time limits put an upper bound on how long youre spending on it which is good for a lot of people. ive given take home tests and some people clearly put more ti

time limits put an upper bound on how long youre spending on it which is good for a lot of people. ive given take home tests and some people clearly put more time on it than we expected. as an applicant, ive refused takehomes that were auto-sent on receiving the application, but if its after a phone call with the hiring manager or engineer its not so bad. but then, i did end up having to defend why i didnt do a bunch of parts ancillary to the assignment - 'why didnt you build a config loading system?' 'uh cause i timeboxed it and that gives you fairly little signal compared to the business logic'