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Announcing Starfighter

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Re: Announcing Starfighter

#51

Post by patio11 »

jameshart wrote: post #32

One of the conventional complaints against CS-algorithm-heavy interviewing is that companies ask all these tough questions about distributed cache latency in red-black tree optimizations, then once they hire people, they're just bashing out PHP and MySQL. How do you make sure that the companies hiring your services have challenges that live up to the skills you're selecting for?

I've got nothing against CRUD apps, because they make the world go round, but it is unlikely that Starfighter will choose to send our candidates to firms making CRUD apps. The difference will be fairly obvious when you see our client roster. We're geeks with good taste for the kind of jobs a geek would actually want to have.

(Sorry for being coy here. Don't want to jinx contract signing.)

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#52

Post by ChristianGeek »

icco wrote: post #39

I get what they're trying to do, but did this read like a rant from a crazy person to anyone else? Just the first header block read like they were creating some kind of videogame company... and then finally at the bottom of that text block, "Oh, it has something to do with interviews..." and then halfway down the next section, "oh, it's that kind of CTF". Anyway, seems cool if they can make applying for jobs more int…

It read like an infomercial to me...I closed the page after the first two sections.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#53

Post by losvedir »

Very cool! Signed up for an invite.

Couple questions:

1) Is this a Stripe-like CTF that happens over some caffeine-fueled weekend? Or is it more of an ongoing Project Euler-style drop-in-and-solve type process? I don't think I could handle the former, but the latter sounds quite enjoyable and something I might do in my free time just to learn. I did that with PE for a while since it was fun to earn completion points.

2) You mention "Let's Play" style videos. How do you make it so that the solutions aren't given away? Does each player have a customized CTF somehow?

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#56

Post by fixxer »

japesinator wrote: post #14

I’m curious as to how much this will select for people with free time. Many of the CTFs I’ve played in required a quite non-trivial amount of investment of time (which I didn’t mind, as they’ve been quite enjoyable), but there are certainly people who can’t afford n dozen hours to solve problems due to family/work/other obligations. I do think this is significantly better than the alternative, but I’m also concerned…

I was thinking this too. I did the cryptopals while in grad school and was able to complete it. I got 15 minutes in microcorruption before I got sucked into a wormhole of meetings.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#57

Post by staunch »

patio11 wrote: post #51
jameshart wrote: post #32

One of the conventional complaints against CS-algorithm-heavy interviewing is that companies ask all these tough questions about distributed cache latency in red-black tree optimizations, then once they hire people, they're just bashing out PHP and MySQL. How do you make sure that the companies hiring your services have challenges that live up to the skills you're selecting for?

I've got nothing against CRUD apps, because they make the world go round, but it is unlikely that Starfighter will choose to send our candidates to firms making CRUD apps. The difference will be fairly obvious when you see our client roster. We're geeks with good taste for the kind of jobs a geek would actually want to have. (Sorry for being coy here. Don't want to jinx contract signing.)

The problem is that the great hackers are already inundated with unattractive job offers. Offers that seem very attractive to people who are not them.

If you had a deal with Google/Apple/Dropbox/NSA that said "If we find someone who can complete this challenge, you agree you hire them at $500k/year + $100k signing bonus doing work on Skunkworks Project X" you would have an incredible flow of hackers.

No one has created a marketplace for world class experts and yet these positions and people exist.

Congratulations on launching and good luck!

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#58

Post by fixxer »

mathattack wrote: post #33

Hidden in the article is a real gem: The science of hiring practices is settled: work-sample tests are the most effective way to assess skill in potential hires. This is one of the most obvious, yet under-applied truisms in hiring. If they can apply Starfighter beyond Games, or enable non-Game skills to shine while working on Games, it will be industry changing.

Makes me miss prop trading, where a tax return basically settled it. Now, job hunting ruins a weekend.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#59

Post by otakucode »

I'm sure you've got your own ideas for your CTFs, but if you haven't heard of them before I would recommend you check out the Matasano Crypto Challenges (cryptopals.com). They ran them privately for awhile, you just emailed them and said you wanted in and they sent you the challenges, once you emailed the answers for one batch they gave you another, etc. I've tried various 'code gaming' things before, and the Matasano challenges were, in my opinion, the best ones I've come across. (I am exempting things like Stepic's bioinformatics challenges since their main goal is to expand your knowledge of bioinformatics rather than of programming, though they do get into some advanced data structures later on)

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#60

Post by patio11 »

marssaxman wrote: post #47

I find this announcement fascinatingly incomprehensible; it clearly emerges from a slice of the software universe quite distant from mine. The use of the acronym "CTF" suggests that the authors are very familiar with this genre of game; but how exactly does it work? What does it have to do with programming? I guess they are making programming into a game (?) and this somehow has something to do with hiring?

A CTF is a game that one plays by programming. I wish I could point you to competing CTFs that you can sign up and play right now, but most disappear from the Internet because they are fiendishly difficult to keep running. Ask me (or any team that has shipped one) why if you're curious.

One example would be MicroCorruption. https://microcorruption.com Thomas and Erin helped build it back when they were still at Matasano. It's a hybrid of a game -- there's a narrative, flavor text, a progression of difficulty, levels, a leaderboard, etc -- and a programming assignment. The programming assignment happens to be some variant of "Here's assembly code; find an input which exploits the vulnerability we planted in it."

Starfighter CTFs will similarly be a game that one plays by programming. Similarities end there. We can do very interesting things with this.

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