To be fair, a clean no is a little easier when people haven't invested three weeks of their lives into learning and developing solutions to problems you've given them.

I have a feeling this worked out for all parties because who knows how they would have chosen hires otherwise? In this way, as the article states, they got literally the cream of the crop as basically elected by the crop. That's pretty sweet. And in return, for the crops contributions, they got some free advertisement for their work by being a part of the groups, learning new languages, solutions, and theories.

Had their interview process been less intense then I believe a clean no would certainly have been appropriate.

My one buddy, this is anecdotal of course, has a biology (or some sort of major like that) B.S. and can't get a job at all. I remember him telling me one time that after sending out so many questionnaires and e-mails and making so many phone calls that very often people wouldn't even reply. He told me that one time he got a response that said "We're sorry but we're considering other people" and he actually responded "Thank you so much for the closure."

In that case, it might seem that you owe people at least the clean no!