No, there's no principle, there's a ~20 minutes old idea that we engineers are so obviously awesome that companies should actually be paying us for the privilege of interviewing us.
There may exists engineers obviously awesome enough for that to be feasible, and great for them (but they are probably also obviously awesome enough to not have to go through coding tests, so it's a moot point) and even if I could perhaps (judging by certain recruiter-emails) scrape by as one of them, I certainly couldn't five years ago.
Back then, if I'd had to be good enough on paper alone to warrant not just being put through the recruitment process, but to be paid for it was well, I am not convinced I'd have been considered (and yes, I did a take-home test, and I aced it and it made up for my near-total lack of on-paper qualities).
Of course, companies shouldn't waste their applicants time with needlessly extensive tests, but there certainly exists no 'principle' by which you have a claim to be reimbursed for spending a few hours on an application.
Actually, for actors it does. If you go to a casting session, you should get payed for it. That's because they had a first chance to filter you out and they are not entitled to waste people's time. For the first filter, they use their CV and their reel (video of the actor showing itself).
I think that the same rules should apply for programming jobs. Just look at my resume and my publicly available code (that is linked from my resume). If you decide I am good enough to interview me, pay a reasonable hourly rate. This would stop the abusive practice of giving big problems to solve in our free time.
If this is true of programmers as well (and I have no opinion on whether it should be), it should be even more true of standard on-site job interviews, which are more disruptive to your work schedule and more demanding of your time and attention. But, of course, people do not generally get paid to go on job interviews.
It's at least reasonable to cover travel costs for interviewers. I was given a $40/day stipend for food and reimbursed gas and hotel when I interviewed at my current job.
This is a sound-bite, not something that holds up to scrutiny.
If you decide not to interview with possibly great places based on this, you're essentially saying that all future expected gain isn't worth some set hourly rate for 2-8 hours of your time.
Also, what's your free time worth? For me, sometimes it's worthless, and sometimes I feel like I'd sell my soul for 10 minutes to myself.
There may exists engineers obviously awesome enough for that to be feasible, and great for them (but they are probably also obviously awesome enough to not have to go through coding tests, so it's a moot point) and even if I could perhaps (judging by certain recruiter-emails) scrape by as one of them, I certainly couldn't five years ago.
Back then, if I'd had to be good enough on paper alone to warrant not just being put through the recruitment process, but to be paid for it was well, I am not convinced I'd have been considered (and yes, I did a take-home test, and I aced it and it made up for my near-total lack of on-paper qualities).
Of course, companies shouldn't waste their applicants time with needlessly extensive tests, but there certainly exists no 'principle' by which you have a claim to be reimbursed for spending a few hours on an application.