Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best • Hacker News Board

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#101

Post by simonebrunozzi » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 4:15 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #6

tptacek wrote: post #5

Patrick gave an interview to The New Scientist when we announced last week. We're a little worried about Starfighter Fatigue and are definitely trying not to get too much onto the front page (Erin's diligently writing the game details post, which we want to be the next thing people see from us). In the meantime though, if any of you have questions, we're watching and will answer.

What Thomas said. In particular, while we're really glad that many HNers like Starfighter, we were members of this community far before we were co-founders. We're keenly aware that a) HN is a community, not a marketing channel and b) the community frowns on saying the same thing over and over. I'm CEO of a company and am pot committed to spending the next several years of my life repeating close variations of the sam…

:)

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#102

Post by simonebrunozzi » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 4:17 AM UTC

Ao7bei3s wrote: post #27

patio11 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Thomas said. In particular, while we're really glad that many HNers like Starfighter, we were members of this community far before we were co-founders. We're keenly aware that a) HN is a community, not a marketing channel and b) the community frowns on saying the same thing over and over. I'm CEO of a company and am pot committed to spending the next several years of my life repeating close variations of the sam…

> HN is a community, not a marketing channel I wish the YC people saw it like that.

dang, "reply" is not available for your reply to A07bei3s - I suggest it should, and not to start that conversation (agree it should be done separately), but in case someone would like to reply to you.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#103

Post by woah » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 4:45 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #5

Patrick gave an interview to The New Scientist when we announced last week. We're a little worried about Starfighter Fatigue and are definitely trying not to get too much onto the front page (Erin's diligently writing the game details post, which we want to be the next thing people see from us). In the meantime though, if any of you have questions, we're watching and will answer.

How can you judge programming (not security) skill with a video game? I find it hard to believe that there's any way to gamify maintainability.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#104

Post by swatow » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 4:46 AM UTC

I'm not very familiar with this style of programming puzzle, but I wonder how this is less arbitrary than whiteboard coding topcoder or kaggle. I know people who were hired based on all of these, but the latter two are different from Starfighter in that they exist for their own reasons (competition for its own sake, and getting answers to data science questions) with providing a signal to employers being a side effect. I wonder if the selection bias in a system set up for the purpose of employment will be better or worse.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#105

Post by woah » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 4:47 AM UTC

cpach wrote: post #81

soup10 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, this might be relevant to fresh out of college grads with no industry experience. But I have nothing to prove and see this kind of stuff as a waste of time. Why waste my efforts on contrived competitions when I can put them into projects that actually interest me.

”Why waste my efforts on contrived competitions when I can put them into projects that actually interest me.” How do we know it’s contrived and competitive? Keep in mind that we’re discussing a ”game” that’s not even released yet.

A game is by definition contrived, no?

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#106

Post by vskarine » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 4:55 AM UTC

Great idea. I loved Microcorruption. But please please don't call it video game! Average person reading this would think this is some sort of World Of Warcraft type game and stuff like that but this is more of a programming competition.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#107

Post by nitrogen » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 5:42 AM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #102

Ao7bei3s wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN is a community, not a marketing channel I wish the YC people saw it like that.

dang, "reply" is not available for your reply to A07bei3s - I suggest it should, and not to start that conversation (agree it should be done separately), but in case someone would like to reply to you.

HN pro tip: try clicking the post's timestamp (not sure if this still works).

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#108

Post by strags » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 5:57 AM UTC

> Of 12224 players, just 182 passed the hardest level. The firm will get in touch with these elite players and help place them with one of their clients, who pay Starfighter a fee.

As player #181 out of those #182, I'm excited :)

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#109

Post by tomjen3 » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:14 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #5

Patrick gave an interview to The New Scientist when we announced last week. We're a little worried about Starfighter Fatigue and are definitely trying not to get too much onto the front page (Erin's diligently writing the game details post, which we want to be the next thing people see from us). In the meantime though, if any of you have questions, we're watching and will answer.

In my opinion you should have kept your mouth shut about the project until you were ready to launch, even if only in beta. Now you get all the marketing, but people can't play the game and have to guess how it works.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#110

Post by sea6ear » Fri, Mar 20, 2015, 6:16 AM UTC

pjungwir wrote: post #82

sputknick wrote: post #19

Would this be a good way to teach my son technical skills? He's 6 years old, homeschooled and is interested in technology. He's already figured out how to bipass the parental controls on his Kindle. We're trying to figure out how to stimulate that desire when you can't read well yet.

Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey might be great things to try. You can run both on an emulator. I'm pretty sure you can play Rocky's Boots pre-reading. In fact I would not be sad if v1 of Starfighter was playing Robot Odyssey on a web page. :-)

I was going to suggest Robot Odyssey. That was my first introduction to digital logic, although I didn't realize it till years later, when I actually studied some digital logic.

There used to be a clone in java called Droid Quest that would run without an emulator, but I went looking for it a little while ago, and the web site appears to be empty. The only remains I found is a github repo with the source code, but I haven't tried to see if I can build and run it yet.