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A two hour pairing session is hard on people who need to fit their interviewing time into odd hours. It’s also stressful, because it’s so much more consequential than a session of real work with two peers. Not to say you shouldn’t do it—just keep in mind it also has trade-offs. And I soundly agree with the positives you list, especially that it forces the interviewer to commit time like the interviewee.

I did a one hour take-home for my current job. I could see someone taking 2-3 hours on it if they were really rusty, and I think that is a good thing because rusty developers can be very good once back up to speed in a language or domain. Live programming wouldn’t give them a chance.

[twawaaay]

If you can't find 2h for a Zoom call I start questioning your commitment to get the job, especially when there is no time limit on when you can have the meeting (within reason). When I had an important interview in a place where I really wanted to work I would usually take entire day off and make sure I am well rested, prepared and in right state of mind.

Yes, it is stressful. I try to make interviews less stressful but I also believe ability to perform under stress is a desirable trait. I have been presented with many stressful situations in my past where I had to deal with high stakes, difficult problems on a short notice, with important people watching my every move. Like dealing with an outage that incapacitated an entire national bank and was causing a loss of about 50M USD per day.

Now, I am mostly interviewing senior devs, team leads, tech leads, etc. I would be much more lenient with junior roles but I just don't have time to interview everybody and I also like to give the chance for other people to work on their interviewing skills.