From interviewee's point of view, how does doing HackerRank challenges for 3h sound to you as the 1st step of the process?
Too early? Should it even be in the process?

Actually, pretty good, one would have to check their solutions for how well written they are afterwards but apart from that I think it gives the interviewer a chance to see the applicant's problem solving skills. Three hours might be a bit excessive though.

It also helps weed out the ones with no ability at the beginning instead of wasting hours on testing them in person.

I wouldn't spend 3h on a company that early in the process unless its f-ing NASA.

I’m personally not a fan. I greatly prefer companies/interviews that make candidates do a project/exercise that’s highly relevant to the actual position.

I'm not a big fan of that approach as well. I understand it's gaining popularity and sometimes only used as a quality threshold.
To me it's too much to ask of candidates to do something that hardly touches on actual job description.

Needless to say, I withdrew my application without trying and they can keep looking for their "ideal candidate".

@ItsNotMyFault And to your point, I got a call from agent and next thing: 3h HakerRank invite... all I know is company name, their website and that they loosely agreed to my pay request. Never met anyone from the company, who can say I won't hate their guts after 5min with them in a room? 🤔

@LordPeeve atleast they agreed to your pay request first, nothing worse than wasting time on a company that isn't prepared to pay what you're worth