61–70 of 81 posts
I'm curious why they use this mod for recruiting, though I don't own Portal 2 and I'm not interested in applying to Wibidata. What the video shows of the gameplay and puzzles are what I'd expect from Portal 2.
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This is called a fallacy of dramatic instance. Your problem domain and your company are satisfied with young programmers, but you cannot extrapolate that to all software enterprises.
Sure, but you can extrapolate it to the entire web industry, which is my domain. I've built teams for clients (we started out taking equity in startups in exchange for prototyping and team assembly), and in every instance have followed that formula. In every instance they've had successful eight figure exits. Sure, it's likely not universally applicable, however you shouldn't underestimate the power of an open mind.
I'm not sure your ideas are quite as bold and radical as you think. In fact, I would say that you're merely repeating the common liturgy of the industry. Young tyros are more "creative" than seasoned veterans. Caffeine addled youths have more exciting ideas. They have fewer preconceptions. They're more nimble. They're in it for love of the game.
What I'm asking is why you're so sure all of this is true. "It's true because I am successful" doesn't seem to me very persuasive.
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Some places mention that they have an XBox on site for you to play with, but that's usually just a red flag for me. I love playing games, but if I am going to be at work long enough to feel the urge to play then I am at work way too long. These are probably the same places that think adding an extra hour to your work increases your productivity by 16%.
"XBox on site," says to me, "we're (hiring) young people."
Seems like fun... But this type of thing doesn't help our profession be taken seriously. If WibiData was a game company this would fit - but they do data analytics as far as I can tell. I am a professional software developer. I have a very specific skill set and I expect to be treated properly. I do not appreciate it when people think I am a "geek", or that I obviously play video games or are in to Star Trek[1]. When…
Kind of neat, but strange as a recruitment device: It seems difficult enough to get good people, why would one put such an arbitrary filter as a first barrier? People who don't play computer games or Portal 2 are probably much less likely to apply that way.
Personally, I like working with other developers who like games and good beer. I haven't had great experiences with the type who lock themselves in their offices and don't come to happy hour.
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"Best" in what sense?
Productivity, enthusiasm, willingness to learn new tricks (get 'em in knowing PHP, watch 'em learn C, Java, and ASM as they go deeper into our stack), and willing to take the risk of sticking their neck out with outlandish but brilliant ideas.
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Sure, but you can extrapolate it to the entire web industry, which is my domain. I've built teams for clients (we started out taking equity in startups in exchange for prototyping and team assembly), and in every instance have followed that formula. In every instance they've had successful eight figure exits. Sure, it's likely not universally applicable, however you shouldn't underestimate the power of an open mind.
"you shouldn't underestimate the power of an open mind." I'm not sure your ideas are quite as bold and radical as you think. In fact, I would say that you're merely repeating the common liturgy of the industry. Young tyros are more "creative" than seasoned veterans. Caffeine addled youths have more exciting ideas. They have fewer preconceptions. They're more nimble. They're in it for love of the game. What I'm asking…
I've worked both in orgs with "greybeards" and in the org I've founded along with many clients. There's plenty to be said for veteran levels of experience, but this is something that's only really needed in a leader, as this experience can be communicated and demonstrated to others. A fool learns by his own mistakes, a wise man by those of others. I suppose this makes me a fool, but a fool who's decided to help others be wise, and to harness those several decades of experience in such a fashion that it benefits all involved.
So yes, you have a point in that years of experience are indeed valuable, but I would argue that this is not a prerequisite to be an exceptional engineer, and that in fact truly exceptional engineers arise through memetic experience, and a thirst for knowledge.
It's true that I speak from personal experience, but then again, so does every scientist who finds a repeatable experiment. I'd be happy to be disproven, but until then, I'm equally happy to treat what I find to be a valid theory as fact.
Young, passionate individuals make the world go round. You only have to look to the great leaps and bounds of science to witness this in visceral actuality.
"In this mod you're placed into the Wibi!Data office to reset a PIN for the CEO of the company. You reset this by gathering reset keys and slowing figuring out the reset code."
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Productivity, enthusiasm, willingness to learn new tricks (get 'em in knowing PHP, watch 'em learn C, Java, and ASM as they go deeper into our stack), and willing to take the risk of sticking their neck out with outlandish but brilliant ideas.
Frequent use of ASM in a web dev shop? Really?
This has typically arisen from working with existing OSS projects which incorporate vector transforms and the ilk in ASM, often badly or subtly brokenly, and from building optimised functions for doing fun things like creating n-dimensional maps of customer/product relationships in order to determine purchase propensity based on cluster profiles.
So yeah, ASM in a web shop. Except we're only kinda a web shop these days - client sites are our marketing platform, but our business is business systems.
* : I mean really playing, not decompiling..