Resume-to-offer attrition rates are often as high as 99.9%. In-person interview-to-offer attrition rates are rarely worse than 90% and often in the 30%-50% range.

The thing about homework is that it costs companies basically nothing (one form email followed by an automatic grader in some cases), so they can afford to give it as early as possible - strictly by the numbers, this means offers cost on average 1000x8 hours. Whereas in the in-person interview case, the big cost is much later in the process, so it's more like 10x8 hours per offer.

Worse yet, this cost falls heavier on developers that have more trouble getting jobs, who are probably less likely to be able to weather that cost. Not a great situation.

Sure, Google/Microsoft have the legendary "6 hour" marathon interviews with multiple teams with lunch in the middle but for smaller scale of companies, they don't have bandwidth to mess around with all-day interviews. It's ~2 hours. In this thread, it shows I'm not the only one who prefers onsite whiteboard over homework projects so the "no developer prefers" claim is too absolutist.

>The problem developers have with "homework problems" is really a problem with bullshit companies that won't provide timely feedback on their submission.

Regardless if the feedback is received within 10 minutes or 10 days of submission, if I apply to 4 companies, I don't want to do 4 homework projects. I simply don't. At least with 4 onsite interviews, I see glimpses of the office and meet the interviewers.

I'd prefer it, since if I pass the coding challenge, I'm likely in for a airplane flight and an on-site interview anyway, so I've still lost that time from my life in addition to the time spent on the coding challenge. Unless the coding challenge is conducted INSTEAD of an on-site hazing session, in which case, well, E-mail in profile!

It's not an expensive investment for what you get, and since the meeting should happen soon after the code is written, it's easy to provide basic feedback.