ArcReviews of arc.dev

I see the notification stating that I have not passed Introductory Call. I think it's not enough for people who invested time in successfully passing 2hrs+ tech quiz and then participating in the interview with HR just to see notification. I'm very disappointed with the service and of course will not recommend this platform to anyone.

Recently I received an e-mail inviting me to apply for a part-time contract job on Arc. It looked like it could be good so I gave it a try. In order to apply for verified jobs, you need to pass their verification tests, which other reviews have mentioned in detail. They wanted to fast-track me straight to the technical interview, but even then this process was pretty terrible and not worth the time. After I responded saying I was interested, I received an e-mail with a button leading to a form. However in the meantime I had gone to the verification test and took one of the coding tests (3 hours to code 3 leetcode problems -- I hate leetcode by the way). I got interrupted midway and had to leave. This timed me out, and counted me as having failed the test. As a result, when I pressed the button in the e-mail, it prevented me from getting on the fast track. I brought this issue up to them via e-mail and fortunately they did fix it within a few hours (though it is sadly ironic that a website that vets developers has such an issue with their own website - I'm sure they would have failed their own test). So then I applied to the job posting and waited. I received two emails in parallel, one was to interview with the actual company who posted the job, and the other was to finish my verification. Arc kept saying to me via email that they wanted things to go quickly (ASAP) so I scheduled the interview with the company for the next day, and it went well. But the technical interview was another story. I received an e-mail with myself, an Arc representative, and a developer from a tech company who would pair program with me during the test. I mentioned that I would be available from 9 AM to 5 PM CST on Thursday and Friday (they wanted it to go fast, remember). The developer said he wouldn't be able to do it this week and asked if I had any times next week. I responded saying that I could only do Monday because I knew I wouldn't have Internet Tuesday or Wednesday. It wasn't until Monday (4 days later) that the Arc representative asked the developer to actually give me a time I could do the interview, because they wanted to hurry it up. He said he was busy due to travel (must be nice) and had times on Tuesday and Thursday, but as I mentioned I wasn't available on Tuesday so the only time I could choose was Thursday, at 10:30 AM (no timezone mentioned). I mentioned specifically in my email that I'd be available at 10:30 AM CST (I had stated my timezone was CST in the initial email as well). Then on Wednesday he schedules the meeting for... 3:30 AM on Thursday. What?! Obviously his timezone is not CST, but I told him mine! You'd think he would have said initially 10:30 AM in such and such timezone, but he didn't. He just assumed I knew what his timezone was, and that I'd be able to wake up at 3:30 AM for an interview with him... or something. I don't know what he was thinking. Maybe he was just really busy and didn't bother to read all three of my emails, but in that case why doesn't Arc get ahold of developers who can actually dedicate their time to technical interviews? There is clearly some mismanagement going on. So then while I'm sleeping I get an e-mail at 3:45 AM saying I did not show up to the meeting, asking if I would want to reschedule. It had taken us 8 days to arrive at a time that I literally could not meet, and I was no longer very enthusiastic about this opportunity. We'd have to schedule again, and who knows if that would take another week, or if the time would work out, or if I'd even actually pass the interview! I'd rather just forget it and get on with life. And then I found out that another developer had applied to the same job posting. If they are already verified then they could potentially be going to the next step in the process while I'm stuck waiting. That's not fair at all! There were also some other minor issues, including that the job I applied for was advertised as part-time, but the company clearly wants someone to work on it full-time (and probably with more experience than I actually have). When I got fast-tracked I gained access to CodeMentorX, which is pretty much their version of Freelancer.com -- ridiculous amounts of work for ridiculously low pay. During the interview they give you a "playbook" to read from to try and get you to show loyalty to them by telling you what to say and how to say it so that they can make a deal with the company. They claim that they will negotiate everything for you to benefit you, but honestly after this I know I'd be better off applying for jobs directly on my own. During the course of all this I went from "excited" to "unimpressed" to "frustrated". By the time I received the last email I had found other opportunities. If you wait too long, you miss out. That's just how it goes. They don't value your time, and to a certain extent it seems like they need developers themselves.

