Sorry, my wording left out a bit of detail and was confusing. Our process is:

1) 30 minute intro phone call to see if both parties are pushing in the same direction

2) technical review, which can take one of two forms:

a) 1 hour phone call (no computer needed)

b) take home coding exercise

3) in person phase to meet team, cross functional team members, and ceo

Because of the nature of this comment, I thought it'd be helpful to offer up option 2b directly if someone wants todo it without a phone call blocking things.

We offer the coding exercise as an option for a few reasons, but the most important one is that some great engineers are good on the phone and some aren't. While good communication skills are a must to performing well, doing well on a tech phone call isn't.

Two things - not every engineer in good standing at a well known company can do FizzBuzz. And it speaks to compliance -- if someone is annoyed by a simple coding exercise, imagine how annoyed they might be if I ask them to do some not fun wizzbang work task after they're actually hired.

I really don't see much wrong with a 1-2 hour coding exercise. I'm really averse to "projects" that are supposed to span more time though, since I have a full time job and also a life besides.

Others have mentioned engineers not being able to do fizzbuzz, and that is certainly the most important part. Another one is, I've personally worked in larger orgs where "engineers" stick around for years, but haven't really done any solid coding whatsoever in years. They use tools developed by others to "assist" their team, but are actually the least productive people. One of the strategies that help this is by not automating certain repetitive tasks, so that it seems to require the attention of a full time engineer. e.g. I knew a person whose job day in and out was clicking in the Jenkins UI to run the jobs (!).

Of course this is not universal. But a small coding exercise is a good compromise imo.