I had to take a deep breath when I read this comment. As others have mentioned this is a huge strawman.
My post was not meant to imply that home assignments are a wrong tool to filter out candidates.
It's how it is conducted that makes it a toxic practice. Not providing any meaningful feedback or not paying for a work that takes too much time is what makes it not acceptable.
Re the "no meaningful feedback" - this may be laziness or negligence, but in my experience is almost certainly related to liability. "Takes too much time" as a value probably varies widely between engineers. I personally like a system with a take home designed to take 1 hour (we've said so explicitly) but we don't actually cap the time. There is an entirely other camp of engineers who don't want _any_ time limits so they can approach the problem in whatever way they want. At the end of the day you have to make a call re the most efficient use of your team's time to find new folks.
My post was not meant to imply that home assignments are a wrong tool to filter out candidates.
It's how it is conducted that makes it a toxic practice. Not providing any meaningful feedback or not paying for a work that takes too much time is what makes it not acceptable.