This reads as an indictment of the entire hiring culture of the tech industry, which it is. Hiring is one of the most important things any company ever does. It's also one of the biggest opportunities to attain a competitive advantage. And it's one of the most difficult tasks that any developer will ever participate in. And yet, consistently there is a lack of seriousness when it comes to hiring, and a reliance on bad, counterproductive cargo cult practices. It's not just embarrassing for this industry it has a big impact on the quality of life of developers and the quality of developer talent at companies. If you want to hire good people you need to put a lot of resources into it. And that means you can't just hand off these sorts of important tasks to interns who don't know what they're talking about. Hiring, even at the phone screen level, is not like comcast customer service, and any company that treats it that way is setting themselves up for failure.