I generally have a policy of "over 4 hours and I charge for my time." I did this in the 4-hour window, and it was a lot of fun. Much better than many other take-home assignments.
Anyone worth working with respected that and I landed several clients who forwent the assignment altogether. It's chump change in the grand scheme of things, and often a formality.
Does help that I have a very public web presence and portfolio, though.
I couldn't care less about getting paid for a few hours, what's truly annoying when you're job hunting is the company having an extremely high rejection rate even at the take-home stage. That's an inordinate waste of time multiplied by a lot of companies.
If you have a >50% chance of rejecting, don't even give the candidate a take-home. Be at least 90% sure you want them before you get to that stage.
Being told "here do this arbitrary thing that will take 4 hours of your time and maybe we'll look at it, and then if we even bother to do that, maybe we'll respond" is different than an interview where both parties invest their time face-to-face.
Worth mentioning that demanding to be paid to apply for a company is usually equivalent to rejecting the job. Most companies are going to end the interview there. Few HR departments would allow one applicant to be paid for the same interview loop as other candidates.
I was helping out in a mentoring program during the ZIRP period when the idea of charging companies for take-home interviews started to become popular. I can’t think of anyone it actually worked for in that group. I’ve heard anecdotes online of some people doing it with success, but any company like Anthropic is just going to close your application and move on if you request to be paid for applying. They have a zillion other qualified candidates in line.
If someone is giving a take-home problem that looks like you’re actually doing work for the company, that’s a different story. This problem is not actually work, obviously.
Sending a company a surprise bill that they didn't agree upon is bad practice. Interviews are customarily not compensated, so it's unreasonable to surprise bill someone for it.
If you send a company a surprise bill for the interview, it's going to give the HR people a good laugh as they cross you off the candidates list. Everyone involved is going to forever remember you as the person who tried surprise billing for the interview and make a mental note to never interview you again at future companies.
It's not a good thing to try.
i guess that ensures you either hire the childless
or those with children who are fine with be not present for that long willingly (so they are probably gonna be job-obsessed enough)
or they are currently unemployed so they won't have an existing job as anchoring leverage
well played, anthropic
nobody i know ever spends 4hrs uninterrupted working remotely lolol