[TulliusCicero]

> Why would any company engage with 1000 candidates and request these samples from them with no expectation of reading them?

Because there's little downside to do doing so. And of course they would read some of them, they do need to hire someone, but they might not read all.

> I don’t understand this desire to assume the absolute worst, even when it’s illogical for the company to do so.

It's not necessarily illogical. They can just blast out "give us samples" to a large number of people, and then filter out most of them based on whatever they feel like later on.

It also means that later on they can brag about they're so elite that "they only hire 0.1% of the people they interview", if the company culture bends that way.

[bcantrill]

The company culture does not bend that way at all. To the contrary, as I have said repeatedly (and other Oxide folks have said), it has been really difficult to turn away folks who could plausibly succeed at Oxide.