[wikwocket]

I think this is a good point. There's a real risk that a homework you think is simple is a little more complicated because you're making assumptions. I think it's good to have a few current team members actually code it up (not just whiteboard it), and also to talk with a few candidates to see how long it took them, to calibrate this.

It's also better to aim small (a la FizzBuzz) and walk up the complexity slowly, as opposed to starting with "Solve this ticket from our prod JIRA queue, with tests please" (which I have actually been given as a test!)

I like to aim for a very simple task, like proposed above, with maybe one non-obvious part or edge case (which the spec mentions, so it's not a trick question). Just enough to demonstrate a) clean coding for the simple parts, and b) ability to solve something without using a completely naive solution.