> In an effort to simulate their work environment, they bring in 50 job candidates at one time and pair them for 20 minutes. This is because work at Menlo is do

> In an effort to simulate their work environment, they bring in 50 job candidates at one time and pair them for 20 minutes. This is because work at Menlo is done in pairs, two people sharing a single computer, passing the mouse back and forth while brainstorming ideas. > What's being evaluated in this audition process is whether job candidates bring out all the best qualities in their partners and make them look as good as possible. This is crazy. So the candidates are to compete elbow-to-elbow to 50 other candidates and be evaluated on whether they "bring out all the best qualities in their partners". And that shoudl simulate work environment at Menlo? And that should somehow be better that a traditional interview? I don't know what these guys think about themselves. Next one is no better: > Now, every final candidate that makes it that far works for the company for three to eight weeks on a contract basis, doing real tasks alongside the people they would actually be working with if they had the job. > To keep it simple, Automattic pays a standard $25 an hour, whether the candidate was hoping to be an engineer or the chief financial officer. So you do normal inteviews an then get an 8-week-contract for $25 an hour and THEN they maybe decide you're worthy? I'm based in Germany, a senior-level Java dev freelancer gets somewhere between $80-100 an hour. This means a loss of say $60/h for 8 weeks * 5 days * 8 hours which is around $20k. How can it be worth it?