I thought the Office Hours this year were borderline mean spirited. When a team is willing to come and be grilled in front of 1,700 people, it needs to be done with a lot of tact. If you rip someone apart in a public environment like that, it becomes about you, and not about the company that you're critiquing.
Sam and PG did a great job last year. They seemed to be able to hit the right balance of probing questions while being respectful of the people they were interviewing.
I thought the Office Hours this year were borderline mean spirited.
They didn't seem mean spirited to me; but they certainly did rip people apart (especially with the UI critique). At the end of that I left thinking "I'm glad they weren't doing this on Tarsnap, because they would probably have opened patio11's blog post and read the whole thing out in front of everybody".
The UI critique to me was crazy. They were interviewing a B2B company which wasn't using their website as a lead generator. Plus, given the space, the website wasn't really all that bad compared to anyone else. If they had been critiquing a B2C company, I would have agreed more, but really I thought the most insightful feedback was to make the API documentation more prominent.
Sam and PG did a great job last year. They seemed to be able to hit the right balance of probing questions while being respectful of the people they were interviewing.