What is so horrifying? He's hiring startup developers who need self-direction.
Look like his rationale is if you can't speak high level and you can't resist over-engineering solutions; it isn't going to work out. That saves everyone time and sounds reasonable to me.
I qualified that by "over and over again" and "first half of first page". If you're switching from nothing but bigcorps to startups, you need to give me something on the resume to make me think that you can adapt to the cultural change.
it also depends on the companies. where i am now, big corporations work their engineers to exhaustion and teach them a very competitive attitude. that's not something i want in my small company. i need cooperation and mutual support, where developers back each other up and not try to gain favors with their manager at the expense of their teammates.
Look like his rationale is if you can't speak high level and you can't resist over-engineering solutions; it isn't going to work out. That saves everyone time and sounds reasonable to me.