
Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best - wglb
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530132.400-video-games-beat-interviews-to-recruit-the-very-best.html?utm_content=bufferab5af&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#.VQr6gRDF8nS
======
tptacek
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.

~~~
patio11
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 same three things to anyone who
will listen. ("How is that different from the last eight years, Patrick?"
Answer: Previously I only had two things!) We would prefer people exercise
their discretion in posting them to HN, to avoid boring anyone here.

~~~
Ao7bei3s
> HN is a community, not a marketing channel

I wish the YC people saw it like that.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
dang, "reply" is not available for your reply to A07bei3s - I suggest it
should, and not to start that conversation (agree it should be done
separately), but in case someone would like to reply to you.

~~~
nitrogen
HN pro tip: try clicking the post's timestamp (not sure if this still works).

------
ConfuciusSay
This 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 hours!

~~~
soup10
Seriously, this might be relevant to fresh out of college grads with no
industry experience. But I have nothing to prove and see this kind of stuff as
a waste of time. Why waste my efforts on contrived competitions when I can put
them into projects that actually interest me.

~~~
cpach
”Why waste my efforts on contrived competitions when I can put them into
projects that actually interest me.”

How do we know it’s contrived and competitive? Keep in mind that we’re
discussing a ”game” that’s not even released yet.

~~~
woah
A game is by definition contrived, no?

~~~
cpach
Why the tautology then? ;-)

------
krstck
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 mentioned during the announcement a
little while back. The post mentioned something like "employers will be able
to see exactly what you did when you had to create a REST service" (or
something like that). Maybe I'm just learning this concept, maybe I'm only
playing around! Will I have to have one "play" account, and one "real"
account? If I knew that I'd be judged by not only _whether_ I complete a
level, but _every single thing I tried_.... Yeah, no thanks.

~~~
autoreleasepool
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 employers.

~~~
yareally
I'd argue that if an employer cares about public repo commits to personal
repositories, one is probably better off not working for them (at least from
my perspective of an ideal employer). If an employer thinks all their
developers are infallible and instantly experts in everything they're
learning, that sounds like a pretty awful culture. I know I've made
silly/trivial commits to my github and it has yet to hurt my employability.
I'd much rather work for a company that knows its employees aren't perfect and
development can be a trial/error process at times (these kind of places do
exist and I live and work in the Mid Western US).

I do agree somewhat about game scrutinization, since it's active process by an
employer verses employers passively looking at your github profile.

~~~
deciplex
> I'd argue that if an employer cares about...

I see this argument a lot and it does have some merit, but it ignores the fact
there might be an idiot hiring manager standing between you and the job you
want. Just because a company might hire a few bad apples doesn't mean they
aren't worth working for, for pretty much the same reason a person can still
be worth hiring, even if they make a lot of commits for something simple, etc.

~~~
yareally
Perhaps, but how many hiring managers are able to scrutinize commits in that
great of detail? I'd figure anyone that could, would be in a more technical
role and likely a developer/developer manager versus HR.

------
Leon
Am I the only one that doesn't entirely enjoy gamification of everything?
What's wrong with just writing software?

~~~
sthreet
The last I heard "gamification" was simply adding achievements onto things,
such as getting work done, which I agree is awful.

This doesn't sound like that though.

------
VikingCoder
Reminds me of the "Hopeful Parents" Far Side comic.

[http://farside.wikia.com/wiki/File:Hopeful_parents.jpg](http://farside.wikia.com/wiki/File:Hopeful_parents.jpg)

------
soylentcola
My first thought when I saw this posted was "huh...kinda like The Last
Starfighter".

And sure enough, they named their company Starfighter. Xur and the Ko-dan
armada don't stand a chance.

------
patmcguire
I am lulzing a bit that the top Google result for Starfighter starts "Official
website for Starfighter, an erotic sci-fi m/m webcomic" Kind of like when
Django Unchained came out and it got a lot harder to debug one of my
projects...

~~~
tptacek
You figured us out; the other problem domain besides security in Starfighter
is sci-fi porn.

~~~
tomjen3
Well some porn sites have started to advertise their own jobs on their front
pages so there is a market.

------
bcg1
I like the idea, although personally I wouldn't be excited about being
"interviewed" like this. I am supportive of its existence however because it
has definite upsides (i'm sure there are more, just enumerating a few):

1) eliminates some cultural/gender/language/fashion/appearance/disability
biases

2) its not subjective

3) no difference between local and out-of-town candidates

I'm glad that the toolbox for candidate search is expanding. I hope one day
employers might be able to ask candidates which form of "interview" they
prefer to have so that candidates can best demonstrate what they excel at in a
way that is most suitable to them.

~~~
tptacek
The biggest misconception we've managed to foster about what we're doing is
that Starfighter is a form of interview. It isn't. At all. A better way to
think about it is that it's a sort of Venn intersection between "Github
resume", "Coursera course", "Dwarf Fortress", and "recruiting firm".

Our crusade against the tech job interview is roughly analogous to Google's
"organizing all of the world's information". It's a mission statement, but it
isn't a description of our first offering.

That said: the technology we're working on ports beautifully to actual
interview processes (it came from a successful process I built at Matasano).
We're also very happy to talk to companies building hiring processes and
evangelize and help. Companies with smart, modern hiring processes are
especially fertile ground for what we're doing, so we'd like to help more of
them come into being!

