All of your replies here suffer from the same logical flaw and many people have pointed it out. Fog Creek has a policy of not divulging their reasons for denyin

All of your replies here suffer from the same logical flaw and many people have pointed it out. Fog Creek has a policy of not divulging their reasons for denying an applicant a certain position. Joel has given his arguments about why that is sound, so I will not bother to repeat them. You keep assuming that Fog Creek should know that it would be safe to make an exception in your case and getting offended that they choose not to. The fact is you should not be an exception. To make this as clear as possible, suppose you were trying to get pain killers without a prescription. No matter how obvious it is you're not a junkie and are in pain, it would not be appropriate for the pharmacy to sell you the medicine based on their subjective judgment. It may not matter in this instance, but it would undermine the whole system. The reason why I respond is because it has been frustrating for me to read your replies on this thread because this gap in reasoning has made all of your comments sound very personal. Anybody can sympathize with the frustration around being denied a job, but your story says nothing about Joel's management approach.