As a middle manager I can confirm, I have a certain set of standard interview processes I apply but if the candidate is warranted to ask for an alternative approach to assess their skills in condensed time I can accommodate those situations too. Simply asking directly is most likely the best approach, suggesting a route is likely fastest to get an answer e.g. instead of 4x1hr can we do 1x1.5-2hr and reference your code for them to measure your skills overall.
I thought about stopping but decided to keep reading. I'm not sure these guys know what ETL Tooling means, some of the entries were just bespoke R script only packages that just extract data into R.
Might be location specific but out of 300+ candidates for 15 positions mid to senior level over 8 years in London recruited using this technique I've only ever had one person turn it down. We ask for fairly simpler requirements and for people to limit themselves to 4-6 hours over the course of a week with a focus on comments and recording their thoughts in a readme to suggest how they'd scale things if it was a real project. We don't really bother with many technical questions outside of the project anymore. It really is the single most important thing to get a glimpse into a persons ability to deliver, let them code at their own time in a setting they are comfortable with and then do a peer review with them on location and discuss the implementation and potential enhancements. The rest after that is generally just team fit and culture alignment checks.
I don't turn them down - bridge burning is for pyromaniacs - I just make non-committal noises and don't usually get back to them.
I should clarify that I was thinking more of outfits that respond to my enquiry with "Hi $candidate, please do this generic exercise after which we'll deign to look at your CV". Bonus points awarded/deducted if the requested exercise is for something already available on my github profile.
And 4-6 hours is typically my free time (not free computer time, total free time) for a week.
