This solves a little mystery for me. A few months ago, my son called up and said that he had received a breezy email invitation that was obviously for some unknown group of people to come to an event that involved free pizza, socializing, and the presence of mystery man "John no-last-name" who would give an interesting educational presentation. Son had already jumped through about 4 separate hoops in the job application process for this company by then (online technical skills test, phone interviews, etc.) He thought it was very odd and wanted my opinion. I thought it was very odd, too. A little googling on my part found out that it was a legitimate company and that "John" was some sort of mid-level manager. So I told him to go if he wanted and to try not to drop the pizza on his shirt. And not to give them any money if it turned out to be a MLM or a strange scam.
Still think it's an odd way to interview programmers, but now I understand it's a New Thing amongst the Human Resources folks. The MMM forum is such an educational place!
The rest of the story is that Son went, must have vaguely passed the pizza-party test because in the next week or so, he had to jump through 2 more hoops (face to face interviews this time, I think). After 7 different hoop/contacts, they told him they were hiring someone else. He was Not Pleased with the time he had spent on that company. It also was an lot of effort on the company's part if they do that for every position.
