The other thing is, how well researched do you want to be? When I'm learning something new, I usually want to gain a deep understanding and really get to the ins and outs of it.
So when figuring out (for example) how to do X in language Y, I'm not very likely to stop at the first SO answer and call it done, because very often there's more to it (e.g. tradeoffs in performance, compatibility, composability, pitfalls & caveats, etc.). But the difference it makes in time taken can be massive. Maybe finding that first SO answer takes a minute, but gaining a deep understanding can take a few hours of reading and experimenting.
This ends up feeling weird for these take home assignments if you're using a new stack. My normal mode of operation is to gain deep understanding (and people generally consider me insightful, which I attribute to that pursuit of understanding), but this may look bad to someone who already knows the stack and/or thinks that you should just cope & paste.
So when figuring out (for example) how to do X in language Y, I'm not very likely to stop at the first SO answer and call it done, because very often there's more to it (e.g. tradeoffs in performance, compatibility, composability, pitfalls & caveats, etc.). But the difference it makes in time taken can be massive. Maybe finding that first SO answer takes a minute, but gaining a deep understanding can take a few hours of reading and experimenting.
This ends up feeling weird for these take home assignments if you're using a new stack. My normal mode of operation is to gain deep understanding (and people generally consider me insightful, which I attribute to that pursuit of understanding), but this may look bad to someone who already knows the stack and/or thinks that you should just cope & paste.