Hiring at Plane

The best interview is a few days of real work

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The last step of hiring at Plane is a work trial. You take a scoped project from our current cycle, work with the team you would join, and get paid whatever we both decide at the end. This page covers how it runs and what we commit to.

Why we run trials

  • We interview, and we take it seriously. An hour of conversation tells us how you think about your work and how you explain it.

    It does not tell us how you handle a problem nobody rehearsed, or how you work with other people while things are still unclear. We know people who interview badly and are excellent, and we have been fooled by people who interview well.

    A bad hire sets us back a quarter. For you, it is a job, and sometimes a move to another city, spent on something that turned out not to be what it looked like. So before either of us commits, we work together for a few days and pay you for the time.

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Both sides are deciding

  • An interview is a performance in both directions. You arrive with your best stories and we arrive with our best face, and our careers page shows the good parts like everybody's careers page does.

    A trial removes most of that. You read the actual code or sit inside the actual pipeline, you see how decisions get made and how disagreements get handled, and you meet the people you would work with every day on a normal week.

    By the final day neither of us is guessing. If we make an offer, you can accept it knowing what Monday looks like. If you turn us down after seeing the place up close, the process did its job.

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How a trial runs

  • Before anything starts we agree the scope, put the exact rate in writing, and sign a short agreement covering payment and confidentiality in both directions. You get set up like a teammate: the repository or the design files, the conversations, access to Plane. You run the project inside the product you would be helping to build.

    Day one is a kick-off. After that the check-ins are yours to schedule and lead, because what we want to see is how you drive a piece of work. Block time for your family, keep your appointments, stop at a reasonable hour.

    On the final day you walk the team through what you built and why you made the calls you made. Everyone who worked with you writes down their read. We decide within three working days, we pay for every scheduled day regardless of the outcome, and the feedback is specific to your work.

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Built around your life

  • Most people who trial with us already have a job, and many have kids or school or something else that does not pause for a hiring process. The trial fits around that.


    Consecutive days, evenings across two weeks, or weekends if that protects your current role. We match your time zone and will break any day into blocks. The shape you pick has no effect on the evaluation or on how fast you hear back.

    If a paid trial is not possible at all, because of a visa or a contract you have signed, tell us and we will design another route to the same evidence. Needing one does not count against you.

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What you will work on

  • The project is sized for evaluation, not for output. You are paid for all of it, and we tell you upfront what happens to anything you produce.


    It is a scoped problem from our current cycle. Depending on the role that might be a piece of the sync engine or the editor, a surface where a person hands work to an agent, a design flow with production constraints attached, or a customer segment with the numbers behind it. You will see the roadmap, the standards, and the mess, because you cannot honestly evaluate a company that has been tidied up for visitors.

The eight commitments

These apply to every trial and every role. If we fall short of one,
careers@plane.so reaches someone who can fix it.

Paid, always

  • Every trial is paid, at a rate we put in writing before you decide anything, and payment never depends on the outcome.

Your schedule

  • Days, evenings, weekends, split blocks, your time zone. You choose the shape, and it has no effect on the evaluation.

Your job stays safe

  • We never contact your current employer, and confidentiality runs in both directions, on paper, before you start.

The team you would join

  • You work with the people you would join, on work that matters to them, in the same tools and channels.

Sized for evaluation

  • Finishable in the days you have. We do not use trials to get cheap work done.

A fast, honest answer

  • A decision within three working days of your last day, with feedback specific to your work.

An alternative path

  • If a paid trial is impossible for you, we design another way. Needing one never counts against you.

It is okay to say no

  • If the trial convinces you we are not the right place, walking away is a good outcome. You are still paid, and we part on good terms.

Questions you might have

Anything not answered here goes to careers@plane.so.

Yes. Every role, with the exact rate in writing before you agree to anything, under a short agreement covering payment and confidentiality. We pay for every scheduled day whatever the decision is. This is the minimum bar for asking days of someone's time. Be sceptical of any company that asks for trial work without it.

The same way most of our candidates do. We run trials on evenings, on weekends, or split into blocks across two weeks, matched to your time zone. We never contact your current employer, and the confidentiality in our agreement protects you as much as it protects us.

One thing to do on your side: check your own employment agreement for rules about outside paid work. If there is a conflict, tell us, and we will structure around it. That situation is common, and we have a path for it.

No. This is one of the most common situations we see, and it never counts against you. Tell us early, and we will design an alternative path together, built on the same idea of working on something real, with mechanics that fit your constraints. What we will not do is quietly ask you for unpaid work.

The project exists to help both of us decide, and it is scoped for that. Before you start, we tell you whether your project could end up shipping. If something you made does land in the product, you were paid for the time that produced it, and you will hear it from us. We will never quietly harvest trial output, because a trial that doubles as free labor stops being an evaluation and starts being exploitation, and candidates can tell.

Everyone who worked with you during the trial writes independent feedback, and the hiring manager makes the final call. You hear from us within three working days of your last day. If the answer is yes, we move straight to an offer. If it is no, you get the real reasons, in enough detail to be useful to you somewhere else.

The trial is the last step for every role, from engineers to executives, partly because the fairness of the system depends on everyone going through it. What is flexible is everything else: when it happens, what shape it takes, and how it fits your life. If now is an impossible time, we would rather wait for you than lose you, so say so.

For engineers, a scoped slice of a real feature, taken from a first plan to something the team can run. For designers, a real flow taken from problem to proposal, with the constraints left in. For go-to-market roles, a real segment, a piece of content, or a motion, worked with real numbers. In every case the project is finishable within the days you have, and a finished, thoughtful piece of work beats an ambitious, unfinished one.

You will work alongside the agents we are building, the same way the team does every day. The evaluation, though, is written by the people who worked with you. At Plane, agents hold the toil and people hold the judgment, and deciding who joins the team is judgment.

A week of working together

beats months of guessing

If that sounds fair, we want to meet you.

Bring your questions, your skepticism, and your calendar.

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