Hey fellow failed applicant!

I had a very similar experience, except I got the automated email after two months, not three — you sound like a stronger candidate, so maybe that's why I got rejected sooner, which'd be fair enough. Still, spending about a week's worth of evenings between the suggested materials, reflecting, writing, and editing 15 pages for one job application and having zero human interaction feels uniquely degrading.

I disagree with your point about that being fine. I think it's not good enough to replicate the bare minimum of what the rest of the industry does while asking for so much more from candidates.

A standard custom, well researched cover letter takes an order of magnitude less effort. When it's cookie cutter rejected by someone spending a few seconds on the CV, it's at least understandable: the effort they'd spend writing a rejection (or replying back) is higher than the amount of effort they spent evaluating the application.

With Oxide however, Brian made a point that they "definitely read everyone's materials" [1]. Which means reading at the very least five pages per candidate. If that's still the case, having an actual human on the other side of the rejection would add a very small amount of time to the whole process, but the company decided to do the absolute least possible. It's a choice, and I think this choice goes against their own principle of decency:

"We treat others with dignity, be they colleague, customer, community or competitor."

I wish Oxide best of luck. They have lots of very smart, very driven people that I'd love to work with, and I love what they are doing. Hope this feedback helps them get better.

[1]: https://youtu.be/wN8lcIUKZAU?t=1400

P.S. Don't you dare, dear reader, consider the emdash above an LLM smell.