Company swapped its interview loop for a paid two-day project and I'd take that over another take-home

No algorithm round at all. One conversation, then a scoped two-day project against a sanitised slice of their actual codebase, paid at a day rate, with a real engineer on Slack to answer questions.

What I liked: I got to see how they actually work. Questions got answered in ten minutes instead of me guessing at requirements for six hours and getting marked down for guessing wrong. Being paid meant it stopped feeling like a bet I was personally funding.

What would make it unworkable for a lot of people: two days is impossible if you're employed with kids, and "paid" doesn't fix that at all.

I didn't take the offer in the end, for unrelated reasons. Still the best process I've been through. Would you do one of these, or is the time cost worse than just grinding for a month?