If a company asks for a take-home assignment, it should be pretty clearly related to the actual work now being performed by the engineering team.

Ideally, it’s actual work using their actual code — and preferably the candidate would be paid for his or her time. Pair programming for 1–2 hours would bridge the gap in the case that an appropriate take-home assignment could be provided.

Unfortunately, all of those solutions require more time on behalf of the company, and some of them require actual financial investment. It’s much easier to screen 500 applicants with a blind take-home assignment, where you might only get 100 back.

Of course, the company is likely not to look at those take-home assignments in any detail, and only those candidates currently employed with “the right job title" will move forward in the application process.

So it’s actually a two-fold screening tool: unemployed and underemployed people are much more likely to find 8 hours to do pointless volunteer work. But since companies prefer currently-employed candidates, those who still find time to do the take-home assignment can be said to “have a real passion for the work.”

So out of 100 take-home assignments, companies may only even open the 10–20 from “passionate and qualified" candidates — those who are currently employed based on a 6 second skim of the resume. That would seem to perpetuate discrimination in hiring practices, since BIPOC and women are much less likely to already have the correct job title.