[a_small_island]

Fair enough. I respect your point of view. I hope you engrain this mentality in your team for future hires and/or when they start their own companies. It's a solid perspective, sorry for being critical.

How do you deal with feedback for the candidate? Are there legal concerns for disclosing too much?

[ntalbott]

I hope it has a lasting impact beyond Spreedly, too. The impact of founding a company shouldn't just be on customers; if we act in an upright manner, hopefully employees, vendors, partners, the families of all of the above, and a cascade of future endeavors will be positively improved.

RE feedback, we try to give it and make it meaningful, so for instance the pre-defined, objective grading criteria we use for work samples lends itself well to us being able to highlight why someone isn't a good match.

There may be a slight possibility that giving clear feedback opens us up to some sort of liability, but (a) a respectful process ends up documenting itself really well as a side effect (how else are you going to keep up with all the details?), (b) a respectful process hopefully leaves even candidates who weren't a fit feeling like they got a fair shot and thus not inclined to come after us for a perceived slight, (c) I think the fear around giving feedback is more about how uncomfortable it makes us feel vs. an actual legal risk, and (d) I hate not getting feedback when I fail and as a founder and executive I have the clout to take some risk and do what's right.