The application has a series of short essay questions that are reprised somewhat in the interview itself. The interview takes place on Slack. I found this fairly stressful only because I couldn't assess how I was doing. The rationale behind having a Slack interview is respectable, since that is the way the company operates. The next step in the process would have been a technical challenge followed by a paid trial

Applied by email, heard back after few weeks, had an text chat interview in a private Slack channel, got an exercise, had a couple of more chats about my exercise. Got a rejection email with good feedback. The whole process maybe took a month. Good things: I liked being interviewd in chat, I'm more comfortable typing than speacking face to face. I learned how WordPress plugin development works. I got reminded about commitment and attention to details. What could be better? I think they were expecting too much from me. I'm a developer with a full time job, and fixing all the issues in a broken WordPress plugin during my free time wasn't easy. If I were a plugin developer or were I even applying for that role, it would be fine but for someone without that experience it's a lot to expect. I envy those who can pass that test, but for the rest of us it's easier to just skip Automattic. As others mentioned, it's a long process. Some days or weeks passed between the time I sent my assignment and the interviewer came back to me. I get it, they are busy like any other company, but it takes too much stress for applicants to wait for such a long time. My advice is get hands on experience on WordPress and its plugin development before applying.