interview pales in comparison to what they're already spending on the unfilled job.
I don't think it would cause a declining number of interviews. If anything, it might cause interviews to go up, once employers can see the drop in the bucket of spending the interview represents.
How would it make them go up? It currently costs zero, and adding the cost of that pay doesn't change any other expenses for recruitment contractors. Even if they don't view it as a significant cost relative to the full HR department, they'd still either ignore it and maintain current rates or view it as an avoidable expense and minimise it. I don't see a mechanism for increasing them unless the law gave them some backdoors to, say, pay below standard wages while asking candidates to do work as part of the interview, effectively turning them into sub-minimum wage workers for businesses where that might be useful.
Because people involved in hiring have no idea what they are spending to find and hire employees. Once they learn what they're spending and on what, they'll definitely agree to spend a tiny bit more to ensure the upfront investment pays off in a good employee.
EX: My company, we are currently hiring another accountant to join the team. We've spent somewhere in the range of $20,000 so far trying to fill that role. I expect we'll get closer to double that by the time these dipshits find the right person.
So we're talking about, say, $30,000 in expenses to find the new employee.
What would an interview pay? A few hundred dollars, max? Let's say $100 to make the math easy.
If we interview 5 people for the job and hire one, we will have spent $30,000 + $500, or $30,500. If we interview 10 people for the job and hire one, we will have spent $30,000 + $1000, or $31,000.
We doubled the number of interviews (much larger pool to find the right candidate) and the overall cost was only 1.6% higher.
A savvy manager would significantly increase interview numbers for a small increase in cost. Big benefit, little downside.
Two immediate thoughts:
One key there is 'savvy manager.' I've met too many who would see a line item for interviews and say 'why is this so high? Don't the HR team vet these people. I'm cutting the budget for interviews. Hey, Direct Report, I just saved the company another several thousand dollars a year. Aren't I great?'
And neither way explains a reason one would do MORE interviews if candidates were paid than while they were free. The cost increase for doubling the number of interviewees while we still aren't paying them is ~$0. You could centuple the number of interviews and 100*0 is still 0. There is still no incentive to do something MORE after it has a cost. If you want to hire the right person, you'll do as many interviews as it takes, until the cost of interviews grows beyond the expected cost of hiring a suboptimal candidate. That's true now. Why would it be different then?
True, then there could be a charge to accepted candidates who then reject the job to block the emergence of such an "occupation" as well. But then if one legitimately declines because of the salary, hmm... idk... Maybe to avoid this, the money should go to some governing board...
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The hiring process has moved further and further from the company and is controlled by a bunch of middle-man companies who found a niche and made an industry out of it. No wonder hiring has become more expensive and riskier for a corp.
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Interviews actually cost the company. They have to pay those people interviewing you, and not working for clients at that time. That's why I don't see many applications going to interview phase at all. Most applications are just filtered by AI, or some HR and it never goes to the actual hiring manager. And they don't interview unless they are pretty sure about wanting to hire the candidate. At least the companies without ghost jobs do that.
But HR only interviews are probably different, they might do interviews to justify their job.
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Agreed
Looking for a job now and a single company so far has has taken 6 hours of my time.
Two for the initial requirements for applying, the reading their 5 page information, writing a cover letter, etc.
Then two hours on a screening interview, and the initial interview, though that second one went from 1 hour to 1 hour 45 minutes so it was actually 6 hours 45 minutes
Then two more hours on a technical interview
This is where I'm at now, and i still am looking at two more one hour interviews with higher up, then the CEO herself.
That'll make over 8 and a half hours IF I get the job.
If I don't get the job, man, this was a fucking waste...
In principle, jobs should be a mutually beneficial relationship. I give them resources, they pay for that but in reality, the balance 100% tipped to their side
I have to apply for jobs, they dont have to apply for employees
I have to write cover letters and separate letters to tell them how much i love their company and how badly i really want to work there and how much I'll sacrifice for them
They interview me on their turf, their rules. We don't get to interview the company. Some companies allow us to ask a few questions, but that's it.
Shits fucked up
Yes sure I would love to be interviewed then everywhere everyday
Lmao Have you tried getting an interview lately?
Yeah but I don't know how it is for other industries or fields honestly
Love it.
Unfortunately, then there would be professional candidates who just never accept a job.
Edit: I've had a lot of great replies pointing out that it likely wouldn't be a big deal anyway. I'm just used to finding fault in anything that sounds good lately.
There’s no way that would be a viable career.
- You’d have to reliably get interviews, which is hard enough as it is.
- It’s a lot of work to do sustainably—more work than many jobs imo.
- You get none of the other benefits of accepting the job.
- Eventually you would run out of companies for which you were qualified, and you’d probably stop getting interviews.
Your argument sounds similar to anti-welfare arguments. Sure, some people may abuse the system, but it wouldn’t pay that well, and the positives to society would greatly outweigh any abuse.
