Yeah, no kidding. If you’re not going to pay an hourly rate for a homework assignment, you are not getting particularly good applicants. No quality engineer will spend more than a couple hours at a chance to maybe have someone look at their code, to maybe offer them a job.
As I have said in a comment below, it sorta became a way to signal being hip-n-cool, while actually being totally otherwise.
Most cheapo shops which won't pay FAANG salaries but still want near-FAANG-quality-engineers end up using this as a bait.
Other ways are "your work has great purpose!" "You will advance humanity!" "You will bring great experiences to users" ... yeah yeah yeah, just an alias for "we are a glorified bodyshop. BigCos hire us for some piecemeal job. We get it done and get paid relatively well." But this isn't too appealing, is it!
We did allow concessions for people who were not able to find time to do the exercise. We merged it with the pair programming exercise and asked them to build it with us in office.
Young parent here. Not a chance in hell I'd be taking part in that exercise. The only possible way would be to take a weeks holiday and that's just not going happen.
At least they are open about it. It is probably a fair indication of the companies values if they are oblivious to how unreasonable a 3 day take home assignment is.