It still seems strange to me to pay for throwaway work but I can also see how that’s really just my personal sentiment / bias and this is probably a pretty good and balanced approach.
This type of interview self-selects for people with fewer family/non-work obligations, who are willing and able to spend their free time still programming.
Are you also job hunting at work, doing interviews on your employers time, etc?
That guy already has a good job. Another company is trying to poach him. Why would he, or any other qualified and gainfully employed candidate go through that unnecessary homework bullshit for a company that's trying to recruit them? The company has its priorities misplaced. They should be trying to convince the candidate to join them, not putting up barriers to their most qualified candidates.
I mean this isn’t a lottery, and hopefully you’ve reasoned there will be a high probability of getting hired; say 50%. So then the expected value of your time is $6.25k/hr.
Go, take the moral high ground, and don’t do the homework. That helps rational minded folk achieve an even higher hit rate.
There are much better and less humiliating ways to get top dollar. Work your ass off and build reputation is the biggest one.
If you are a company and you have to call a recruiter, you're already behind. Putting people through that stuff just makes it worse.
I mean, even "discount" recruiting platforms like Hired and Vettery will cost 5-figures when we make a hire through them, and traditional recruiters often charge 20% or more of the new-hire's first year salary. A few hundred bucks to get some more information about a prospective coworker is cheap.