So here's MY opinion on the problem: 1. I totally agree with that. Yeah, watch someone code. Do a short hackathon. But not a day's worth. Seriously. 2. Using t

So here's MY opinion on the problem: 1. I totally agree with that. Yeah, watch someone code. Do a short hackathon. But not a day's worth. Seriously. 2. Using the actual codebase is fine but the interview starts to stink when the interviewer says "I gotta get this pushed live by the end of the day so let's get 'working'". It's not about "is he genuine?", it's about "that's a little weird, does he even want to interview?" 3. Here's an issue. What if you have 10 great people. I've been in a hiring process where it was DIFFICULT to find a person. So you get 10 days worth of free work and have to hire someone based on OTHER metrics. Be it budget, their demeanor, or whatever else. Also, freelancers (same as contractors) get by the HOUR unless contractually provided otherwise. Meaning that it's not just about the deliverables. If I was doing freelance work on a big project, had a scope, I'd get paid by the hour. If the company cut me off (didn't let me finish), they would pay for that hourly work, not for what I delivered. Same with scope revisions and other stuff like that. Sometimes you even work for a company HOURLY, doing random work that they need done. Again, it's HOURLY.