On the one hand, TFA is obviously put off by both the tech stack and the hiring procedure. This suggests to me the possibility of a poor cultural fit, so the ou

On the one hand, TFA is obviously put off by both the tech stack and the hiring procedure. This suggests to me the possibility of a poor cultural fit, so the outcome is probably for the best. On the other hand, it is reasonable to have a backup plan for situations where someone is adament about not working on your proprietary code for free. Any legal issues aside, as someone familiar with the existing code base, a lead should be able to conceive of a contrived scenario that closely maps to work that will be done on a day to day basis. While I am personally an advocate for contributing to open source projects as part of a company's cultural, that is not something that all companies are okay with, or that all leads see as valuable. Without judging one way or another, this is another factor that should be considered for cultural fit.