Whilst I'd love to have them do a paid project for me that will actually ship, I work in a part of the programming world where a project easily runs a decade from first draft of requirements to entering maintenance. This sort of suggestion always seems to come from the world of web apps or SaaS or whatever else is hip at the moment.
I also can't imagine what HR would say if I told them I wanted to hire someone for a week just to see how they get on. "Well, then your HR system is broken and you should totally hack it to make it better." I'll get right on that, just as soon as I become Vice-President of HR. They'd tell me to do my job and hire people who can do what they're hired for.
Where this is going is the ripost that this kind of suggestion always comes from the small part of the industry where it might be practical; the are are a great many programming jobs in companies where it really, really isn't.
I guess I am such a terrible developer, that I too can't imagine a project that is useful that can ship after just a week's work (of probably part time while working at my real job).
I did an online coding interview a few months back, and after working with some dude for 20 minutes on some program he asked me if it was ready to ship. And I was "uh, no, of course not" since we had done no testing of any sort apart from mentally running through the code. "Well, make it ready to ship!" I don't think he understood. The two of us certainly didn't agree on what software engineering means.
Although I like some aspects of the trial project idea, I agree that having something shipped to production after one week of work on a completely new project is in most cases unreasonable.
I also can't imagine what HR would say if I told them I wanted to hire someone for a week just to see how they get on. "Well, then your HR system is broken and you should totally hack it to make it better." I'll get right on that, just as soon as I become Vice-President of HR. They'd tell me to do my job and hire people who can do what they're hired for.
Where this is going is the ripost that this kind of suggestion always comes from the small part of the industry where it might be practical; the are are a great many programming jobs in companies where it really, really isn't.