Thanks for the comments! In our case we would explicitely tell the people who interviewed that we would throw away all their code at the end of the day. It wa

Thanks for the comments! In our case we would explicitely tell the people who interviewed that we would throw away all their code at the end of the day. It was pretty unlikely anything they did would actually be valuable to us in such a short period, and giving the candidate something mission critical to work on was a no go. In 1 case, we did have someone come in for a week (on the UX side) and we paid the person for their week of work. She actually was the one who suggested a full week with us, so she could really get to know the team and see if it was a fit (it wasn't, so it is good we tried it out) It is not unusual to end up spending 5-8 or more hours interviewing with a company - you would not ask to get paid to come interview, and the code exercise was another form of interview. Finally, this was a great opportunity for the candidate to get to know us as well - how did we collaborate on stuff? What process did we use? What was the team environment? This allowed a candidate to come in with "eyes wide open" (well, more open) regarding our workplace....