Passionate hackers love to solve technical challenges, sure, but it does feel weird that he posted this open-ended call to action. I'm not saying they must be paid, as per the free work detractors, but even in FOSS you get credited and on Stack Overflow you receive karma.
> did anybody expect Hotz to sit down and write search from scratch in complete isolation?
Based on his reputation, people sure act like he is some sort of supercoder polymath who is able to pick up on any stack.
Ask me to prototype something that I would use in the actual job. Don't ask me random algo question. Don't ask me why I am so excited to work for your stupid company that I hadn't even heard of before applying
I find it very unlikely that search, of all features, has problems where UI development is remotely relevant, let alone the solution. UI-wise, search consists of firing dumb requests to the backend and just update the UI with the results.
If he was merely asking for help it would be less controversial.
He made an job offer while acknowledging that he doesn't know if he is allowed to do that and he stated that the interview for it is to do free labor for him.