As a hiring manager who was once a developer who was absolutely terrified of the typical whiteboard/algorithm interview, take home assignments are my preferred method to judge tech ability. However, I often feel it's not fair to ask the candidate to invest their personal time in the interview process. So I'm glad to see some affirmation that it's the preferred method for at least some.

When I have done take homes, I've tried to keep the time requirements minimal and the project itself simple and hopefully even a bit fun. It might even be as simple as "here's a REST endpoint, pick the JS SPA framework of your choice and do something interesting with that endpoint." Even just a simple form with clean code that builds will be enough to get you hired if you're otherwise a good candidate. Because in the real world, most of of us are just building CRUD apps.

All that said, I only bother with this if the candidate is incredibly green. For anyone with decent experience I generally assume they're not lying on their resume, and an hour long chat about their projects and technology interests will tell you more than any technical assessment.