I withdrew from the interview process midway through once it became clear that Noodle, contrary to its innovative and woke airs, is a standard-issue Corporate Basket Case beset by inflexibility and incompetents up and down the ladder. If you want to see why employers are struggling to hire people these days, read on. Tl;dr it's because they *don't know how to hire people.* They know how to waste people's time and pretend like they're searching for candidates. But actually staffing an organization with competent people? Nope. You got the wrong number, pal. The tip-off that Noodle is lost in space (and probably not coming back) came in the form of a discombobulated and creepily complimentary talent rep email informing me that I'd made it to the final round and needed to complete *four* more interviews to reach the offer stage. Now, I'd already done two interviews (including with the hiring manager) and taken an editorial assessment, so I'm seeing a Breadcrumbing Alert. If you've ever vied for an editorial job before, you know what this about: The hiring manager, for all their Wharton-imbued know-how, cannot for the life of themselves own a decision and therefore must spread the responsibility around to a Whitman's Sampler of employees, most of whom have no more ability to assess your fitness for an editing role than your local barber. In fact, one of the people they wanted me to talk to would have been someone I'd be *supervising* -- so why on earth would they be given a vote on my candidacy? Let it also be known that in my very first conversation with Noodle, I asked what the process would look like. This should be a standard question every candidate asks, lest you get sucked into a never-ending vortex of interviews and corporate indecision. And lo and behold, I was told that there would be "1 or 2" interviews after the editorial assessment, not 4. So, either Noodle sucks at internal communication, or they're just making it up as they go along because they don't know what they're looking for. Or, you know, both could be true! I was later told, in the condescending tones of a hotel manager who can't find your reservation, that 4 interviews were SOP -- yet no one could credibly explain why front-line interviewers were unaware of this supposedly boilerplate procedure. "I do apologize." Yeah, right. To make matters worse, the talent representative handling my candidacy lost my email and let about 8 days lapse before re-establishing contact. Too much work to send a follow-up email to me one or two days after you'd touched base? Guess not. Eight is the magic number here. At that point, I was on vacation. Because of their unforced error, the process suffered a month-long delay. By the time I returned, my appetite for dealing with these people was just about gone. I talked to the hiring manager once more to make plain that Noodle's miscommunications and own-goals constituted forfeiture of their demand that I undergo four more interviews. I explained that I had picked up additional freelance work in the interim, and I even shared with them links to recent media highlighting the latest trends in hiring -- including a now-famous example of a candidate who withdrew from an onerous hiring process, posted about it on LinkedIn, and became a viral sensation, drawing much-needed attention to the abuse candidates suffer as companies haplessly stumble over themselves to find decent people. I gave the hiring manager the option to just solve the problem on the spot by giving me the job. But these guys have imbibed so much Kool-Aid: Pink Unicorn Flavor, they would rather steer the ship onto the rocks than make a straightforward, logical decision that benefits everyone. My experience with Noodle, like with so many organizations out there that I've encountered in my travels, leaves me asking a simple question: Where are the freakin' grownups in these companies? This Noodle is severely undercooked. Avoid, avoid, avoid.