I don't think that's something a people should do these days, this looks more gladiator stuff... what is your thoughts?
Steer clear of it. If this is their mental model of how work should be done, imagine what it is like inside the company.
I would also wonder, if in the US, what laws they might be breaking for this "hiring" process.
That's how a lot of big open source projects like Chrome and Android and React work...except it's more than 100 developers for more than a 8 hours and there is a lower ratio of jobs on offer at the end...and NPM and Github have a similar model except that they profit by aggregating code people contribute for free.
I occasionally get paid to work on open-source projects that happen to help my company. Because you know, it's my job.
1. Choose your team
2. Choose your project
3. Keep the IP
If there are 200 developers who are willing to participate in such a tournament, then its most likely that they are either jobless, or looking for a better position or find this kind of tournament fair game.
Regarding getting paid for your code, I just want to ask do you get paid for writing/designing programs or solving problems when you go give a regular interview. Of course not. Apart from perhaps from a free lunch at the onsite facility and the travel tickets, do you ever expect to be paid your average hourly rate when you go to give interviews at companies like Google or Apple. I don't think so.
If someone whines about getting paid, then you need to assume that the person has either made it or is not jobless. A lot of jobless people would go great distances to land a job - sitting in a AC room for a day writing programs is surely not that unpleasant a demand.
I am sure that a lot of folks here would have a very different opinion if they were jobless/homeless or looking desperately for a job.
However I will not feel comfortable working for this company knowing this is their hiring process, they pay no respect to a developer's skill to communicate and work with others, their knowledge in building software at large scale, ability in bringing improvement to other people's skills and the company's processes. Sorry to be blunt but it sounds to me they're trying to hire code monkeys/coding robots not software developers.
I think they are relying on recruiting younger developers.
