Yeah, I thought about applying.

Investing 6 hours into applying for a position should warrant a response beyond 'we are going to pass'

It's so disrespectful to not give feedback to people you reject, companies that do it should be shunned.

Have some respect, be human.

Then the human that is rejected files a lawsuit.

Humans doing human things

On my last job search, I got to a few final rounds. In two cases, companies offered me a 15 minute "debrief" with the hiring manager, which I found invaluable - both gave sincerely good advice, and also helped the "what am I doing wrong?" with a "you were hireable as-is. but someone was moreso."

But generally, the more demands you put on a first round, the less likely I am to apply. I've seen companies asking for 8-10 multi-paragraph each long form answers to even get to a hiring screen. For one recent application, this was one of the questions, of eight: "Describe a time when you had to make a tradeoff in roadmap items. Describe each option and their merits, and the decision-making criteria you used. Describe what stakeholders you spoke with and how their input influenced you. Describe how you communicated this with the team, and customers. Be specific about all points and clear on the exact role you played in this process."

People can say "well, it's a good screen because if you won't put effort into that, will you put effort into your work", but if your argument is that you need to do such things because you get 500-1,000+ applicants per position, you're going to have a hard job convincing me that a human reads every one of those, and not just the subset that are not automatically routed to the trash by your ATS and/or AI.

So my end retort to that is "well, it's a good marker of the level of respect I can be expect to be treated with as an employee".