If it increased the number of overall respondents as well as the number of respondents who were above a certain bar (passed a phone screen), then even if it cre

If it increased the number of overall respondents as well as the number of respondents who were above a certain bar (passed a phone screen), then even if it created other false negatives, it still seems to have helped. Good developers don't just go around submitting their resumes to every job in existence, and not filtering out false negatives was insufficient in and of itself to produce a good applicant pool. If doing something that produces false negatives (which, yes, are undesirable) nevertheless convinces enough developers to consider your company who never would have considered it otherwise, then it seems like the advantages have outweighed the disadvantages. Obviously, an even better scenario would be to produce the same level of developer interest without also producing any false negatives. Perhaps by investing sufficient resources in networking or in making his company famous to other developers, he could accomplish this. This would still be a possibility to explore in the future. But just because his tactic has not produced the best possible outcome does not mean it has not produced a positive one.