[DethNinja]

So was the company the best in their field? I sometimes see small / badly managed companies pull such interview processes and it is ridiculous. You would expect they would hire 100x engineers with these tasks but I wonder what they are exactly looking for.

[ornornor]

My theory is that they’re looking for compliant, docile employees who won’t have the courage or the liberty to refuse unpaid overtime demands or complain about shitty stressful work conditions.

By having such an abuse and convoluted requirement for applying, you’re selecting for people in this situation. Then all you have to do is hire the best on the technical solution and you’ve got one more employee you can abuse in your company :)

[jmholla]

No. They were just starting out trying to sell their open source product. In fact, I had interviewed with a different company solving the same problem whose tech I thought was way more impressive.