This is a terrible solution at many levels. Paying someone who isn't on your payroll (yet) needs a lot of bureacracy on both sides (e.g. taxes). And even if it

This is a terrible solution at many levels. Paying someone who isn't on your payroll (yet) needs a lot of bureacracy on both sides (e.g. taxes). And even if it's paid, it's still a not-insignificant time investment for the applicant. They're probably applying for several gigs and take home assignments would quickly turn into a full time job, and filing the tax paperwork could take more time than the coding. And finally, assigning a job that would actually get used at a company pushes up the complexity level, the need to understand the context. This would also make me very suspicious about the motives of the company. In my company, we give a "fizzbuzz" level assignment on the whiteboard (or their own laptop if they prefer). The purpose is to weed out the applicants who can't code at all (makes a surprisingly large portion of applicants). Additionally, we've noticed that the ones who are good programmers will ace these tests. I don't think that whiteboard assignments or takehome work is a good way to assess how good a programmer is. A 15-30 minute smoke test with a binary result (the applicant can or can not code at all) is good to filter out bad applicants but not to distinguish good from excellent.