I know this article is referring to a different kind of gaming, but back in the day, I used to give potential candidates a NES controller and Tetris when they were in the waiting room before the interview... You can tell a lot about how a person deals with time constraints, pressure and approaches problem solving by watching somebody play tetris for 4 minutes. Not that Tetris would be the only input into the decision, but it was a thing.
Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best
31–40 of 125 posts
Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best
#32Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best
#33Patrick 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.
I'm not impressed that your submarine PR effort lead with a marketing line / hope, presented as established fact.
That's crossing the line from self-promotion to skeeziness, especially in a publication that calls itself "Scientist", and attracts readers who don't know it doesn't respect the culture of scienctific communication.
Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best
#34Earlier 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.
Oh, we do; that's what I spend all my time on. But there must be some reason behind your comment, and I'd be happy to discuss it with you at hn@ycombinator.com if you'd like. (Just not here, though, as the topic at hand is game-driven recruiting.)
Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best
#35Patrick 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 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.
Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best
#36Patrick 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.
Why does the story say "video game"? I wouldn't call Microcorruption a video game. Was this your word choice or something New Scientist did on their own? Or is Starfighter actually going to be something I would call a video game (instead of what I was expecting which was an experience akin to Microcorruption)?
Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best
#37Am I the only one that doesn't entirely enjoy gamification of everything? What's wrong with just writing software?
Nope. I don't like "gamifiaction" either.
Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best
#38I know this article is referring to a different kind of gaming, but back in the day, I used to give potential candidates a NES controller and Tetris when they were in the waiting room before the interview... You can tell a lot about how a person deals with time constraints, pressure and approaches problem solving by watching somebody play tetris for 4 minutes. Not that Tetris would be the only input into the decision…
What would you do if they didn't play and just waited for the 4 minutes?
Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best
#39Patrick 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.
Why does the story say "video game"? I wouldn't call Microcorruption a video game. Was this your word choice or something New Scientist did on their own? Or is Starfighter actually going to be something I would call a video game (instead of what I was expecting which was an experience akin to Microcorruption)?
The term makes me flinch too. We're working on the best way to describe it, but mostly we're working on code, so we'll need some slack.
Re: Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best
#40This is awesome. I'll definitely become an avid player, right after I contribute meaningfully to several open source projects, have an active GitHub profile, while keeping my Stack Overflow reputation high, and having a fleshed out CodeCombat profile, and of course making sure my LinkedIn page is up to snuff. I hope when I get this awesome job my employer doesn't mind me keeping all my profiles updated on company hou…
No CodeJam victories or at the top of the TopCoder leaderboard? Extensive Coursera certificates? No-hire. Plus I'm beginning to doubt that you've even solved several Project Euler problems in a variety of functional programming languages.