I just had the WORST intro call all week after speaking with countless other agencies. The sales rep was rude, getting frustrated with me for giving him too much information ("I don't need all of that, I just need this number"). Any other hiring agency has been happy to have info to help narrow down matches. I also didn't appreciate the condescending tone when I wasn't ready to drop 100k+ for a role - I'm an impact tech firm servicing family businesses in emerging world countries. What about finding me people who are happy to take a pay cut to help build tech that matters? Just like there are fantastic people at NGOs, I'm sure there are fantastic devs who are into impact tech too. I've never felt so offended after a call. According that sales rep, most Arc clients are ex-Y Combinator, VC-funded North American start-ups, so I can't compete on salary with those job offers if I don't up my rate. Fine, but I shouldn't be SHAMED for not being able to, and as a hiring agency in "90 countries", Arc should be able to support my type of firm too. Rude. Don't ever use these guys. --- EDIT: After reading the company's reply, this actually just made me more infuriated. To schedule a call with ARC in the first place, you have to select your budget from the 4 radio button options Arc gives you. I'm well within the first two options - Why accept my call if you're going to shame anyone who's in the lower ranges? Waste of everyone's time. Pure Silicon Valley arrogance.

This company has a very long and convoluted “vetting process” in which they supposedly qualify you just so you can be a freelance worker. This consists of a four hour coding test, a phone interview, work reference, a 30 or so hour project, another technical interview, just so you can start from zero. When they asked me to take the coding test, I had no idea this was their process. After passing the coding test and the phone interview, I was handed a time consuming and trivial python project to complete. After three days of meticulous work finishing the project AND hosting it for them because they are too lazy to spin up a local server, I hear back nothing from them. Some days later I see my access to the website has been revoked with a two sentence message that I did not pass the project portion. They couldn’t dignify adding a hint of explanation, so I had to send another email to ask why my project was not accepted. This is what I hear: Reason 1 “Eh, we didn’t like your commit message. You had one in there that said ‘small clean up’”, which was was a commit I removed some trailing white space. Reason 2 “You didn’t have enough directories in your repo. Your code was in one ‘huge’ directory”. This was a back end project where there were only four (4) source files in that directory, no front-end, no static resources, no templates, nothing else, just a basic python package. I guess they expected me to put every source file in its own directory. I’ve never in my life heard such nonsense before. Reason 3- “You didn't encrypt the passwords before saving them”. In their project specification, they lousily passed passwords as plain text over HTTP requests. In real applications no one does this. Passwords are hashed on the front-end before they are even sent to the server. So seeing this, I realized they obviously didn't care about security. Mind you, no where in the API specification mentions the slightest requirements about security. Now out of nowhere they are anal about it. That's all she literally wrote. I was really hoping to hear back about some bug from which I could learn something. But as it was, they didn’t find a single bug in my code. They couldn’t fault its functionality. They even had the audacity to praise me because my code was fully documented and they had an easy time reading it. Overall, I feel it's been a major waste of my time. If they want to set up a stringent interview process, I have no qualms with that. But if they make someone like me go through a multi-day job laboring away at a pointless project, they should make absolutely clear what criteria is used to score the submission. This is not a transparent process. It sounded to me like the whims of someone waking up on the wrong side of the bed. If you decide to waste your life going through their vetting process, just be warned that it’s a highly arbitrary process. I’ve lost 25 or so hours and learned nothing but to stay away from them. Good riddance though because there are greater platforms for freelance like Upwork with much more clients to choose from.

Big waste of time. They have consultants do a "short" 2.5 hour test, and there's 3 more steps to the interview process. It's similar in effort to applying to a full-time job, but just for the ability to bid on projects that generally pay below-market rates. Or, at least, I think it'd be similar in effort to a full-time role. Whoever I was supposed to have an interview with ghosted me. They also have an unhealthy obsession with hourly rates in an industry where clients want to pay for results.