<i>&gt; A work-hire test attracts the best programmers. It doesn&#x27;t repel them.</i><p>I&#x27;m not <i>the best</i> programmer, but I&#x27;m comfortable I&#x27;d slot in the top quintile, probably top ten percent, of people that walk through a startup&#x27;s door. And I&#x27;d never even return your call. No work-sample test I&#x27;ve ever seen would take less than four hours. That&#x27;s a $550 opportunity cost for me at my standard rates. What the <i>hell</i> makes you think you deserve that for free? You aren&#x27;t Google and you aren&#x27;t Facebook. You need me more than I need you. And almost everybody else who&#x27;s like you--and given the way you are acting, probably you too--will forget about me or blow me off at some point in the process, wasting my time even further.<p>On the other hand, an in-person, discussion-based interview <i>isn&#x27;t work</i> and isn&#x27;t priced as work; not only does it tells <i>me</i> about the company and whether or not I actually want to work there, but I enjoy meeting new people in a professional setting (there are multiple companies where I&#x27;ve turned them down, but have become friends with people I&#x27;ve met through the process!).<p>Look at my Github and decide if I can hack if you want, that&#x27;s why it&#x27;s there, but I don&#x27;t work on effing <i>spec</i>.