[crzwdjk]

As someone who's had to do a few take home tests as well as coding with someone looking over my shoulder, I am definitely not a fan of the latter. I prefer to sit down and think about a problem, maybe even read it and let it sit in my head for a day or two before I actually start the coding. I also feel like shortening the time and making it synchronous would remove the opportunity to revise and polish the code I've written, which is one of the advantages of the take-home test format.

My ideal interview format would involve a work sample test, followed by a code review of said work sample, and also a reverse code review (candidate is given some code to review). As an added bonus, all of this can easily be done over email without wasting too much of anyone's time, especially compared to an all day in-person interview with lots of whiteboard time.