I'd much rather receive the shorter response without criticism. If I really want the job and am disappointed in the decision, I'd probably send a follow up e-mail and explicitly ask for feedback and what I could improve to work with the company. If I've got several opportunities and one of them doesn't think it'll be a fit, I don't need or want a paragraph explaining why I'm deficient.
Having been on the other side of the hiring coin the majority of my career, when a fit is bad it's usually just that -- the candidate isn't incompetent or a bad person it's just not quite what our particular company is looking for. There's no useful or relevant "advice" to give to the candidate other than explaining in great deal the idiosyncrasies of our team culture and hiring process... this isn't useful. It's not like we have the secret recipe to what makes for awesome programmers and have license to dispense that upon all who fail our review.
Having been on the other side of the hiring coin the majority of my career, when a fit is bad it's usually just that -- the candidate isn't incompetent or a bad person it's just not quite what our particular company is looking for. There's no useful or relevant "advice" to give to the candidate other than explaining in great deal the idiosyncrasies of our team culture and hiring process... this isn't useful. It's not like we have the secret recipe to what makes for awesome programmers and have license to dispense that upon all who fail our review.