It may be too late in the game to reply to this nonplussing nonresponsive response, but what the hell...
>What responsibility am I shirking? If you want the job, then you do the thing.
Was "shirking" too severe? You disclaim, patently and unapologetically, responsibility for the effort that will be put into applying for the position by applicants who will not get the job.
You disclaim that responsibility by saying in effect "it will be fun, and if it ain't fun, don't do it, and if you do it and don't get the job it might be good for your portfolio, or good experience."
Your choice here was between devising an application procedure that actively and consciously tries to minimize the futile endeavors of most applicants or devising one that does not but instead leaves the responsibility for that minimization entirely up to applicants themselves.
You seem to like the second choice, suggesting it really is not at all your responsibility; it's all on the shoulders of the applicant. You're not (the applicant will be distressed to hear) his mom.
Yet elsewhere you seem to want at least a little to acknowledge that there is something to be said, at least publicly, for taking the first choice: You wondered whether you were asking too much. You advised applicants only to do it if it's fun and so on. It seems to me that that's an example of trying not to be callously indifferent to the work of others.
I was merely trying to point out that that's not good enough. It should be obvious, I think, that this, your, strategy for minimizing wasted effort on the part of applicants is not going to work.
The alternative strategy of many employers is to impose the more effortful parts of the application procedure only late in the process and only on applicants they are already interested in. They do this even though it's more time-consuming for them. They take that responsibility. You don't, and shrug.
But let me do you the honor of citing you again: "so be it." I'm certain you have no reason to worry about this. I'm sure Reddit will get its rockstars and continue to rock.
And if you ever want a lesson in supercilious condescension (the "I'm not your mom" stuff is embarrassingly amateurish), look me up. I take payment in advance.
P.s. I didn't use the phrase "spec work" and if I had I wouldn't have used it to mean, in accordance with your bizarre and presumptuously corrective definition, "asking someone to do work and then paying them etc..." Clearly that's nonsense. Spec work is the work, not the asking. I did use "on spec", and used it as a standard modifier to qualify the meaning of "work" as work which is done speculatively in hope or expectation of gain. In this (hardly broad) sense you are asking applicants to do work on spec. Joyfully.
>What responsibility am I shirking? If you want the job, then you do the thing.
Was "shirking" too severe? You disclaim, patently and unapologetically, responsibility for the effort that will be put into applying for the position by applicants who will not get the job.
You disclaim that responsibility by saying in effect "it will be fun, and if it ain't fun, don't do it, and if you do it and don't get the job it might be good for your portfolio, or good experience."
Your choice here was between devising an application procedure that actively and consciously tries to minimize the futile endeavors of most applicants or devising one that does not but instead leaves the responsibility for that minimization entirely up to applicants themselves.
You seem to like the second choice, suggesting it really is not at all your responsibility; it's all on the shoulders of the applicant. You're not (the applicant will be distressed to hear) his mom.
Yet elsewhere you seem to want at least a little to acknowledge that there is something to be said, at least publicly, for taking the first choice: You wondered whether you were asking too much. You advised applicants only to do it if it's fun and so on. It seems to me that that's an example of trying not to be callously indifferent to the work of others.
I was merely trying to point out that that's not good enough. It should be obvious, I think, that this, your, strategy for minimizing wasted effort on the part of applicants is not going to work.
The alternative strategy of many employers is to impose the more effortful parts of the application procedure only late in the process and only on applicants they are already interested in. They do this even though it's more time-consuming for them. They take that responsibility. You don't, and shrug.
But let me do you the honor of citing you again: "so be it." I'm certain you have no reason to worry about this. I'm sure Reddit will get its rockstars and continue to rock.
And if you ever want a lesson in supercilious condescension (the "I'm not your mom" stuff is embarrassingly amateurish), look me up. I take payment in advance.
P.s. I didn't use the phrase "spec work" and if I had I wouldn't have used it to mean, in accordance with your bizarre and presumptuously corrective definition, "asking someone to do work and then paying them etc..." Clearly that's nonsense. Spec work is the work, not the asking. I did use "on spec", and used it as a standard modifier to qualify the meaning of "work" as work which is done speculatively in hope or expectation of gain. In this (hardly broad) sense you are asking applicants to do work on spec. Joyfully.