I'm really glad that the old process worked so well for you. When it worked, it was pretty great. We are losing something with this pivot. The problem is that the old process did not work for far more people than it did. For every wonderful experience with a TM there were 10+ engineers who we screened out. That’s why we made this change.
I think it probably was the point, but I'm guessing the primary issue with it was that it turned out to be harder to profit with that strategy.
To use a rough biological analogy, I think it's generally a lot easier to have a big, rapidly growing company if you take an r-selection rather than a K-selection approach.