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Announcing Starfighter

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Re: Announcing Starfighter

#291

Post by tptacek »

lambda wrote: post #242
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…

On your "About Us" page, you say "We're especially interested in talking to you if you will be hiring 10+ engineers in the next year, as we may be able to help you out with that. Get in touch with any of us." Does a company need to be hiring 10 or more engineers to make it worth it to talk to you? I'm at a small company, that has been trying to hire engineers for the last couple of years, and not having much success;…

I'm totally happy to talk to anyone who hires engineers, is interested in what we're doing and/or wants to know more about how we made this work at my last gig. Please don't hesitate to reach out; you can't waste my time.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#292

Post by tptacek »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #271
eugeneionesco wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you planning on combating cheating? For sure people will post solutions online to your CTFs.

This is an important problem. As part of interviewing processes, I have several times tried offering "take home work challenges". I had to stop after, having run the experiment several times, I detected plagiarism in about 30-40% of the cases. The risk is of plagiarism is real for any problem that's well known enough that the problem and solution can appear online, and detecting plagiarism is not always easy.

It's less important than it sounds for a bunch of reasons having both to do with the actual "game" we are building and with our business model. It's not like we spit out a number for every player, and everyone with a number better than X gets a job offer.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#293

Post by agentultra »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #283
tptacek wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could tell us how to apply data analysis to produce a concrete number that represents the merits and talents of a fellow human being, I would love to hear it; it would make my job a lot easier. I didn't know that was possible. Is this some kind of linear algebra-y machine learning sort of thing?

Most likely it is possible. Take this "Alex" you frequently speak highly of. If you gave Alex a different work sample test, do you believe he'd have done poorly on it? If not, then there is some common factor (call it H) both tests are measuring. (I can confidently state that you do believe he would have performed similarly on a different test - if he didn't, this whole idea would be fundamentally invalid.) Now the i…

This is a good answer.

I could tell if GP was being sarcastic so I deleted my original reply.

The softer side of the equation is that the approach of filtering candidates for businesses allows them to minimize (to some market minimum) the cost for highly skilled individuals. Projects such as this just triggered a bone I'm presently picking over.

Old-guard corporations that hire the legally-liable kind of engineer seemed to have taken a much different approach if the stories I've been told by a retired mechanical engineer who worked for Chrysler are true. A completely irrational approach. They hired people based on their potential and made them into the engineers they needed.

The copy on the announcement sounds like this game will quantify everything about the performance of a participant in the game in order to sell them to a curated list of potential employers. What about this system incentives employers to invest in the career development of these people and strengthens our collective bargaining power as the people who build this stuff?

To be more constructive I might suggest turning down the hyperbole and use fewer adjectives. Keep the pitch to employers for employers. Don't be patronizing to inexperienced developers: inspecting the assembly output of a compiler is not elite and not difficult to explain to someone given the right context and framing. I understand your game is about competition but the "winner/failure" schism it can create is a big turn off for a lot of otherwise intelligent, creative, and capable people. It doesn't have to be about being, "the best," in order to be fun and rewarding.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#294

Post by pnathan »

bearclough wrote: post #177
pnathan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest Starfighter Recruiter, LLC have a contract with a VP, CTO. Something to the effect of... "We provide you the names of people interested in your fine company, along with our certificate of credibility. You in turn agree that the interview process will be entirely on the intangibles[1] of interpersonal relationships, career goals, etc". Along with that would be a rider that would involve Starfighter Rec…

I think if it leads to higher quality job leads than that would be great for many people. I find personally with response rates to cold drops of a resume being around 75%. The amount of time shifting through positions I don't want >> than pursuing those that I do. The great employers don't require to much chest thumping and I've had some down right fun interviews. I question the culture of a company that uses a CTF g…

It's certainly the case that I have never personally have desired to do the ACM competitions, as they, IMO, reflect neither CS aptitude nor software engineering capability. I always chose to do my homework, sleep in, or fool around with my own interests.

But it did seem from the outside that those doing ACM competitions were the upper echelon of the school.

