[mattbillenstein]

Few problems - this is a lot of overhead for you I think, and it'll be hard to measure the strength of one candidate vs another.

Also, a lot of SWEs most significant code bases they've worked on will not be theirs, but property of a previous employer.

The best I've figured out is to have a straightforward coding exercise that doesn't have a lot of dependencies and can be solved fairly quickly in any language the candidate chooses. Do this live in one of your interview sessions - I don't like take-home stuff, it discourages above-average candidates.

Have a couple places where they could chose the wrong data structure or algorithm. And have a follow-up that modifies the first solution to do something slightly different. Give this same exercise to all candidates - you'll more easily know if candidate A is better than candidate B, etc.