Was in the same boat at my previous company, we used Mattermost because of privacy concerns with Slack. Eventually moved to Slack because the mobile options were not great on MMost and Slack was more polished.
A partner is involved in every Pentagram engagement though. Pentagram is not really like a huge Landor-esque firm, it's basically a series of small design consultancies each led by a partner that are loosely tied together. So anything that Pentagram is gonna do, at least one of the partners has to get behind it.
In some ways I guess that makes it very loosely like a VC fund.
I highly doubt that it's racial discrimination, but I'm not going to back that sentiment with 100% certainty, because you never know. However, the whole concept of a "coding bootcamp", literally they're bootcamps that can be mentally exhausting. They're going to try to expose you to an intense array of information in a short period of time, from the basics (HTML/CSS, JS) to intermediate/advanced subjects/languages (Ruby, Python, PHP, etc.). So it's not farfetched for them to reject applicants who would struggle to keep up if they don't know the basics.
And another thing, they're not trying to teach CS. CS is a discipline all its own. Code bootcamps focus on web development, so you can have the practical knowledge and skill for entry level web development positions.
As per a comment below, designers/people "don't know what IRC is." I agree with you (and anyone working in web should understand its technologies -- past and present), but that's an argument.
I was discussing the same topic with my coworkers when we heard the news. Yahoo's YUI could be the company's starting point at developing strong products and boosting Yahoo's relevance as a brand. It's a great library.
There really isn't a need to do it in the manner that was suggested. If a frontend developer wanted to provide a copy with comments, it's better to host it on github & comment the link in the css file.
Boy, I mentioned Slack a lot.