Perhaps a CTF situation would be similar. We can only see what unfolds.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#295

Post by areyousure »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #271
eugeneionesco wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you planning on combating cheating? For sure people will post solutions online to your CTFs.

This is an important problem. As part of interviewing processes, I have several times tried offering "take home work challenges". I had to stop after, having run the experiment several times, I detected plagiarism in about 30-40% of the cases. The risk is of plagiarism is real for any problem that's well known enough that the problem and solution can appear online, and detecting plagiarism is not always easy.

Wait, why'd you stop? Isn't this a great way to filter out those 30--40% of people?

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#296

Post by weaksauce »

samstave wrote: post #200
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…

EDIT: Ill need to lookup other CTFs like this... as clearly I am not familiar with how they work.

Solve a puzzle and then move on to next puzzle. It's fairly straight forward.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#297

Post by neilparikh »

bdavisx wrote: post #266
lexcorvus wrote: post #68

This looks fantastic. One possible wrinkle: I predict that, although top-performing Starfighters will be a diverse lot, they will lack "diversity". I hope the Starfighter founders have a plan to push back against the carping complainers a venture such as this is likely to attract. (My suggestion is to point out that CTFs are the ultimate expression of "Shut up and show us the code." [1]) [1]: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?…

I don't understand your point. I've worked with mediocrity far too often in the programming world, and outright incompetence as well. These kinds of contests/games are designed to weed that out. If you're talking about the "winners" having personality issues, then hopefully that will be caught in the interview process. Perhaps I'm completely missing your point though.

I think they were suggesting that the distribution of the top performers might not be "diverse" (for some meaning of that term), which would lead to criticism (like how people criticize companies for not having a diverse workforce, or conferences for not having a diverse speakers list).

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#298

Post by kenko »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #279
tptacek wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best answer I can give was that we've heard that concern from a bunch of different sources, we share it, and we're designing against it to some extent. As a reminder: this is an outreach strategy we deployed at Matasano to enormous success. We had an English professor finish the crypto challenges. We didn't solve all our diversity problems, but we made a palpable dent in them, and we did that by coming up with someth…

Somewhat relatedly, as a person who's discussed these issues with you in the past, it sounds like you'll be gathering new evidence. How will your beliefs change? For example, suppose $GROUP is over/underrepresented among top starfighter performers. What will be your new belief about $GROUP's technical talent and the causes of over/underrepresentation in tech in general?

"What will be your new belief about $GROUP's technical talent"

Hopefully the most reasonable one: that there's no such thing about the technical talent of "$GROUP" per se, though our society might presently be so organized that it's easier for members of $GROUP to excel at certain kinds of tasks.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#299

Post by samstave »

weaksauce wrote: post #296
samstave wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: Ill need to lookup other CTFs like this... as clearly I am not familiar with how they work.

Solve a puzzle and then move on to next puzzle. It's fairly straight forward.

Thanks, my original question was what actually is a flag. Is it an atomic object that can actually be captured.would be great if it was something unique like say Nixon's are.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#300

Post by yummyfajitas »

pron wrote: post #288
yummyfajitas wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat relatedly, as a person who's discussed these issues with you in the past, it sounds like you'll be gathering new evidence. How will your beliefs change? For example, suppose $GROUP is over/underrepresented among top starfighter performers. What will be your new belief about $GROUP's technical talent and the causes of over/underrepresentation in tech in general?

I don't think my beliefs about the facts are any different from yours; we disagree on the causes of the facts and their mutability. Therefore, my beliefs will change when the dynamics are tested. But this kind of data provides evidence for our disagreement no more than a still image of a flying arrow can settle the one between Aristotle's and Newton's theories of motion. Somewhat relatedly I'd like to add that while…

Tom and I disagree on how much of the underrepresentation of women in tech is due to skill deficits. His new platform can answer that question quite effectively.

My disagreement with you stems from the fact that I don't believe in any privileged population groups - I only believe in individual rights. I may or may not disagree with you about "power" but so far you've yet to provide a clear definition of it. (I did read your wikipedia links, but they provided multiple disparate and unclear definitions.)

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