To clarify - m00dy did get a response from our recruitment manager ~9 business days after submitting his application. What I acknowledged is that we could have done better is in responding immediately to the submission of his solution, instead of simply reporting the result 9 business days later.
And I responded to you 3 weeks after you sent in your solution, because it took me that long to have a chance to your solution. I wasn't actually aware of the HN posting at the time.
In any event, given all the issues raised here, I'm changing our recruitment process (I've added a comment below). I hope this addresses concerns.
I'm not trying to 'win' an argument here, I'm trying ensure BaseCase has a reasonable process that provides the outcomes I need while being transparent to participants. I therefore am trying to get a fair understanding of you and other's criticisms of the BaseCase recruitment process and making amendments that seem reasonable.
It took you NINE DAYS to review something that takes a minute to review. Do you not see how that may be an issue?
It took you TWENTY ONE DAYS to review my challenge. Granted, it wasn't 5 weeks, but that's immaterial. A decent response would be. "Hey we got your challenge" - on the next business day. If it takes you more than another 2 days to review it, say "Hey, we are having some trouble reviewing your application for reason X".
I appreciate your effort, but you're not being transparent at all. Transparency goes further than "here is what we do, deal with it".
And as I already said, you're handing out challenges that appear to be silly skills tests, expecting people to write "good production code".
The only reason I ever did your challenge was because I somehow enjoy doing challenges for no reason other than being challenged.