The 10 hours are not within "normal" business hours – it's a fully remote company. In fact, it's best if they're not – it's a good test of whether someone can communicate well asynchronously (critical for success working remotely).
10 hours a week is very much a second job though. It doesn't really matter when they are, that's a very large commitment over the course of 1-3 months. I'm not sure I know anyone who would be keen to do this.
That's fair – the process has since been revised, and on https://automattic.com/work-with-us/how-we-hire-developers/ we now say "This work is paid, part-time, and designed to last between two and eight weeks, for a total of around 40 hours of work".
It's still a commitment to be sure, but we try really hard to make it as accessible as we can.
FWIW, I'm about as privileged as you get in tech, I have a job that is very flexible, I have few responsibilities outside of work, I don't need the money, and I don't care that much about salary.
I wouldn't work 40 hours spread over 2-8 weeks. It's just too much effort for too little reward. If it were paid at contractor rates then I might – I have done a small amount of contracting in my free time – but we're talking $100+ an hour (and I don't live in the bay area).
I understand the value to the company of a trial, and if I were unemployed I think it would be a great way for me to trial a company, and I'd be totally up for it, but fitting this around an existing job, let alone a family, child, being a carer, or just having an active social life, seems so much more effort than any other tech interview process I've seen.
If Automattic paid 2-3x more than others, then maybe it would be worth it for that chance, but that's not something I see advertised so I assume that's not the case.
Seeing this as part of the process I would be seriously concerned about the sorts of people I would end up working with, as I imagine it selecting for a very non-diverse set of developers who struggle to find jobs elsewhere.
That said, if this is not how things end up, I'd be keen to read a "deep dive" sort of thing on these topics, why the extensive trial works, etc. A full rebuttal to this would be a fascinating read.
One question: is the 40 hours of work something that your company would like to use, that may go into production at Automattic? Or is it just some toy project to work on over that time?
For most engineering roles it's non-production and entirely synthetic, though based on a real app we use internally. It's the same trial project for everyone who applies to the same position.
It's not a one way street, the employee benefits from this as well. You have a 3 month trial to test them out just as much as they're testing you out. You may or may not be happy with this job in terms of cultural or work so it's better than quitting your current job to take another job that you end up not liking.
I think Matt mentioned it on the Vergecast recently, so it's not a secret – we have a team of top folks working on Simplenote and are continuing to invest in it.
Source: I'm on the mobile team at Automattic and just spent a week hanging out with the people working on it :)
Do you also show them the part where it says "Significant Locations are encrypted and cannot be read by Apple"? They're local to the device, not sent back to them.
i doubt it. do carriers really sell advertising directly to their clients? ie. does the company have a advertising division where you can spam SMS to their clients within a certain radius?
Actually, yes. I was pitched by ad reps from the largest carrier - they claimed to be able to send an SMS when one of their customers enters a geofenced area.
TL;DR (from TFA): No. We show that another option, called "Always allow scanning", when activated, makes a device send Wi-Fi frames which can be used to track this device, even if the Wi-Fi switch is off. This option is not clearly described in all Android versions, and sometimes even not deactivatable. Besides, the Google Maps application prompts the user to activate this option.
