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

111–120 of 418 posts

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#111

Post by mallyvai »

Looks fantastic Patrick! Your original blog post on salary negotiation actually helped lay early mental groundwork for what later became http://OfferLetter.io .

One thing I'd love to get your thoughts on, in more detail, is how you see the product and service evolving over time, given that you're charging companies. We believe (as do our customers) that incentive alignment is extraordinarily important. By charging candidates alone, we eliminate the messy incentive dynamics that happen with companies and their sourcing channels. We can go to bat for candidates, every time, unconditionally. That simply doesn't happen under many of the traditional recruiting models. If you've found a way to subvert the original messy dynamic while still charging companies, that's wonderful.

Good luck with Starfighter, super excited to see how things go!

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#112

Post by dataker »

otakucode wrote: post #99
dataker wrote: post #80

Part of the current interviewing process is Github and side-projects. I truly understand the reasons for Starfighter, but are you putting any real value behind it? I like CTF, but it's not quite the same as contributing to open source projects.

You're quite right that a CTF is not the same as open source projects... and I thought the point of this was exactly that. People who contribute to open source projects prove they have a certain set of skills. What if you need people with a different set? What if instead of being able to learn a large codebase, it is more important that they are able to look at a problem and design an algorithm to solve it in the fir…

Makes sense. From that angle, we'd even see better contributions.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#113

Post by fitzwatermellow »

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…

Hey, tptacek.

Your last post on hiring definitely found its legs and I am sure will cited for some time to come. You mentioned that you used to send a sampling of key text books to potential Matasano candidates and was wondering if you could share some references. I imagine Applied Crypto might be on there. Any any other important resources for mastering CTFs you might pass along would be obliged ;)

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#114

Post by Chirael »

Love the concept, can't wait to see it. I don't normally play computer games, but this sounds intriguing. One minor point: "Alt-tab over to your email and click the confirm link in the email we just sent you." If you use web-based email, that's probably Ctrl-tab :)

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#115

Post by logicalmind »

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.

Director: Our operating expenses are through the roof. We've got a dozen developers and we're still behind schedule...

Manager: That's because we don't have any "good" developers. We need to find some of those 10x productive developers and get rid of some of the guys we have.

Director: So you're telling me we can replace 10 developers for the price of one good one?

Manager: That should be true, but the 10x guy is going to want a bit more money.

Directory: Let's do this!

(some time later at the interview)

Manager: Were looking for highly productive programmers and we're willing to pay top dollar. We see you've accomplished X, Y, Z so we want you to come and join our team.

Developer: Sorry, I can't...

Manager: How about $50k more salary...

Developer: Wow, ok, I can't really say no to that.

(some time later the first day)

Manager: Welcome to your first day, here is your team. Get as much information from them as possible because we'll be laying off 10 of them in 30 days. Good luck!

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#116

Post by newobj »

jasonlotito wrote: post #86
patio11 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Where is this hyperbole of 3 days of interviews coming from? Sure, someone had that experience. 99% of people don't.

Anyway, I'm happy to spend lots of time meeting and mingling with my future team and employer. Most people good enough to surpass these CTF's are going to be using the in-house interview time to be in the driver's seat of reverse-assessing their potential employer, realistically.

The interview for my newest job was spread out over two half-days (my choice versus one full-time day). I came back to visit and talk with people three times after I finished my interview and had an offer extended. My choice. I needed to really feel the culture. And ultimately that's what caused me to join the company.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#117

Post by pnathan »

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.

> What are some things you'd worry about a company like this doing that would increase dance-monkey-dance factor?

Not the OP, but anything where a recruiter can go look my rating up, they will. And then that becomes a positive signal, increasing the speed of the rat race, because to be "hip", you have to do the N+1 things. Blech.

If you want to reduce the "dance" factor, have a sheltered tunnel from Starfighter to the first day on the job. Don't have it be a pipe to the tech interview, don't let it be a pipe to a recruiter's desk, don't let HR do anything but verify employment eligibility. Seriously.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#118

Post by mallyvai »

staunch wrote: post #57
patio11 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 creat…

It's not a marketplace per se, but at http://OfferLetter.io, we guide candidates on exactly this offer selection problem. More generally, we preach that everybody should have the best career on the best terms. We've found that by approaching the conversation in a structured way, we can eliminate a ton of the uncertainty and stress that generally accompanies the process.

One of the most high-leverage things we've seen help is simply creating a spreadsheet with (Company, Conversation-State, Date, Last Impressions ) can add a ton of value.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#119

Post by larrys »

bearclough wrote: post #90
tptacek wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

"expectation in the tech industry of having to maintain certain after hours activities to make one self marketable"

On hacker news you are getting a very small slice of the tech industry. And by reading HN you are subjected to repeated attempts to make you think there is a clear way to be marketable and to earn a living. Rest assured that there are people in tech that the HN crowd makes fun of that are earning fine livings and enjoying their jobs.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#120

Post by pbreit »

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…

Sounds interesting. What's the ETA?
Post reply on HN