2. Then they do the take home challenge, or you hire another candidate.

This is not kindergarden anymore. We're taling adult stuff here. If the manager is not able to interview, analyse and understand who is in front of him, then it is time to change job.

Iff the candidates has personal work to show then it is considered a plus, but it is not madnatory.

3. No, normal wage and is expected of them.

A hired person is supposed to fill a role and not a double or more roles just because the manager is not able to subdivides tasks, roles etc. I don't expect engineer or technical roles to do manager job.

4. That’s not manager work. It’s a tech talk, it needs to be with the tech people. It’s really not that weird to have the team decide who they want to join their team

It might work in your culture.

in my culture, who is going to take a manager role _manages_ technical people _and_ as such he _must_ know the technical stuff to a certain degrees otherwise the job is not for him. Here managers don't download their responsibilities to engineers they manage.

At the same time, engineers are not supposed to judge or like or dislike their coworkers. Working in a team is a prerequisite that they have to accept, either you like it or not. Full stop. There is no space for interpretation or for leisure. They have tasks and they finish their tasks. Full stop.