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Announcing Starfighter

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Re: Announcing Starfighter

#151

Post by jasonlotito »

newobj wrote: post #116
jasonlotito wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

> Where is this hyperbole of 3 days of interviews coming from?

Directly from the comment I'm replying to.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#152

Post by jschulenklopper »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #124

Patrick, What is going to happen with Appointment Reminder now?

The answer is at the bottom of the announcement: "I have no announcement to make about my involvement with Appointment Reminder at this time. We will, naturally, continue keeping all commitments to our customers."

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#153

Post by patio11 »

throwawaymaroon wrote: post #144
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…

Will you be allowing anonymous participation? By this I mean, the article uses some creepy language as only a company enthusiastic about its power to broker reputation can. >>We can tell you exactly what happened when your candidates tried to implement a REST API. What, are you going to keep a record of the time I fiddled with it for an afternoon and then use that to disqualify me from a job? You say elsewhere about…

Will you be allowing anonymous participation?

Yes. You can participate anonymously or pseudonymously. I think we say in three places that we only give out contact details if candidates ask us to.

What, are you going to keep a record of the time I fiddled with it for an afternoon and then use that to disqualify me from a job?

Our incentive is to find reasons why you're hireable, not reasons why you're not.

What if I don't want to feel like my performance is owned by you?

Your performance is owned by you -- we won't have copyright to your code or anything. Signal we gather, though? Owned by us. That's the trade: we give you a really fun game to enjoy, but we control the universe you play in and, inside that universe, we control everything and see everything. If you do not like this trade, that's your prerogative and I respect your opinion. Nobody will force you to play Starfighter.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#154

Post by tomjen3 »

soneca wrote: post #54

Will you (patio11, tptacek, elptacek) apply to YC someday? That would be uhm... i don't even know the right adjective.

Honestly they don't seem to be a good fit. I mean they are going to get in, no issue, but they already know how to run a business (charge more) and they can pretty easily get access to investors.

The more interesting question is if they will ever end up teaching at YC.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#155

Post by tomjen3 »

elptacek wrote: post #110
revorad wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats on this new venture, looks fun. What do you expect will be the effect of this on hiring women? Do you have any relevant data from microcorruption (what % players were women)? It'd be great if Erin could also chime in.

We do not have access to the µc data, any longer. That belongs to Matasano. I am now sad that I did not ask myself the same question and pay closer attention while I did. However, this is what I am hoping and dreaming for: that work-sample testing will completely level the playing field. Regardless of gender, age, or origin, if you can do the work, you should get the job. I believe in this so strongly that I am dedic…

>The tone of the post is as politically neutral as it can be. My hope is to draw out some productive dialog rather than piling on stink for flies.

I am sorry, but that is a line with a negative width: if you so much as hint that this may in part be the fault of males (as a whole or, even worse, individuals) pitchforks will be out. If you do not hint strongly enough that this is the fault of males (as individuals and as a group) pitchforks will be out on the other side. As a more personal point the sheer toxicity of those debates continues to shock me, even after spending more than a decade on the internet. Vi vs Emacs debates don't tend to end in treats of rape and/or genocide but "why aren't there more women in computing" almost always do.

This isn't to say that we can't draw any benefit from your writing, just be aware that of the things you can't say (http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html) this is the thing you can't say most.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#156

Post by marssaxman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #145
marssaxman wrote: post #47

I find this announcement fascinatingly incomprehensible; it clearly emerges from a slice of the software universe quite distant from mine. The use of the acronym "CTF" suggests that the authors are very familiar with this genre of game; but how exactly does it work? What does it have to do with programming? I guess they are making programming into a game (?) and this somehow has something to do with hiring?

I guess you might be confusing the very unfortunate use of the acronym CTF for security-related programming games with the usual meaning of Capture The Flag, as in a game mode in First-Person Shooters where people work as a team to capture enemy's flag and bring it back to their base.

I was previously unaware that security-related programming games existed!

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#158

Post by MichaelGG »

patio11 wrote: post #67
losvedir wrote: post #53

Very cool! Signed up for an invite. Couple questions: 1) Is this a Stripe-like CTF that happens over some caffeine-fueled weekend? Or is it more of an ongoing Project Euler-style drop-in-and-solve type process? I don't think I could handle the former, but the latter sounds quite enjoyable and something I might do in my free time just to learn. I did that with PE for a while since it was fun to earn completion points.…

I loved the Stripe CTF. We're not going to adopt the time-boxed model from them. Starfighter : our CTFs :: Blizzard :: Blizzard games. There's no reason for us to ever turn them off. We'll likely have a particular flagship property but we have the option of dropping a new game on the market any time we want. You don't have to rush through Starfighter games. Some people will, of course, just like there is a metagame t…

>The same way you do it with math problems. Mastery of the subject material is the easiest cheat code.

Elaborate? Math questions are the opposite of a good example, aren't they? Even with randomized values it's fairly easy to write generic solutions. People do this even for Project Euler. How much more so for something even cooler sounding?

(I'm very excited to see this project and it sounds like a lot of fun. I'd just be worried that it would end up being gamed, since the drive for cheating is so strong everywhere.)

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#159

Post by Scramblejams »

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…

This looks great. Looking forward to trying it. Good on all of you for trying to change the tech hiring status quo.

I know this whole thing is still in flux, but does it look like there are going to be any remote work opportunities in the early days? I'm probably in the minority but given my personal circumstances (living in a non-tech-rated US city and not considering moving) I'm really only available for remote.

Re: Announcing Starfighter

#160

Post by chernevik »

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…

That looks like fun. Thanks for pointing it out -- and thanks, tpacek et al for producing it.
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