It feels to me like the root problem here isn't how many people are doing the homework problem or whatever. It's that this is increasing your time spent as a candidate relative to the in-person interview.
I think your last paragraph is very close, but I think the thing that matters is "no wishy-washy rejections". Not being the only person taking the test or how much time the company spends seem like ways to make that happen to me.
Maybe I'm just completely wrong here, but I think most of the objections to homework type tests are being caused by processes where the homework test was in addition to the in-person whiteboard interview, not instead of it.
How would you feel about a process that was: some preliminary screening -> nominal 4 hour homework thing -> in person meeting to confirm that you're not a complete asshole and negotiate salary?
I think your last paragraph is very close, but I think the thing that matters is "no wishy-washy rejections". Not being the only person taking the test or how much time the company spends seem like ways to make that happen to me.
Maybe I'm just completely wrong here, but I think most of the objections to homework type tests are being caused by processes where the homework test was in addition to the in-person whiteboard interview, not instead of it.
How would you feel about a process that was: some preliminary screening -> nominal 4 hour homework thing -> in person meeting to confirm that you're not a complete asshole and negotiate salary?