While I appreciate that it can be a waste of time, the way I tended to look at this was that if the coding test / task was minimal, it was an acceptable trade-off for both company and candidate. Like, that task should take an hour or so.
The problem it's trying to solve is just the surprising number of bad candidates that apply. We're talking about people with decent CVs, a bit of work experience at different companies, some open-source work etc., and who had a good chat on the phone – sometimes they just completely mess it up when faced with a task like "combine these JSON files to make output that looks like this sample". Things like code that literally doesn't work, or code that uses totally inappropriate tools. We want to avoid wasting both their time and our time by bringing them onsite for an interview that isn't going to go anywhere.
The risk with being "hired to do real, paid work remotely" is that it relies on finding people who are in a position to do that, and this ends up excluding a bunch of good candidates. Not everybody is in an employment situation that will allow them to do external work, and it disincentives people with families or other commitments.
The process of applying for a position shouldn't be over-burdening on a candidate. I agree that it's unfair to expect lots of stupid work, multiple-day interview processes and so on. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that a candidate who wants to work with a company can afford to spend a few hours in total as part of that process.
The problem it's trying to solve is just the surprising number of bad candidates that apply. We're talking about people with decent CVs, a bit of work experience at different companies, some open-source work etc., and who had a good chat on the phone – sometimes they just completely mess it up when faced with a task like "combine these JSON files to make output that looks like this sample". Things like code that literally doesn't work, or code that uses totally inappropriate tools. We want to avoid wasting both their time and our time by bringing them onsite for an interview that isn't going to go anywhere.
The risk with being "hired to do real, paid work remotely" is that it relies on finding people who are in a position to do that, and this ends up excluding a bunch of good candidates. Not everybody is in an employment situation that will allow them to do external work, and it disincentives people with families or other commitments.
The process of applying for a position shouldn't be over-burdening on a candidate. I agree that it's unfair to expect lots of stupid work, multiple-day interview processes and so on. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that a candidate who wants to work with a company can afford to spend a few hours in total as part of that process.