My experience is that most companies are asking for too much and being downright rude in the way that they do it. Especially from more senior people who have options.

I turned down a number of companies at (or just after) the phone screen stage during my last job search. Usually the pattern was that they'd done one form of preliminary screen, and then wanted to do one (or two, or three...) additional steps before going onsite. One company I remember asked me to do an eight hour programming exercise, after I had finished a phone-based technical screen. I told them it was unreasonable, and that I'd consider it only if I had nothing else to do with an entire day of my time. Never got back to them.

I am a tolerant person, but I am, indeed, too good for that kind of process. Early stage startups especially need to accept the reality that they're not attractive places to work, and behave accordingly. The less reasonable your process, the fewer good candidates will stay in the pipeline. Eventually, you're just intensely screening the people who didn't have better options.

A good example for me is interviews. I'm totally happy to do a full day on site, exhausting as it is. But only if I feel like they have gained new insight in each round. A few months back I did like 8 individual interviews during a 1-day startup visit, and easily half the time was answering the same questions repeatedly. The could have just had people pair up and saved me time while getting better results themselves. It gave me the impression they didn't have their act together.

Take-home work is in the same category. If it's the kind of thing that makes me say, "Oooh, I want to work with people who pass this," then it's great. But if it mainly seems to be testing my ability to put up with nonsense, that's a big negative sign.

The promise of something like Triplebyte (for the candidate) is that I do one round of technical interview, and then proceed directly to my favorite companies for culture fit and personal evaluation. But every company believes that they're the special snowflake who deserves extra screening.

If the process is patronizing, good people will simply opt out and pick another of the many options available to them. The more senior the applicant or the higher the demand for the particular role, the more people you will lose.

If your hiring process is unilateral or asymmetric in terms of time investment, you are almost certainly not going to get the best talent.