It feels to me like such a process tries to shift the power towards the employer, to make it seem like you would be lucky to even have a chance to work there and focus the time wholly on the business needs, when it really should be a mutual discussion to see if both parties feel it is a good fit. Passing your test with flying colours only to find we are a terrible match is just as damaging as hiring a bozo to begin with, no?
Failure to do the most basic of technical screening will result in the latter; as I've said in more detail before, in the '90s it was reverse a linked list in C/C++, look at this dozen or so lines of code and find some of the errors in them, and do some design (quiet, no one in the same room time allowed for that, with a discussion to follow). I didn't think it was too much to ask back then, but it sure weeded out a lot of people who couldn't program their way out of a paper bag.
Never had anyone ask for that, though. They would have gotten major bonus points for asking....
If you have done your homework when interviewing me, you'll understand that you need to sell me on your company, your team and the position first to let me assess whether you're worth my time.
The candidates who will bend over backwards to satisfy your coding tests before you've spent at least 20 minutes explaining why they should care, are the candidates who are fanboys and/or don't have other decent options. You should ask yourself why.
I've called off interviews and called the recruiter back to tell them I don't want to deal with that company again over interviewers who conducted bad technical interviews, for the reason that I know my value and I know the value of my time.
Conversely, when on the hiring end, I don't want candidates that are happy to bend over backwards for me without any sales effort first, or who don't ask me pointed questions about the company, the job, the terms. It makes me immediately suspicious about why they are willing to make such a big decision without sufficient information to evaluate if it would be a good fit for them.
Therefore, I'm going to ask you what your favorite language is and then test your ability to write 10-20 lines of code in that language to solve a relatively simple problem.
If you can't do that, it seems to me that a) you don't like to write code and therefore I shouldn't hire you or b) you're out of practice and shouldn't have claimed expertise or c) you're a poser.
If your expertise is with something else, go apply for positions that require skill with said "something else" as we'll both be a lot happier that way.
It's a completely different situation if I know you personally but 95% of the time I don't and I have to make a quick decision.