Please stop the coding challenges

I recently ran an interview process for a relatively senior eng role at a tiny startup. Because I believe different interview methods work better for different people, I offered everyone a choice:

1. Do a takehome test, targeted to take about 4 hours but with no actual time limit. This was a non-algorithmic project that was just a stripped-down version of what I'd spent the last month on in actual work.

2. Do an onsite pairing exercise in 2 hours. This would be a version of #1, but more of "see how far we get in 2 hours."

3. Submit a code sample of pre-existing work.

Based on the ire I've seen takehome tests get, I figured we'd get a good spread between all three, but amazingly, ~90-95% of candidates chose the takehome test. That matches my preference as a candidate as well.

I don't know if this generalizes beyond this company/role, but it was an interesting datapoint - I was very surprised to find that most people preferred it!

Did you ask why they chose the take home?

I'd favor 1 and 2 over 3, because I feel that you understanding the problem I'm solving gives a better context to appreciate my approach.

If I take it home and hand it later, you can compare my solution to yours (or others) and better grasp my coding style, even if it's different to yours, since we worked on essentially the same task.

If we're working as a pair, you can observe my thought process. I can better express my reasoning for picking certain idioms.

With past code, there's almost no context. It's just code that was written for some other project. In my opinion, this can be very useful in preliminary steps, when I'm sending out my resume and you need to validate that I can indeed write code. In later stages, I think it can be impressive if I have a working app and can walk you down the code for a particular feature. But who has working software laying around? We all have code that works with a few hacks, sorta...

I'd favor 1 over 2, because it reduces the probability to blunder. Between spending 2 hours on-site with a higher risk to mess up (due to pressure, Murphy's law, etc) and take the assignment home to work on it for an extra 2 hours, with ample time to freely research whatever I don't understand. It's a no-brainer for me.