As someone who has some familiarity with the people and processes, this response seems extremely off to me.
> Selection starts from age of 4
Care to share your sources for that? As far as I know most are self taught and get some further training in military.
> Boring.
It might be boring to some and might be extremely interesting for others. People who like solving puzzles and facing hard challenges usually like it. Of course, if your passion is building you wouldn't like it as you don't "build" something new.
> Usually a group of introverted young kids that look at their own shoes while talking to you, led by an extroverted young kid, that looks at your shoes while talking to you.
Have you met these people at all? Because it definitely sounds like you haven't and you just describe the typecast some movie would use.
My children were attending/graduated/served kindergarten/school/army in Israel and I saw selection process as a parent.
My wife was a school teacher in Israel. She described to me some of the evaluation metrics she was supposed to submit every half a year over each and every pupil she had.
I have lots of friends who are ex-8200 (high levels of hightech are surprisingly full of them actually) and this is the first time I hear about that. If you mean that selection that happens at 17yo is based on grades and teachers evaluations since kindergarten - that might be, but it sounds different than "selection starts at 4yo" which implies that 4yo kids are selected and followed all their life.
1) at age of 4 all the parents were gathered to meet kindergarten personnel. They explained that kids will play games all year. Parents were separated to groups and given logical puzzles to solve. Results were noted.
For the next two years children were playing games with changing rules to negate natural ability for specific game and to select for ability to find the best strategy within current constraints.
At the same time each parent is given a day to present his/her profession. Results are noted.
Results were passed to school class selection committee.
2) According to results in kindergarten kids are grouped in schools. Some are given opportunity to participate in electrical engineering or robotic activities (my daughter was Top 5 in Israeli competition for 6-9 years old with reduced team).
3) By the end of the second year some of the parents are notified that there will be an examination. Test is analogous to IQ (math, language, general knowledge). Graded on the curve for municipality. Top 8% are invited for one day a week for additional activities. Top 2% are invited to special schools with much more intensive program. My daughter made it to top 8%. Activities are: decision making, finding solutions within constraints, leading groups of people to solve bigger problems.
4) By the end of elementary, depending on previous results, kids get access to full math program (as opposed to reduced arithmetic). Additional activities include software and electrical engineering, robotics, chemistry, physics and so on. Parents and kids, that didn't made it to Top 8% at previous years, are not aware of these activities (invitations are sent personally).
5) At age of 15 kids pass initial evaluation by IDF. Good grades at high school will guarantee initial evaluation will be upheld. Bad grades will negatively impact the chances.
6) By the end of high school whole history and psychological profile are passed to IDF for final evaluation.
> What does this have to do with the military?
In Israel everything has everything to do with military.
One person's boring is another's career culmination. Breaking system security often consists of dead end after dead end, and even if you get a lucky break, you may hit another dead end after that. Finding an exploit often isn't enough these days, they need to be chained together to actually get somewhere interesting. Personally, it's very unrewarding (aka boring, imho) work most of the time because you don't find anything a lot of the time. (The high off of finding something is something else tho, lemme tell you.) If you're interested in the sort of work involved, http://microcorruption.com is a good CTF to start out on.
> Selection starts from age of 4
Care to share your sources for that? As far as I know most are self taught and get some further training in military.
> Boring.
It might be boring to some and might be extremely interesting for others. People who like solving puzzles and facing hard challenges usually like it. Of course, if your passion is building you wouldn't like it as you don't "build" something new.
> Usually a group of introverted young kids that look at their own shoes while talking to you, led by an extroverted young kid, that looks at your shoes while talking to you.
Have you met these people at all? Because it definitely sounds like you haven't and you just describe the typecast some movie would use.