Title: It&#x27;s common for prospective employers to ask for some examples that prove our ability to code, whether through a sample assignment, an online programming test, whiteboarding, etc.<p>Sometimes a new job or contract will come with the discovery that the codebases on which we are asked to work are not what we were expecting, to put it lightly.<p>Such as,<p>* saturated with anti-patterns to the point that it&#x27;s a massively negative impact on productivity<p>* excessively long compile &#x2F; build times due to lack of maintenance and&#x2F;or things just not being built well<p>* severely outdated tooling and versioning<p>etc.<p>While this can be a workable situation sometimes, an opportunity to contribute in a meaningful, positive way, in others it can be a tedious slog.<p>A developer can ask questions during the interview process about these things, which can sometimes illuminate these issues.<p>If an organization&#x27;s developers are active in open source contributions, that can be a helpful signal as to the quality of a codebase.<p>And, it occurred to me that there&#x27;s a big double standard in hiring around this. It seems like the software development process, generally speaking, is built on what is essentially a lack of trust in engineers - we can come in with over 10 years of verifiable experience, talk eloquently about that and our abilities, and still be met with these ridiculous and demeaning puzzles.<p>Why should we not be able to look at the code at a place we are thinking about working at? It&#x27;s a CORE part of the job. To be blind to that doesn&#x27;t feel right to me.<p>If&#x2F;when I decide to look for a different position, I&#x27;m considering to ask employers if they would be willing to let me sign an NDA so that I can take a look at the code on which I&#x27;ll be working. Or at least some portion of it.<p>I&#x27;m curious how this idea lands for people reading this post. I can envision a world where this is standard practice in hiring.<p>I&#x27;m curious to also hear reasons as to why this couldn&#x27;t work in practice.<p>EDIT: changed non-intentional ultimatum-esque language
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