There is a problem with homework, candidate spends couple of hours and you spend couple of minutes to assess candidates. It's not fair. Google doesn't do that, Netflix doesn't do that. Why anyone would believe random startup and spend their weekend unless you're desperate looking for any job?
It is both true and false. Yes, the candidate may spend 1 hour (I don't give difficult homework exercises) while it takes me 15 to 20 minutes to review the submission, but I have to do it for maybe 5 candidates.
I totally understand the main criticism for homework, it takes time, the company may never call you back after you poured 2 hours into their stupid exercise. But it is an attempt at fixing all other alternatives:
* the onsite whiteboarding is BS
* using open source contribution is totally unfair to candidates who don't participate
* the "contract for 1 month and then maybe we'll hire you" is also total BS in my book. Who would leave a FT job with benefits for a contract that may end?
I'm not sure I can think of any alternative that has 0 drawbacks.
and at the end it turns out to be 5-10 hours. Companies say "you should be able to finish it in 1-2 hours", but it's almost never true.
I think alternative is to have 1 hour coding session on a good problem. Most problems are complicated, but there could be something else. I was once asked by Uber to implement timer in JavaScript that will update DOM, also create APIs to stop/start/pause. This kind of a challenge doesn't involve any algorithm, but it shows your ability to code.
It should be enough to bring you onsite.
But I open source should work. If you contributed to Linux Kernel and it was accepted - onsite no questions asked. If you have github repo of 1000+ stars - onsite no questions asked. If you have already passed Google tech screen and was invited onsite - invite onsite no questions asked.
