That's a bit funny to me, because the level of absurdity you get from reading something like that is insane, I have been using vim on a daily bases for more than 5 years now.
One day thought about contributing to vim because was silly enough to believe that the tool shouldn't be that many lines of code, something doable, like in couple thousands, then found out its way way more than that and closer to half a mill, couldn't even dream of understanding anything, not close to be fluent enough to find RCEs.
My experience was worse than just frustrating verification - it cost me money twice.
I submitted my government-issued ID and bank statements multiple times. Each time rejected, no specific explanation why. After several rounds I gave up, assuming my developer account would at least stay dormant until I felt like trying again.
It didn't. Google deleted the account entirely. No warning, no refund of the €25 registration fee or whatever it costed. When I eventually wanted to publish again, I had to create a new account and pay again. The second time around they accepted my driving license - the same type of document category they had rejected before.
So the real cost of a bad verification experience isn't just time. If you give up and walk away, you lose your fee and start from zero. That's the part that stung, at least for me.