The downvotes are likely because of the false dichotomy you present.

Like I said,

>In my experience that [code challenges] is pretty much the sole alternative.

I would love more options but I can only speak based on my own experiences. I've gone through many interviews and only once have any of them escaped this "false" dichotomy. To me, and I suppose many others, it is not false.

The take home is a no go because its goal is make me invest my time with no corresponding investment of the other person's time. From a game theory perspective that makes my time disposable to them. I'm used to full day interview rounds and in principle I don't mind doing a 4 hour programming exercise, but only if one of the company's own engineers is there in the room with me talking to me while I work. That way we are both investing time. A paid initial engagement is of course also fine. Or perhaps a $1000 donation to the nonprofit of my choice would do it. I'm not necessarily in it for the money myself, but I need to see evidence (in evolutionary terms, an "honest signal") that the take-home isn't an exercise in bullshit.

The other trouble with take-homes (as someone mentioned) is the incentive to incessantly refactor and polish the code, write tests, etc. So it goes way beyond the 4 hours mentioned. I felt ok doing a 30 minute thing like that once, but only because it was a timed online test, "press go when you are ready to start". So I knew it would not run over 30 minutes.

The take-home thing might not immediately be a red flag to a naive participant, but once you've done a couple of them, you get to realize they are bad news. The exact reason companies want to do them (so they can burn the candidate's time without burning any of their own) is the same reason experienced candidates know to refuse them.

I don't think your premise is accurate because you don't have insight into how much, if any, time the company invests in reviewing take homes.

As a reviewer, I sure spent considerable time reviewing take homes. As an applicant I got extremely thoughtful and detailed reviews.

Conversely, I've interviewed at least as many times in code challenges with unhelpful, absent-minded interviewers.

To me it boils down to sync VS async. I default to async always. Take home is async, code challenge is sync.

> As a reviewer, I sure spent considerable time reviewing take homes.

You mean like 4 hours reviewing? I'll believe you, but it surprises me. Anyway I can only go by what I can see. If you've already got a candidate you mostly like, you might solicit more take homes hoping to get one that blows you away, and take only a minute each to spot that none of them do.

> As an applicant I got extremely thoughtful and detailed reviews.

That's cool to hear. I myself have never gotten any kind of feedback to a take-home, beyond "hey, you did that really well, let's move forward to a live interview", or alternatively, dropping communication.

I do understand that sync is more hassle for you than async, but that is part of what makes it an honest signal.

Doesn’t the single example you yourself have experienced actually confirm that it is false?

If we were talking about math theorems, yes. In real world situations like this though it is customary to equate "extremely rare" with "not existent"

How many interviews have you taken to determine that one is an outlier?

I haven’t had a “formal” interview in some years now, but of the 5 job interviews I’ve had in the last decade, zero had a take home component and one had leetcode style questions.

Since I’m 0 for 5 on take homes, and 1 for 5 on leetcode I can only surmise based on your logic that neither actually exist.

I've taken at least a couple dozen interviews, maybe more. I create trello boards to keep track of them when I do job searches.