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Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

newscientist.com

121–125 of 125 posts

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#121
post #26

Such a cool idea, and I enjoyed Microcorruption, but ended up getting stuck in the second or third level and couldn't even figure out the right questions to ask to get help. (I stepped into the irc channel at some point and asked some simple question, but got an answer that I couldn't even parse. So I realized I was out of my league and needed to learn more basics first.) My one concern is about something that was me…

I'm with you. There's no way I'd play a game where my every move was fair game for employers to scrutinize. That's too much stress and it would suck the fun out of everything. The thought of a game like that irritates me to no end. This is one reason I pay for a private github. I hate that if I'm learning a new technology, have "too many" commits on something simple, or am generally messing around it looks "bad" to e…

> have "too many" commits on something simple ... it looks "bad" to employers

Really??

I have frequently, in the line of my consulting work, advised my clients (those self-same employers) to worry when they stop seeing a healthy flow of commits from a developer. (Not necessarily to github, rather to whatever VCS they're using.) One friend - like myself an experience dev. - wired ctrl-S in his IDE to his VCS commit command!

Mistakes, meandering explorations and wandering up entirely wrong paths is all part of software development, and is precisely what your VCS is there to help you manage. The notion that some (potential) employer might consider using it to the hilt as a "bad" thing sounds profoundly worrying to me. Probably not someone I'd want to work for.

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#122
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…

> the community frowns on saying the same thing over and over. You must not be aware of the pros and cons of working remotely, how terrible we are at hiring people, and the real reason that YC is awesome. ;)

You missed SQL/ORMs :-)

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the community frowns on saying the same thing over and over. You must not be aware of the pros and cons of working remotely, how terrible we are at hiring people, and the real reason that YC is awesome. ;)

You missed SQL/ORMs :-)

Oh my. Have you heard about how NoSQL is or isn't the superior replacement for all platforms?

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#124
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.

[deleted]

Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

#125
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will be the official policy for sharing game footage on websites such as Twitch and YouTube? Will you officially support content creators who might want to make something like a Let's Play of Starfighter? I'm only asking because if it's actually a fun standalone game (independent from the job hunt aspect) this is going happen.

Will you officially support content creators who might want to make something like a Let's Play of Starfighter? Heck yes. Existence of many Let's Plays is necessary (but not sufficient) to prove we're actually doing our job. I'm peripherally aware of the mechanics of what I have to do to get Big Daddy G to be OK with this, and it's on my checklist. (Not asked, but the answer to "Are you OK with people monetizing thos…

Please also consider pushing Twitch "Let's Plays" as well. We have a lot of programmers watching!

I agree with what you're saying about video advertising CPMs, though it is quite possible to make a living on Twitch once you add in subscriptions at $5/mo.

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