This is exactly what I meant. Home tests are totally fine, given there is some reasonable interest from the company already.
Home test is totally fine after a phone call or a two. However, they are not fine at all just after submitting an application and no real contact.
>"What I am asking is that companies don't ask me to invest hours of time before they decide if they're even interested in talking to me."
I feel like this is the crux of it as well. I am not against projects or tests to show I am technically qualified. But this should be after talking to some potential team mates to see if there is even a fit, personally, work culture-wise, technical interest or any number of factors that you could glean by speaking to potential colleagues for 20 or 30 minutes.
What I am asking is that companies don't ask me to invest hours of time before they decide if they're even interested in talking to me. At the very least I want to have had a phone interview and the chance to assess whether I'm even interested in working for you. That's particularly relevant when looking for remote friendly employers, I've had several calls in recent days from recruiters responding to me saying I'm looking for remote work which I stopped on finding out what they meant was "at least three months fulltime on site, and then maybe we'll talk about some remote work".