I've never heard of this organisation, and maybe it's because I don't work in tech but I don't really understand why they need to exist. But in any case, I'm entirely unsurprised to see the customer response to these changes. It comes off as incredibly predatory - AB testing the perfect, most "frictionless" experience which is obviously going to lead people to signing up without understanding they're committing to hundreds of dollars of future expenses. Gross.
There are many dark patterns out there but what they've described and the UI screenshots don't scream all that predatory to me. It looks like a good faith effort that went awry. They're certainly handling it well afterward.
I could have made the same mistake. Their customers are highly technical engineers applying to FAANGs and other top companies, I'd personally expect a greater understanding of terms and payment details from that cohort.
>Their customers are highly technical engineers applying to FAANGs and other top companies
They don't, as far as I can tell, vet their customers. They deliberately cast as wide a net as possible, so it was entirely foreseeable they were going to hook some less sophisticated users.
Exactly - this is a HUGE common problem at startups, describing their ideal customer who doesn't really exist and completely ignoring their actual customer base and what it is made up of.
The vast majority of the people signing up are going to be wannabe engineers - what percentage are actually highly technical needs to be determined.
Right, the issue is that they're going to hook people who are aspirationally looking to work at a FAANG and will not by any stretch of the imagination pass their interviewing process. They picked Pay Later because they figured they could pay for it later if they got the job, or given the funnel hacking discussed in the post, they never considered that they would have to pay for it later even if they didn't get the job.
This is a lower scale and lower cost version of the for profit bootcamps and IT schools. Yes, if you go in with the tools you need to succeed, you will probably gain something and get a good start at a FAANG or similar. The programs cannot work miracles and have a vested interest in casting as wide a net as possible even though that's a disservice to their customers. This service figured out they need to reign in that net to confirm people can actually pay their cost.
I wouldn’t describe most of the interviewing body in software as “highly technical” that’s why there is such an issue of finding qualified talent. I’d personally bet a good deal of people would not and did not understand what they were getting themselves into.
Tech has become popular because of the salaries, the amount of people interviewing has heavily increased, but the talent levels are quite diluted. Especially because any engineer worth their salt is off the market in under a month right now, if not shorter.
It shouldn't need to exist but unfortunately interviewing is still a separate skill that engineers need to learn.
People can get so caught up in the numbers on a dashboard or AB test that they forget that there's a human on the other end that just got duped into a 4 figure expense. Gross indeed!
