I would prefer that we pay people to do this, but unfortunately that's not my call. That said, no one seems to complain so bitterly about the all day interviews that places like Google do (and insist you fly out for in person).

Isn't asking people to fly out for 6-8 hours of interviews (which effectively takes 3 days minimum out of your life) a much greater burden than spending 2-3 hours on some coding which you can do at a time of your choosing? (Followed by 2-3 hours of video chat interviews spread across multiple days, no flying required).

Also, just to clarify, the homework problem is _not_ something related to our business. The solutions are of no business value to the company.

Are you paying as much as Google? Is your job going to give the same prestige as having "worked for Google" on your CV?

I am not saying that you are wrong, but applying to Google does sound like it will have many benefits above your average company.

Google is hardly the only company to do in-person all day interviews. I've had several in my career, none of them with Google. IIRC, they were with Shopzilla and Grant Street Group, and Livetext (not exactly Google-famous companies). I wasn't thrilled about flying out for 6 hours of interviews, but at the time I thought it was reasonable for them to ask for this. I'm not sure I'd do it again unless I was incredibly excited about the position in question, but I'm older and more jaded now.

As to how much we pay ... Our pay is very good, and all but one of the positions for which we've had the homework requirement have been telecommuting as well. It's actually a pretty desirable place to work if you like good pay, telecommuting, working at a small company, a low pressure environment (we've been profitable for many years), and various other perks (training budget, flexible hours, blah blah blah).

And the above poster would seem to have an eminently sensible interviewing style, himself:

http://blog.urth.org/2016/03/08/tech-interviewer-theory/

The last time I was in the hiring side of the process... I had what I considered a pretty easy assignment... it was for a full-stack JS developer (node). The assignment was to read in an XML file (preferably via an input stream) and write it out to a JSON file of a predetermined object structure.

There were no other limitations put.. "bonus points for stream based input" "bonus points for test cases" ... only a couple people actually delivered a "working" solution (one that ran and outputted anything), none of which had the correct output (one was close enough), and none had any tests.

It was truly something that should take a "skilled" developer a couple hours. And not something that should be entirely alien. To say the least, I was really disappointed with the results. I did the project myself in about 2 hrs, with test cases, 100% code coverage. (before I even gave it out, it was as trivial a challenge as I could come up with for a real world problem).

Why should I have to pay the couple dozen people for their 3 hours, when none delivered a correct solution?

In the end, the person with the closest to correct solution, was the one with the least experience... that person got the job.