The take home is a no go because its goal is make me invest my time with no corresponding investment of the other person's time. From a game theory perspective

The take home is a no go because its goal is make me invest my time with no corresponding investment of the other person's time. From a game theory perspective that makes my time disposable to them. I'm used to full day interview rounds and in principle I don't mind doing a 4 hour programming exercise, but only if one of the company's own engineers is there in the room with me talking to me while I work. That way we are both investing time. A paid initial engagement is of course also fine. Or perhaps a $1000 donation to the nonprofit of my choice would do it. I'm not necessarily in it for the money myself, but I need to see evidence (in evolutionary terms, an "honest signal") that the take-home isn't an exercise in bullshit. The other trouble with take-homes (as someone mentioned) is the incentive to incessantly refactor and polish the code, write tests, etc. So it goes way beyond the 4 hours mentioned. I felt ok doing a 30 minute thing like that once, but only because it was a timed online test, "press go when you are ready to start". So I knew it would not run over 30 minutes. The take-home thing might not immediately be a red flag to a naive participant, but once you've done a couple of them, you get to realize they are bad news. The exact reason companies want to do them (so they can burn the candidate's time without burning any of their own) is the same reason experienced candidates know to refuse them.