I for one have "walked out" of any interview that has asked me to do a take home assignment. Usually, the request for the take-home comes early enough. This shows me that the engineering team is too busy with work to even give time for a 30 minute shared text editor code interview. If we all refuse to do it, this crap will stop.

I balked at a take-home. They agreed it was a nuisance, instead hired me for a week to work with their team as a contractor! At my rack rate. That was a great experience, didn't hit me in the pocketbook, and convinced the team we could work productively together.

This is a good idea. Doesn't work for people on visas but I can imagine working this out somehow. Basically, make the potential employer realize that your time isn't free.

I don't really agree - I remembered a take home assignment which combined enterprise-like object-oriented design (data model, strategy) with algorithmic thinking (several flavors of graph traversal). The job also turned out to be top-notch before the company was bought by a certain trading firm which has 2/5 (and falling) on glassdoor. 9 months later it was pure shite. it was the best team i ever worked in though - still keep in touch with some of the guys :)

True! Word.