[alexfromapex]

Have been doing SE for 10 years now. Got burned on three of these recently because they didn't used to be as common. Talking several hours each one. It leaves you with the feeling that the company is stealing your work. Will not repeat.

Also, one company had me do a SQL take home which I thought was amusing because then one of the employees nit-picked all the SQL code which I hastily wrote because it was already a risky time investment, even though it was a Python job and I'd likely just use an ORM.

I would argue that a truly qualified interviewer should be able to have a dialogue where they ask you very pointed questions and give you maybe a 20 minute coding problem. If they're not satisfied, they should invite you back for another interview. The major drawback of take-home tests is they are usually very subjective and huge time investments.

I ultimately got 3 job offers, got to the final round at 3 others which had take homes, and accepted one at a FAANG company who didn't use these poor interview tactics but to each their own.