When I did their process a few years ago, there was a fairly challenging online quiz that could obviously be gamed by (say) having a more knowledgeable friend looking over your shoulder and giving you answers. If your score was above X, you were invited for a live (in person or video) interview. That one would have been harder to game. If you didn't score high in enough areas, they told you what areas to brush up on and I think there was a 1 month wait before you could try again. So you had to be pretty strong to get through this phase (I got through).
It sounds to me like they must have since lowered the bar for getting through the process, so weaker candidates now get through; and at the same time, it sounds from other comments that they must have stopped having the interviews done by real engineers (which was expensive). So it sounds like they have become just another recruiting agency. That is disappointing. My initial experience with them was great. I do feel slimed by something that happened later but will see if I can talk to Ammon about that.
I agree that the public profile thing was outrageous. I put it off to the intoxicating effect that money has on business people, that makes them do idiotic things if they think that might get them more of it. We programmers get similarly intoxicated by (say) access to fast enough computers, so I didn't stay angry after the error was fixed.
It sounds to me like they must have since lowered the bar for getting through the process, so weaker candidates now get through; and at the same time, it sounds from other comments that they must have stopped having the interviews done by real engineers (which was expensive). So it sounds like they have become just another recruiting agency. That is disappointing. My initial experience with them was great. I do feel slimed by something that happened later but will see if I can talk to Ammon about that.
I agree that the public profile thing was outrageous. I put it off to the intoxicating effect that money has on business people, that makes them do idiotic things if they think that might get them more of it. We programmers get similarly intoxicated by (say) access to fast enough computers, so I didn't stay angry after the error was fixed.