[dragonwriter]

> What: engineering manager writes me e-mail that goes like: “we found your open-source project and want to offer you a job”

If you want to offer a job, offer a job.

They seem to have confused “job” with “hazing ritual after which you might be offered a job”, which is...less attractive.

I get the need to filter an excess of applicants who come to you cold or in response to an advertised opening, but if you are reaching out to someone, whatever motivated you to reach out ought to substitute for several layers of filtering. If you are reaching out for demonstrated, job-relevant coding acheivement, leetcode style exercises are not merely wasteful and insulting, but also a sign to the prospect that your management is mindlessly walking through checklists rather than thinking through their actions.

Do you want to work in an environment where that's how things are run? Especially a startup, which has instability and other issues that people accept to avoid that kind of bigco blind bureaucracy?