Agreed. That's been exactly my experience on the few I did before I refused to them. The onus is all on you and your only interface is basically a flakey recruiter. There's no guarantee that any will every look at your submission.
As a candidate, it's an awful feeling to spend time only to get ghosted.
It's usually not malicious, just disorganization. From a hiring manager's perspective, it's too easy for things to slip through the cracks. When the volume of candidates increases, it's hard to keep track of all the zip file submissions + individual repos while making sure the eng team reviews them all.
This is one of the problems my team is hoping to solve through software. So far, we're seeing teams working with us getting back to 100% of candidates (often with personalized feedback), with median times as fast as 1 day. I hope we can reduce the frequency of terrible take-home experiences.
I didn't say or even imply that it was malicious. Regardless, it's disrespectful and unprofessional. I fail to see how adding yet another SaaS tool into the mix of the dozens that companies already use is somehow going to fix what is essentially a cultural problem. Applicant Tracking Systems have already been a thing for a long time now.
Problem with take homes is that you can spend hours and then they can spend seconds or minutes reviewing.
At least with traditional interviews the time spent is equal for both parties.