Are coding challenges part of a hiring process necessary?

@No-one thats classic fizz buzz stuff, you would be suprised how many people fail those

Have a look at:
https://github.com/poteto/...
If you want to avoid those challenges.
Personally i dont like them, but i think they are neccessary for some positions, like entry level or internships. Where people typically dont have much to show, in terms of prior projects.

Yes they are. How else would you be able to know if a candidate is able to program. The one I had to do was building a Simple CRUD application with entries containing a date and have them sort and searchable. They gave me 2h for it, which is quite resonable if you ask me. That way they are able to judge if you're able to write code in the first place, if you write clean/structured code and if you are able to explain your code.

@sylflo Yeah, at my job they ask for a simple palindrome detection. Its crazy how many people are not able to finish it even with a lot of help

Yes

@thiemok oh, I love DP (talking about dynamic programing here, you dirty minded bastard!)