Digest: pay for a task before deciding to contract.
On the article, Amir wrote: "They refuse to do the project because “someone will hire me without it”.
On book "Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky's Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent" Joel said that the "the best developers usually have lots of proposals, so they don't spend time doing tests for interviews".
I came here just to make the opposite point. They aren't making you do a test, they're hiring you for a project. It's fine if you're too busy even for paid work, but why would you turn it down otherwise?
I think Joel means "unpaid tests". I routinely turn interviews with unpaid projects down, because each interview process gets a number of hours of my time for free (depending on how much I want to work for that company) and unpaid tests/projects usually way way overrun that time.
Or maybe that's what you said and I misunderstood?
#11 of the Spolsky test is "Do new candidates write code during their interview?". I think Joel would agree that a take-home test would fall under that.
On the article, Amir wrote: "They refuse to do the project because “someone will hire me without it”.
On book "Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky's Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent" Joel said that the "the best developers usually have lots of proposals, so they don't spend time doing tests for interviews".
I think Joel and Amir are right.