Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Announcing Starfighter

kalzumeus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 418 posts

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#81

Post by otakucode »

tptacek wrote: post #2

I'm all, involved? and stuff? You can, like, ask us stuff, I guess. Let me answer the most frequent questions we're getting right here: "CTF" stands for "Capture The Flag". Conventionally, it's a contest with a collection of "flags" each of which is guarded by a programming puzzle; teams of people compete to collect flags. What we're doing is not a conventional CTF, but if you want to get the flavor of what we're doi…

My first thought when reading the blurb on your site was 'oh great... they're going to make a CTF where you have to participate in a team, and all other members of your 'team' are actually AI programmed to be as distracting and abrasive as possible and you will have to work on a 25 year old PL/SQL system designed by a prima donna so you can show your ability to work in hostile environments.' I am sure that's not what you're doing, but that's what comes to mind when I hear 'real systems' and 'real challenges'...

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#82

Post by bearclough »

achompas wrote: post #78
bearclough wrote: post #40

Wonderful, let me add this to the list of things I need to do in my spare time to remain a hire-able resource .... GitHub, Meetups, reading hacker news, preparing for puzzle interviews, , HackerRank, conquering a CTF. Jeez, can we say dance monkey dance.

I think patio11 and tptacek hope this can replace those things, so that you can work towards a new gig on your own terms (instead of going through the usual song-and-dance).

I admit it's a different song-and-dance but it's still a song-and-dance.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#83

Post by tptacek »

otakucode wrote: post #81
tptacek wrote: post #2

I'm all, involved? and stuff? You can, like, ask us stuff, I guess. Let me answer the most frequent questions we're getting right here: "CTF" stands for "Capture The Flag". Conventionally, it's a contest with a collection of "flags" each of which is guarded by a programming puzzle; teams of people compete to collect flags. What we're doing is not a conventional CTF, but if you want to get the flavor of what we're doi…

My first thought when reading the blurb on your site was 'oh great... they're going to make a CTF where you have to participate in a team, and all other members of your 'team' are actually AI programmed to be as distracting and abrasive as possible and you will have to work on a 25 year old PL/SQL system designed by a prima donna so you can show your ability to work in hostile environments.' I am sure that's not what…

You will not have to participate in a team or work on my 25 year old PL/SQL system; I made the PL/SQL optional.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#84

Post by [deleted] »

otakucode wrote: post #59

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 Matasan…

[deleted]

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#85

Post by patio11 »

paulhauggis wrote: post #77

"You will use real technology. You will build real systems. You will face the real problems faced by the world’s best programmers building the world’s most important pieces of software." I'm wondering, what is your business model? Are the users doing free bug fixes and work for the employers while they are proving their skills?

No sane employer would want free bug fixes. Think of what that would do to their IP assignment issues alone.

Our business model is explained in the post, under the heading How Will Starfighter Make Money. Briefly: we'll find the best engineers in the world, then broker their introduction to companies who want to hire them. Companies will pay us a substantial amount of money for this service.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#86

Post by jasonlotito »

patio11 wrote: post #44
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…

We'll try to make Starfighter maximally useful for casting as wide a net as possible in the candidate pool, including folks who have demanding career/family/etc situations. I'm an ex-salaryman, believe me, I know the frustration. That said, the perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good here. The hiring process as it exists on March 9th 2015 is already insanely hostile to people who don't have scheduling flexibility…

How do you ensure people won't be required to still fly out for 3 days of interviews? How do you prevent this from being just another filter before the "real" interview begins?

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#87

Post by tptacek »

bmelton wrote: post #74
patio11 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Matas…

So, for those of us who fit your archetype, that mostly build web apps in high-level languages like Python, haven't touched Assembly in a decade, but do not have a team of seasoned hackers hanging out with us in our living rooms, what are the odds that we're going to be able to use it to refine our skills in isolation? I fully understand that if your company is looking for pen testers, I'm not the guy you'd hire. Tha…

We're not looking for pentesters.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#88

Post by j2kun »

achompas wrote: post #71
j2kun wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I see what you mean: if this replaces interviews entirely then some people just won't be considered for the job because they have children. To me that sounds like a policy issue (it's illegal to discriminate based on irrelevant features to the job). I.e., not something that the designer of the CTF should be responsible for, but something a company could be very liable for if they aren't careful in how the app…

Parent's point is that companies implicitly filter for this by asking candidates to participate in time-consuming multi-phase interview processes. It's already difficult to work contract-for-hire or take time off for several days of on-site interviews, and it gets much more complicated when you're not well-off or you also have to take care of your kids.

Of course. But you still hire more skilled people over less skilled people, and if free time contributes to skill it's not necessarily unfair.

In fact, I think a quality CTF could level the playing field, since each candidate could be judged on their relative abilities (how far they can progress through a game that adapts to their prior knowledge). Moreover, one could offset the time commitment by paying candidates to do the CTF. Certainly paying people a decent wage for 6 hours is worth the benefit of hiring a better long-term candidate. There are all kinds of ways to fix the problem.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#89

Post by joshschreuder »

scoj wrote: post #73

Congratulations patio11, you sound excited. I am curious to see how this will work for those like yourself that make CRUD apps. I didn't go to school for programming, but self-taught. I'm afraid it'd be over my head? The best line: We haven’t done any consulting in a while. We will continue doing no consulting, to the best of our inability.

I think that anyone motivated to research and work on these problems, will likely be a decent hire in most organisations.

Having done other CTFs and puzzles like Matsano / Stripe's, I have found the research part is quite enjoyable. I have little to no knowledge of crypto but researching and solving some of the Matsano challenges was extremely rewarding.

With that said I found the information is pretty thinly spread and it is often hard to find relevant information to the problem domain, particularly with regards to crypto, so I hope they include good starting points for problem research.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#90

Post by bearclough »

tptacek wrote: post #79
bearclough wrote: post #40

Wonderful, let me add this to the list of things I need to do in my spare time to remain a hire-able resource .... GitHub, Meetups, reading hacker news, preparing for puzzle interviews, , HackerRank, conquering a CTF. Jeez, can we say dance monkey dance.

What are some things you'd worry about a company like this doing that would increase dance-monkey-dance factor? What are some things a company like this could do to decrease dance-monkey-dance factor? We're not interested in making monkeys dance, unless they want to, and enjoy it.

Sorry, I think I'm a bit of a cynic and a bit burned out. There seems to be at least an expectation in the tech industry of having to maintain certain after hours activities to make one self marketable. Personally having a 50+ hour a week day job + side projects + studying + leveling up in order to find new employment is exhausting .... I'm just concerned adding another implied responsibility to a candidates plate seems overwhelming.

But, if someone loves to play CTFs and is seeking employment than its a great match. Me personally I'm a build things I want to see in the world and the job will come ... kind of person.

Post reply on HN