They are looking for someone who already has lots of ideas of how they should run a software team/project instead od someone to fit into their process. Thought that was kinda weird especially for the lowest entry level position.

I applied online and very quickly received a lengthy questionnaire, which I filled out the next day even though it took me an unreasonable amount of time considering I hadn't even spoken with an employee at that point. After about 3 weeks they finally called for the next step of the interview. After such a long time I already had several offers on the table and was planning on cancelling, but I figured why not, I may as well use the interview practice. What followed was one of the least attractive/competitive interviews I have ever done. I got the sense that they thought they were gods because they have jobs and everyone must kneel before them and beg for employment. In this competitive environment for software developers, we don't need to take crap like that, but as I said I did it for practice and to see what the company was about. Needless to say I will not be applying here again. Let me explain: We scheduled a 1-hour phone interview, even though I live in Ann Arbor and would have happily (and preferably) come on-site for an interview. Before the interview, and before I had ever spoken with an AO employee, they sent me a document describing the work environment. I would compare it to a set of preconditions that are designed to filter out people who do not agree with their methods. I strongly disagreed with most of the items, but again I did the interview anyways and lied about my agreement just to see how far I could get (I imagine lots of people are doing the same thing just to get an offer even though they would turn it down). Their work environment description contained such items as: * Paired programming (yuck, I'm an industry professional, not a student!) * Hourly pay, not salary * "Average" 40-45 hours per week. Are you serious? * Noisy environment and they discourage headphones (which would make me productive in a noisy environment) * Actively invest your own time attending conferences and workshops, makes it sound like unpaid work. * Every 40 days you have to write a blog post for their corporate spin machine (would this be unpaid also?) Anyways, I outwardly agreed to all these items even though I actually disagree with them, but it seems that's the homogeneous attitude they're cultivating at AO. Then came the phone interview. I spoke with two engineers over the phone where they quizzed me on code and database topics, and had me write code on a certain website that allowed them to see what I was typing as I was doing it. That part was all straightforward and I kind of liked the exercise. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I didn't get to the next phase of the interview because most of my experience is with C/C++ and they want C# and MacOS gurus. But at the end I was left thinking what kind of developers do they have working there, that all acquiesce to these wholly uncompetitive terms (or who will do/say anything to get a job)? I guess when you're hiring students straight out of college they don't know any better, but I have been working already 5 years and I know that the grass is greener elsewhere.