I don't expect interviews. But I also don't want to spend 20 hours working before getting a "Unfortunately we've decided not to move forward" message.

As a thumb rule, I'm happy to put 4x more effort than the company. If they interview me for 1 hour, I spend 4 hours doing the take-home. Anything more feels like exploitation.

Well, they said they receive a lot of applications so they are in the position of setting the rules.

You are absolutely right into setting your own rules as well, those haven't overlapped.

As a general rule of thumb, random series A startups are in much lower demand for top-tier talent than top-tier talent is in demand for these companies. That would mean that the good engineers should set the rules of engagement, and that any startup that thinks they set the rules is attracting worse talent.

Well, unless Qdrant writes a post complaining about the quality of their applicants, I don't see where the issue is.

Also, not all companies try to maximize for "top tier developer", it seems they are maximizing for "top motivated developer", which does not seem stupid either.

Maybe they maximize for "top gullible young inexperienced person that will fall for that"?

It sounds like they are instead maximizing for "free integrations," which seems to be a fine way to get neither free integrations nor high-quality candidates.

Thanks. We will reveal our hiring strategy in more details soon.

The general rule of thumb is that companies are free to decide what they look for and how to find it and so are candidates.

This is an open source database company, obviously the best candidates are contributors to the project first.

Picky ivy league graduate that farms leetcode and system design question is very very low in the ranking of what such companies should look for.

All the ivy league graduate leetcode farmers I know are actually the ones who would do the grunt work of developing database integrations for free if they believed a decent salary at a prestigious job might be waiting over the hill.

The people I have met with the lowest tolerance for this stuff are the ones who actually produce the most impactful work. Partly because they don't do work that has no impact on their lives.

Edit: Obviously, they can do whatever they want, but that doesn't mean that it's a good sign from outside.

"We receive a lot of applications" can be also a marketing speech and it could also mean they are flooded by spam requests from all over the world they can't filter out.

Then this job is not for you, simple as. Sounds like a win-win.

Don't be ridiculous.

HR gets paid to talk to candidates. I don't get paid to apply. The initial screening call is what allows a company to gauge the relevancy of a candidate. Let him speak about some of the topics and see how in-depth they go. Either the HR is familiar enough with the tech to understand proficiency (think a student listening to a maths professor) or they let a TL have a short conversation. I've overheard unqualified HR do their jobs badly, too; They laughed at picking them by looks and "feels". But, that's out of scope here.

A large company has millions to invest in different areas. Intrinsically, it has a much larger margin of error. You accidentally overprovisioned some resources and cost the company 10k? Tis but a scratch. You POC some personal project and accidentally get billed 10k? That is not the same.

A company can spend money on hiring. It is expected to. A private person can't spend money on applying to jobs. It isn't expected.

It's interesting to see how the shift goes from the self to the company [and to the country]. A little bit of communist propaganda goes a long way, eh, comrade NPC?

> NPC

When someone calls others "npc", I understand that they are complete psychopaths that are somehow capable of thinking that the other people don't live the full human experience as they do.

Companies not paying for their applicant's time is communist now?