Yeah I've seen this a lot and while I understand the whole "hire slow, fire fast" mentality, there's a point where you've got to bite the bullet and take a chance.
I’d argue theyre just running a marketing campaign, post an advert about software engineer, at a company offering software engineering products, id like to see how many felt for it and introduced the product at their companies, how better you can target your primary target?
The first #3 engineer set up the job ad script too, and none of the other 17 people could figure out how to increment the integer. It's hard to find good help these days!
I was always curious what was going on there. I definitely have a negative impression of them already based on their recurring job ads for the elusive 3rd engineer.