I love a rough lines/size guide and will be stealing that idea :-) The biggest risk with those take-home projects is that you'll lose out on the "2-3 hour proj

I love a rough lines/size guide and will be stealing that idea :-) The biggest risk with those take-home projects is that you'll lose out on the "2-3 hour project" because someone else spent 5-6 hours and had time not to just finish it, but to make it look very polished—unreasonably polished for 2-3 hours. So you either do it as directed and worry, or spend way more time on it (enough that I'd probably just pass unless it was one hell of a job) Keep it small enough and you don't run into the thing where you're excluding the semi-happily employed, competent devs, because they don't really have to put up with your shit to find new employment, which is the case with those defined time (but not really) larger projects.