Because I don't do IT trivia, and I don't offer free consulting services. When getting these kind of idiotic interviews it's common for experienced people to walk away because they have options. The people that you get jumping through your hoops are mostly going to be people who don't have any options and they're the people that study for the test and that's all they can do.

I've walked away from interviews like this because I don't care there's lots of good places to work and a lot of people who know how to recognize skill without an idiotic amount of tests. It's really a big red flag to any experienced person when the interviewers don't know how to size up a person's experience and interview properly. That shows an overall problem with company culture. I suppose if I really needed a job I would jump through those hoops but I would bail as soon as a better opportunity came along.

Stronger: Because I'm not desperate enough to willingly take abuse.

You want me to spend 4 hours on a coding test? Without paying me? I don't know what my odds are of landing the job, but let's say that it's 1%. If I keep applying at places that do the same thing, that's 400 hours of coding tests before I land a job? No. That's abuse. I'm not doing ten weeks of free work to try to land a job, and I'm not doing 4 hours of free work for a 1% chance at landing a job.

Interviews are a bit different. With interviews, if you're wasting my time, you're also wasting your own, so I assume that you have at least some incentive to not waste my time. But with a homework assignment, you have no incentive not to waste my time.

In interviewing for my current job, they gave me a small test. It took me five minutes. That kind of thing doesn't bother me.