I've heard this called the "California No," in both a personal and professional setting. Apparently it's extremely common in Hollywood and that's where the term came from. I've definitely noticed as I socialize in California that people avoid perceived confrontation more here, so maybe there's something to it. A new one I've noticed recently is what I call the "read receipt no," where someone will read a message, send a read receipt, then not reply to say no.

If someone does it to me I tend to lose some respect, but that's possibly because I'm an outsider. Maybe Californians expect that but I usually hope for the respect of a direct no. (Shrug.)

I've seen this as a strategy for H1B fraud, months after accepting applications everyone good is probably employed somewhere, so suddenly we've recently discovered there are no qualified local applicants for the job position H1B stamped approved.

If you want to make the HR person extremely angry then feign interest and you've ruined their whole H1B process. Its kinda funny to do. Sometimes they'll slam the phone down or sound like they're about to cry. If they're made of sterner stuff you'll get requirements like an in person interview at 4am or an interview within the hour in person (for a job 100 miles away).

Amazon does this all the time. I can't count on two hands the number of times I've seen them do this.

Lot of New York companies do this one.

Yep. That is where it was.