I share the same opinion. Appart from that, I'd love to have the opportunity to see and play with the actual codebase before signing up for a job. During my first days with a really friendly and somewhat generous company, I inherited a mind-blowing codebase (well I'm gonna call it "code", but I might as well call it absurd theatre). All the blubber that HR, product managers and team leaders feed you during interviews, gives you like 10% of the job description accuracy you would get from actually reading their code.

Anyway, I think attitude plays a really important role here. A candidate might be able to recite Linux Kernel code by heart, but if he doesn't show commitment or a bit of flexibility, I would never get him on my team. I'm not talking here about an 8 hour long test run. I bet the guy could have negotiated it to 4 hours or something. I gave away 8 hours of trial work once (+ 3 hours spent talking to managers during the other stages) and I never felt bad about it. I really don't get what the problem is here, I was always really eager to show what I can and to impress. It's all about being competitive. We're not pealing potatoes, we're writing code. Show some passion for Christ's sake. Or find a job that makes you happy even when you're not getting paid. That's the kind of job you'd like to keep for the rest of your life.