///Code Samples: Excuses(null)
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There are a number of reasons people give for not providing a code sample. Honestly, none of them are acceptable. I’ll address the two most common here.
“All my work related code is proprietary. I can’t betray my current/former employer’s trust by showing it to you.”
Good for you. Integrity for the win! I definitely respect your dedication towards protecting your employer’s intellectual property. In fact, it would probably color everyone's opinion negatively of you as a candidate if you submitted a code sample that looked like it might contain trade secrets. However, that doesn’t get you off the hook. Many candidates mistakenly presume an implicit requirement that the code sample must come from your professional work experience. Unless you were specifically told this, this assumption is usually not valid. Whether it is fair or not, most hiring managers will interpret these responses as “I can’t send you any of my existing code, and I’m not interested in the job enough to bother writing anything new.” Can you imagine a hiring manager that really wants to hire a programmer with the attitude, “Ugh, I have to write code?”
“I am a student and only have code from academic work.”
As a hiring manager, I don’t care why you wrote it as long as it is your own work and it meets any requirements I specify.
Even if you do have some previous professional work that you are not restricted from sharing, I’d strongly advise you to take the time to write something fresh to use while you are interviewing for a programming job for a number of reasons:
Your coding skills should be improving over time, thus your newest code should be the best you have ever written.
The code you have already written was probably created under constraints that won’t be apparent to the hiring manager. You don’t want to submit code that requires an explanation or apology.
In most cases, you are free to write code to do whatever you want for the sample. You rarely get a chance to choose a problem that you are good at solving, take advantage of it.
Your existing code was written to solve a work problem not sell your skills. Different objectives require different approaches.
You have a chance to write code that matches the technologies/tasks that match the job description.
That last point is important and applies to other areas of the recruiting process. Anything makes you seem more familiar to them will help your chances because it encourages them to start thinking of you as an insider. Unfortunately, I also think this tendency is also the source of a lot of unintentional and illegal discrimination during the hiring process, but good managers have learned to recognize their own natural biases and find ways to remain objective about candidates.