11–20 of 28 posts
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No, the way it worked for me was that I had a short non-technical chat with an internal recruiter and then we went straight to an onsite interview.
That sounds exactly like square one in the interview process...
I'm the third person to finish all the current Stockfighter levels. (I also coded a MineCraft visualizer, a physical hardware stock trading device with an ESP8622 plus cardboard and duct tape, and helped organize PVP games.) I had fun. When I first finished, the challenges had just launched and the Stockfighter team was busy putting out fires. I think they switched to recruiting mode about a month later. Patrick of S…
So you play the game (proving your talents by finishing) and then start from square one in the companies interview pipeline? I thought the whole point was to solve that problem?
I finished the levels during beta. I had already been in communication with Patrick via email (giving beta feedback), and after I finished the last level I sent him a note saying that I was actively looking for work. We had a chat over skype, talked about my experience and what I was looking for. He very quickly lined me up an interview with a very well-known company (well-known, in this case, can be interpreted as "…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds exactly like square one in the interview process...
No, square one would have been several phone screens if they liked my resume at all. So it got me to around square four or five.
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No, square one would have been several phone screens if they liked my resume at all. So it got me to around square four or five.
Just to be clear, did the on-site interviews consist of additional technical interviews, or just cultural/general interviews?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you play the game (proving your talents by finishing) and then start from square one in the companies interview pipeline? I thought the whole point was to solve that problem?
They should also least guarantee no whiteboard coding if you pass the game. That would be worthwhile.
But we're just a goofy game company right now, not a force of nature.
Generally: if you're not into the CTF stuff for its own sake, because you like doing this kind of thing for fun, we're not asking you to be involved. We hate the idea of being another hoop to jump through.
If you dig CTF stuff and you're looking for a new gig, we're working on trying to be as helpful as possible for your job search. We're still figuring a lot of this stuff out.
We are still figuring this stuff out. As an actual business, it's early days for us. We have a thingy we send out to candidates who want to consider working with us that goes into this in some detail.
You should play with the Starfighter CTF stuff if you are interested in CTF stuff (or trading, or, any day now, low-level programming and AVR). You should not do our CTF stuff if you're just trying to get a better job. Maybe someday in the future, if we're wildly successful, this will change, but right now the best mental model for us is "we're a goofy game company that does some recruiting on the side".
I have a lot of strong feelings about hiring process, ineffective and inhumane interviews, work sample testing, and recruiting underserved demographics. I've written some of them up. I think I've also given the impression that what we're trying to do with Starfighter is to singlehandedly fix all of that. Nope!
If you're doing large-scale hiring and you want advice on how to structure your process based on our experience doing hiring (for instance, at NCC/Matasano), please feel free to reach out.
Hey, all. Thanks for asking about this. I can give a pretty simple answer here: We are still figuring this stuff out. As an actual business, it's early days for us. We have a thingy we send out to candidates who want to consider working with us that goes into this in some detail. You should play with the Starfighter CTF stuff if you are interested in CTF stuff (or trading, or, any day now, low-level programming and A…
I got a head start on working with players to get them jobs. (All of the SF founders do this, in principal.)
I rate my execution on that process at about 3/10 right now. (I'm very good at writing introductions in a way that gets hiring managers excited about candidates; I'm terrrrrrible at follow-through with candidates at present and have been juggling too many balls for the last several months.)
I'm hoping to get better at it, rapidly, and then replace myself with a short shell script, dedicated hiring engineers, or both.
Things are exactly as fluid as Thomas said.
At present, the modal conversation with me goes something like "Hey I noticed you did $PICK_A_THING. That impressed me and I read your solution. Do you want to have a chat about the game and about potential job options?" If so, proceed to 30 minute phone call about what you liked/didn't like about the game, about your background and interest, and about what you want in terms of a job. If I have a good option for you, I tell you about it. If you agree it is a good option, I write a three paragraph email to someone who has agreed that they trust my judgment on engineers saying why I think they should interview you.
Again: execution ability on this, not fantastic at present. The biggest issues are followup, followup, and followup, for example if e.g. the company I intro you to doesn't immediately jump on the intro. Aspirationally I should bang down their door; in practice, that ball is a ball I often drop. If you have an interview(s) but the interview(s) doesn't result in an offer, I should aspirationally get in touch with "OK, let's debug that, and let me introduce you to some other options." That ball also one I'm not great at, particularly as I've been traveling for the last week and a half.
We're very very new at this, and we're at least as bad at recruiting as I was at writing stock exchanges before I actually wrote a stock exchange. Hoping to get this nailed down over the course of the next few weeks/months and then scale it out.
I finished the levels during beta. I had already been in communication with Patrick via email (giving beta feedback), and after I finished the last level I sent him a note saying that I was actively looking for work. We had a chat over skype, talked about my experience and what I was looking for. He very quickly lined me up an interview with a very well-known company (well-known, in this case, can be interpreted as "…
Literally changing on a day-to-day basis as I try things out.
Congratulations on the new adventure! (And pip pip for Triplebyte.)
I finished the levels during beta. I had already been in communication with Patrick via email (giving beta feedback), and after I finished the last level I sent him a note saying that I was actively looking for work. We had a chat over skype, talked about my experience and what I was looking for. He very quickly lined me up an interview with a very well-known company (well-known, in this case, can be interpreted as "…
I think they've been connecting candidates with companies in serial. Literally changing on a day-to-day basis as I try things out. Congratulations on the new adventure! (And pip pip for Triplebyte.)