> Yes, they charge $200+/h - when they actually do the work.

Agreed.

Annual billable hours for consultants, be they developers, management, lawyers, et al, are considered huge if near 1500. That roughly works out to just under 30 billable hours per work week when vacations/holidays and non-billable time are taken into account.

As you surmise, just because someone _can_ bill X/hour doesn't mean that each hour they breathe commands the same remuneration.

But when comparing the difference, and considering a code project for an interview has a tendency to be even more stressful, which would a person rather spend their time on? It certainly is not the code project - I have heard & experienced too many stories where companies vastly underallocate time, or not respect that job seekers have other things that keep them busy typically, including less bureaucracy/time wasting (especially if a candidate has significant open source contributions), or not looking at the project, or even rejecting candidates for non-code related reasons (happened to someone I know today).

I'd much rather freelance for that type of stress & when having to compare the economics time-wise, which a take home test simply does not match - that is the whole point.

If a company does not want to pay that much, maybe they should respect the prospective employee's time, especially since it is a job seeker's market.