Why does it matter if it's real work, versus just resembling real work? At some companies the work may be of a nature that it's easy for someone to jump right

Why does it matter if it's real work, versus just resembling real work? At some companies the work may be of a nature that it's easy for someone to jump right in and do $500 worth of work in a reasonable time. At other companies, identifying the work, scoping the work, vetting to work, finding an owner for the work, etc adds up to enormous effort and is not even close to worth it. For those companies (by far the majority I would guess), it's going to pay off to have one or a few projects that they give everybody. To the candidate, it doesn't matter. Whether they see it as a waste of time or an investment depends only on whether they end up getting the job.