What's interesting to me about the discussion in this article is how many people talked about wanting to adopt Google/Amazon's hiring process and how they liked the 7 interviews/whiteboarding way more than take-home assignments.
Call me weird, but I prefer the assignments than the mindless discussions about balancing trees and Big-Oh notation.
I think there is a place for both. Maybe not data structures, but things like application architecture and development practices are ripe for good discussion.
A well designed take home assignment, meanwhile can be a good filter, telling you immediately if the candidate knows the basics and has the added benefit of showing you strengths and weaknesses in their practice.
Which culminated in this blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3061860