[Ensorceled]

Or, if they don't actually expect you to spend more than 3 hours on the task, they will compare you to people who have spent 9 hours on it.

Had that recently: they said "spend no more than two hours on it" so I finished in about an hour and 45 that evening and flipped it over.

Then they started asking why my 20 or so unit tests only covered the basics when other candidates had full unit tests in the two hour time frame. I told them the other candidates were simply lying :-)

[Jare]

If a company emphasizes quantity over quality during the interview process, run away.

[Bahamut]

Very true - it is part of the bane of take home assignments. Even for someone who can code extremely fast, a lot of the exams aren't realistic with time, and then they are compared with those done by people who put in multiples of the asked hours.

I rather put in those extra hours contracting (worst scenario), doing open source work (lots to be done that advances the productivity of tens of thousands of developers, if not more), into my hobbies, or into my friends.