Why would anyone believe that Automatic is such a great place to work if they value the time of their candidates so little? If they think it's fine to throw an extra 10 hours/week of work at candidates for little to no pay, how will they treat you once you're salaried?
They may think that this is the one true hiring system, but it's seriously weird.
Other companies have figured out how to hire people without this nonsense. Imagine if this was the standard in the industry. Some company would have the brilliant idea of hiring people without a 2 month trial period and write a breathless blog post about how they're so cool that they hire people based on interviews alone!
HN would go nuts over this forward thinking company that treats its candidates so much better.