# Three Sessions. Six Hours of Real Production Code. Zero Job.

**[TRUE STORY]** — by Software engineer · startup · via r/recruitinghell

The posting was for a software engineering role at a Hong Kong startup. The candidate cleared an initial screen and was handed over to the CEO, who ran what he called a technical assessment. Over three separate sessions, the CEO directed him to edit actual production files -- not dummy data, not a sample project, but live code the company relied on. One session ran late into the night after the CEO claimed the software had crashed and needed immediate rework. By the third session the candidate had logged roughly six hours of real development work. The CEO downloaded the final deliverables and went silent. No offer. No rejection. No response of any kind. When the candidate reviewed what had happened, the pattern was unmistakable: the company had extracted six hours of free production labour under the guise of an interview. The Reddit thread that followed was unanimous -- bill them, name them, and never touch a proprietary take-home assignment again. "I felt like an idiot," they wrote. The community corrected them: they had been used.

*Source: [r/recruitinghell · Hindustan Times / DNA India](https://www.hindustantimes.com/trending/techie-claims-ceo-tricked-him-into-6-hours-of-free-work-during-job-interview-i-d-been-used-101745498543741.html)*
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