Interesting, as a candidate I prefer the take home project because then I don't have to cram largely irrelevant knowledge.
Just like the topic at hand, that kind of requirement is correlated with other characteristics, think young, fresh grad, not married probably, no kids, really wants the job, maybe a bit desperate, doesn't mind expending their free time etc.
In some cases the companies are aware of what they are doing. They know it is not about the take-home test but about picking those types of candidates most of all, and they are ok not selecting the rest. This was my friend's company.
In other cases, companies are not aware of it, they just copy what others are doing or say believe that this testing method is better, so use it strictly for that reason. Which is fine too, it might work for them better. However, they'll still end up selecting certain candidates and not others, but they just don't do it explicitly.
The test was designed to be a 6 hours task. I spent a Saturday on it (with regular pauses to go out a bit, play games, watch tv, etc)
I got the job. I have started there very recently so I can't really speak about the amount of work / week in that place.
Again, compared to a very skilled friend who had to cram for 2 hours each evening for a couple of months (and speaking with other people I know having gone through that, it seems pretty standard), I really see my time investment as ridiculously less than an on-site whiteboard.
I am obviously only referring to programmers, knowledge workers etc.
yes it’s entirely possible to be at a stage where you can’t pull more hours out of your sleep or other obligations to fulfill X task you truly want to. I really have a lot invested in believing it.
Could you burn the candle at both ends ? Sure! But I the case that you already are, what more can you do?
If you are a knowledge worker - and on HN, perhaps you do have the spare time.
But if you are older - Do you need to take care of your family? Help around the house, sleep? Maybe not! But usually the older you are, the more likely it is that you don’t have those hours lying around to just burn a weekend at your convenience.
Which supports the idea that this is going to be a request (take home exercises) that will favor one type of person. The person with the freedom to burn that time.
A very competent friend had to cram for months in order to pass the whiteboard interviews at one of the tech giants.
I had to spend a Saturday on this test (it was scoped to be a 6 hours project, I spent the day on it with frequent and long pauses).
My time investment is orders of magnitude lower what it would have been for a whiteboard.
I do think that "homework" interview problems are better than pointless algo.
Something which takes 2-3 hours is much more reasonable and I am willing to do that because it leaves me with enough time for family / life over the weekend or to do homework for few different companies to not put all my eggs into single basket when interviewing.
If you are looking for a job you would rarely only concentrate on one opportunity. For sure you would try to compare at least 2-3 comparable jobs to choose the one which fits you best. So these sort of tests / home work assignments should be quite simple, probably algorithmic questions which can be completed in 50-100 lines of code.
You will easily spend 10-20h for "normal" coding interview.
5h to refresh basic algorithms BFS, DFS, sorts, Trees.
2h for hackerrank challenge from clueless HR person
3h for another preparation before whiteboarding on site
1h whiteboarding before any design question is asked