[pc86]

We don't use homework projects at my current job (I don't care for them personally and thankfully have a bit of influence in the hiring process), but I've worked places that did. We always took real-world problems we had but had already solved. This has a couple benefits: a) we have full context around edge cases, bugs, historical stuff, etc. that the candidate doesn't; b) we can see pretty quickly when a candidate does something innovative we didn't think of and it's always lead to extremely good discussions in the interview; c) it's very similar to the work they'd be doing day-to-day, so if they have a lackluster resume and/or don't interview well, but shine on this, their odds of an offer skyrocket; d) the company gains nothing from the work so that settles most (but not all) of the ethical objections to it.