Exactly, for every one person who abuses the rule to get 10 hours of labor paid to them in exchange for doing no work, you'll have 999 people that are actually using the system as intended.
Are you really the kind of person that'll fuck over 999 people just to make sure that one person doesn't get ahead in a sneaky way?
Not to mention, some companies right now are abusing interview candidates to get free work with "trial project" type assignments, or "How would you fix this problem, if you were hired?" type of free consultations. If some candidates abused the companies in return, I'd call that fair play.
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Then there would be professional candidates who ~~just never accept a job~~ start getting blacklisted really quickly from a means of income that's vastly more difficult, less fulfilling, less stable, and less efficient than just having a stable job.*
FTFY
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It should be outlawed to have more than two interview round. Just fuck off with that dehumanizing ratrace bullshit
I know someone that had a 3 tier interview for a balloon handler. They made arches and stuff for parties. This was a part time position. Didn't get the job either...
From the context, it seems pretty obvious they were clowns.
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I miss hired.com It was a hiring platform that tipped the scales a little in favor of the interviewee. You could take an assessment to prove your basic competence in programming and thereby cut out a round of interviews.
This sounds viable until you consider what the application process will devolve into.
The initial screening process will become even more annoying which will cause more bot applications and in return it will get even more annoying.
We have a massive government mandate that requires that you apply for a large number of jobs in order to qualify for unemployment benefits.
We have job agencies who are incentivised to place candidates, any candidates, with no penalties for incorrect placement.
We have unpaid internships that normalise free work for hire in the most susceptible population, job entrants.
We have automated processes run by HR to weed out unsuitable applicants before the actual employer sees anything.
We have technically unqualified HR departments demanding qualifications for things that don't exist without any controls by the actual employer.
This idea won't address any of this, and I think it will make things worse.
E: spelling
Easy solution. The company is allowed 1 free 30 minute phone call to both verify basic resume details and to schedule a lengthy interview.
Takes care of the bot issue, and a 30 minute phone call is less of a burden on the applicant
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They should also be forced to pay a year's salary to everyone who applied to a ghost job. (That's a job that's not real and they have no intention of filling)
I guess there is a selection bias on internet comments, but as someone that has been on the interviewer side several times now, I have to say: the interview process is not even remotely cheap for companies. At least the companies I worked for take them seriously and the time investment of senior professionals is huge, which is not cheap at all.
On top of that, there is always pressure for hiring quick, so I don't know which companies you guys are interviewing, but I don't know any company that just likes "fooling around".
Maybe you are not choosing the correct companies on your applications? or maybe you are applying to meat grinder companies such as Meta or Amazon?
As interviewer you would be surprised how many people apply to "senior embedded C developer" without much idea of how to even program, even with theoretical experience on the CV.
This is a 2 sided problem, and I understand it might look one sided sometimes, but it is a very complex problem to solve. Believe me, no one wants to be "hiring manager", but also, no one wants to deal with a bad team member.
Paying interviewes directly would not help at all, as it would create a new level of mistrust for people trying to gamify the process. And this will end up being paid by honest job seekers and interviewers.
Just a side note: I live in EU, not the corporate American dystopia, so my argument might not apply to the USA. For example, an error on hiring here becomes a huge problem lasting months, in USA I believe you can just fire people at will without prior notice, so you can be more reckless with the interviews.
Senior embedded C developer here in the US. I can speak first hand experience at people applying to be on my team that have reasonable sounding experience and then collapse under interview questions.
Everything else you said applies here too, legally we don't have repercussions for firing someone quickly (once had a team member for two months), but a healthy org will try very hard to get hiring right because it can cause pretty bad morale to see a revolving door and there is a massive brain and resource drain having to constantly be training new people.
So then a person could make his living by interviewing for jobs he's not qualified for and could never get? I guess that probably wouldn't happen.
I didn't used to hate the long interview process until I applied for a job that had me fill out like a hundred questions for background information. It was like, "Have you ever been convicted of embezzlement for an amount greater than $500?" No. "Have you ever been convicted of embezzlement for an amount less than $500?" No... "Have you ever been convicted of embezzlement for exactly $500?"
Did you know that if they can guess your crime with enough specificity, legally you have to admit to it? At least that's what I assume, based on the questionnaire. Like, "Have you ever been convicted of violating the endangered species act while crossing state lines in a class C vehicle on a Sunday?" And I'm like, "No, but you're so close!"
Anyway, I got the offer, but then they rescinded it when I asked for more money.
It's weird. I was applying for an engineering tech job and they asked if I've ever knowingly violated the second law of thermodynamics, but wouldn't tell me if it was a deal breaker if I had. Anyway that place burned to the ground before I heard back on my interview anyway.
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If you aren't qualified and they have to pay for every interview, either you are being honest on your application and they aren't interviewing you or you're lying and you open yourself up to charges of fraud because you took money under false pretenses.
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I already can't get an interview, this would make it impossible.
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