In my experience the lack of communication is caused by a combination of workload and lack of experience. A lot of the larger tech companies have an assembly line approach to recruiting, with teams of coordinators, sourcers, and recruiters each handling a portion of the process.

These teams tend to grow fast and hire of a lot of junior people - that lack of experience combined with pressure and a huge volume of interviews(at a fast growing firm) results in a lot of inconsistent communication. When a sourcer/recruiter is dealing with 5-10 interviews a day with 80% of them not making the cut, sometimes they make the decision to prioritize building pipeline over closing the loop properly with people. And sometimes people just have poor time management abilities and let things get lost in the shuffle.

I think it's because they don't want to be in the position of making an offer to someone they explicitly rejected when the preferred candidate didn't work out.

Hmm, in my case at least with a bunch of companies, they had laid out the interview process (say, 3 or 4 steps) and they stopped communicating after the 2nd or 3rd step (with more to come) so I don't think they had me as a secondary alternative, I don't know why they can't just say "Sorry, you are not the right fit for us" and _then_ stop communicating for the legal / time waste reasons the article gives.

That does seem a bit rude.