Comment by shagie

I am certainly not saying that it is time fair or that it doesn't result in a lot of excess work being done.

Take home assignments are there to minimize the amount of time spent per candidate with the most limited resource in the interview process - the people on a small team doing the interviews.

That is the problem that it is trying to solve.

Trying to minimize for the candidate time spent, increases the amount of the limited resource (the interviewers' time) and may mean that the interview process will be longer than is acceptable for candidates (are you willing to wait 4 weeks between the last interview and offer?) and removes the interviewers from revenue generating tasks.

There is no good solution to this. Often take home assignments are the least bad solution.