lol yeah this is what gets me too. I'd be pretty damn surprised if a company i was applying to (so they will be conceivably paying my bills for a long time...) would give me $450 to sit next to one of their programmers and slow him down for a day.
maybe I wouldn't say anything too valuable unless it really seems like it will tip the scales but this is part of common sense and good judgment at any job -- if you publicly spill too many good ideas, others will repeat & steal credit. plenty of corporations will hire with a couple hours of interview but i don't really expect startups & small companies to work like this realistically. They probably need to be more careful with hiring. if you're obsessed with your "day rate" and think you can get people to keep paying it, then just keep freelancing...
the point of a job is to get a steady check every week in a more relaxed environment than freelancers typically face. if you want that opportunity, you have to prove yourself. the idea that they are trying to trick your fantastically brilliant mind into solving their problems sounds like a Ruby-ists fantasy or something, lol.
Just get real now and then, the author made fun of them for hiring [Hipster programming language] but he sounds just like [Hipster programmer]. If you walk into a place and you are not feelin the vibe then you are free to leave. Their request seems far from egregious though, I've done a pair interview before and it's strange but you're pretty much just shadowing someone and hangin out. They're not going to set up a dev environment for you and give you the keys to the codebase, come on.
maybe I wouldn't say anything too valuable unless it really seems like it will tip the scales but this is part of common sense and good judgment at any job -- if you publicly spill too many good ideas, others will repeat & steal credit. plenty of corporations will hire with a couple hours of interview but i don't really expect startups & small companies to work like this realistically. They probably need to be more careful with hiring. if you're obsessed with your "day rate" and think you can get people to keep paying it, then just keep freelancing...
the point of a job is to get a steady check every week in a more relaxed environment than freelancers typically face. if you want that opportunity, you have to prove yourself. the idea that they are trying to trick your fantastically brilliant mind into solving their problems sounds like a Ruby-ists fantasy or something, lol.
Just get real now and then, the author made fun of them for hiring [Hipster programming language] but he sounds just like [Hipster programmer]. If you walk into a place and you are not feelin the vibe then you are free to leave. Their request seems far from egregious though, I've done a pair interview before and it's strange but you're pretty much just shadowing someone and hangin out. They're not going to set up a dev environment for you and give you the keys to the codebase, come on.
Full disclosure: I have a job