This is advice to other companies not just Zapier. How can one be excited to work for a company the know nothing about? Maybe for a company like Google, but even then, you still have no idea what you're getting into. Until there's an offer, there's nothing to get excited about. This kind of expectation is ridiculous on the part of the company.

Also, what company would not want the biggest pool of candidates to hire from? That's just bad practice. I'm sure it happens because of the proliferation of the "shortage of good engineers" myth. If you make your applicants jump through hoops, just to apply, of course there'll be a shortage for your company.

This is just to apply, where chances are probably greater than 90% that you won't hear anything back. It doesn't matter if the company responds to every application because most companies don't and that's a pretty normal statistic when applying to places. Perhaps they're just looking for truly desperate candidates that are willing to jump through all the hoops on the off-chance that they might get a response. Then they say that they don't want people who are applying for just any job. That's just ridiculous because that's exactly what they're getting. Instead of weeding them out (and why would you?) you're targeting the exact group you're trying to weed out. Stupid.