Why is it common for senior developers to drop out of coding interviews?
quora.com
quora.com
I've walked away from interviews like this because I don't care there's lots of good places to work and a lot of people who know how to recognize skill without an idiotic amount of tests. It's really a big red flag to any experienced person when the interviewers don't know how to size up a person's experience and interview properly. That shows an overall problem with company culture. I suppose if I really needed a job I would jump through those hoops but I would bail as soon as a better opportunity came along.
You want me to spend 4 hours on a coding test? Without paying me? I don't know what my odds are of landing the job, but let's say that it's 1%. If I keep applying at places that do the same thing, that's 400 hours of coding tests before I land a job? No. That's abuse. I'm not doing ten weeks of free work to try to land a job, and I'm not doing 4 hours of free work for a 1% chance at landing a job.
Interviews are a bit different. With interviews, if you're wasting my time, you're also wasting your own, so I assume that you have at least some incentive to not waste my time. But with a homework assignment, you have no incentive not to waste my time.
In interviewing for my current job, they gave me a small test. It took me five minutes. That kind of thing doesn't bother me.