[thelist] Offering contracts: Opinions on Etiquette?

[Nicole Parrot]

As a subcontractor, and also someone who did interviewing and hiring in her
last full time job, and of course, as a coder who had to go through
interviews myself... here's what I got to expect by now.

1. I too have refused to show my code. I am willing to explain algorithms,
up to a point, but not code. Code belongs to the company I was working for,
and I gently explain I defend their right to their code, just like I will
defend the interviewer's code  in the future. It seemed that it worked cause
I always got the job ;-)

2. as an interviewer, we would always ask code from juniors, never from
senior programmer. We assume that they would not have made it to senior
programmer in their previous jobs, if they were not good programmers. I also
work in a relatively small city, and we know all the software companies
around here. We know the standards applied in each company, so I guess that
helps.

3. a head hunter once told me I should be "insulted" if an interviewer wants
to look at my code. I should let my track record speak for itself, not show
code.