~~~
ZebraCakes
Will Starfighter be focusing mostly on security? That seems to be most of the
examples that I find, and it's not a field I'm terribly interested in. I love
the idea though, and would like to see it applied to other areas.

~~~
tptacek
Security is the through-line of the game; it gives us structure, incentives,
little dopamine hits, and makes it so that the systems we're building reward
exploration. But the game is not _about_ security; it's about programming and
interacting with complex systems.

If you're a software developer with no security domain expertise, one benefit
of goofing around with Starfighter is that you'll come out knowing a lot more
about software security. But it's not a tool for getting people security jobs.

It'll make a little more sense when Erin posts the game details.

~~~
tomjen3
Yes please, post the details.

------
sputknick
Would this be a good way to teach my son technical skills? He's 6 years old,
homeschooled and is interested in technology. He's already figured out how to
bipass the parental controls on his Kindle. We're trying to figure out how to
stimulate that desire when you can't read well yet.

~~~
patio11
Geek to geek and parent to parent: honestly, no. Can I recommend Besiege? It
doesn't require literacy. It has the same sort of freeform expressiveness
you're allowed to do in Minecraft. "Syntax" errors are inherently fun rather
than demotivating. There's fun, rewarding visual feedback for success.

It doesn't teach programming qua programming, but it is almost perfect for a
gateway drug into engineering. (You get to build catapults! And airplanes! And
catapults _which fire airplanes_!)

~~~
tptacek
Teenagers, though: I wish I had excellent CTFs when I was growing up.

~~~
andars
As a teenager: yes. I am working through microcorruption right now and loving
it. Starfighter is vey exciting. Thank you

~~~
tptacek
\o/

------
matt_s
Having worked on an applicant testing and tracking system in the past, it was
a decent business case to operate because a single company has a job type with
100's of openings and high attrition so it helped screen people. In that case
it is self-serving and you know if someone is applying twice (SS Number or
other identifier) to try and ace the test.

If Starfighter is open, there are people out there that will try to game the
system ("game the game" doesn't sound right.) If someone wants to be a level
50 app_coder, they could have a pre-made sequence to follow to do that. Much
like in a MMORPG where you have helpers level up a character or a "mule" for
hand-me-downs.

Interviewing candidates last year showed no hesitation on their part to share
info with each other or their recruiters. How will Starfighter prevent player
"cheating" or knowing the route to leveling? How will content be updated or
dynamic?

This is a promising thing for software geeks in general, can't wait to try it
out. I started playing Microcorruption and if this is similar to that, it will
be fun.

~~~
MichaelGG
This is my major concern, but they've said that it's easier to learn the
skills than cheat. I'm don't know how, but it's something they're obviously
concerned about.

------
strags
> Of 12224 players, just 182 passed the hardest level. The firm will get in
> touch with these elite players and help place them with one of their
> clients, who pay Starfighter a fee.

As player #181 out of those #182, I'm excited :)

------
Everhusk
Here is an example of one of their games:
[https://microcorruption.com/login](https://microcorruption.com/login) Love
the Cy Yombinator part haha

~~~
bentcorner
I've played a few rounds of this and love it. As far as I've gotten, it's been
refreshing to work on a machine where everything is "all there". Too often
there are black boxes that contain too much magic, or just too many layers of
abstraction to efficiently reason about something.

------
waspleg
Because IT worker shortage, right? (Now with more flaming hoops!!)

~~~
patio11
Companies which are satisfied with their ability to hire and employees who are
satisfied with their ability to find jobs don't have to even care we exist,
though they're certainly welcome to play our games.

Sadly, many companies are dissatisfied with their ability to hire and many
qualified engineers are dissatisfied with their ability to secure desirable
jobs. In economics, they call this a market failure. In CS, a search problem.
In business, "a shedload of money available for the taking."

In Starfighter, I guess we categorize that as "the mid-boss."

------
vskarine
Great idea. I loved Microcorruption. But please please don't call it video
game! Average person reading this would think this is some sort of World Of
Warcraft type game and stuff like that but this is more of a programming
competition.

------
ezdiy
While the efforts of Matasano to make wargaming cool and hip again certainly
is commendable, I think HR drones of the world also appreciate a game of
"pretend to be sociable teamplayer/brogrammer".

Too often hackers don't get the job because of being overqualified and prima-
donna, rather than lack of technical skill - a game teaching/testing the art
of office politics could be applicable to wider market [outside of infosec].

tl;dr: Perhaps less of
[http://alexnisnevich.github.io/untrusted/](http://alexnisnevich.github.io/untrusted/)
and more of EVE online.

~~~
tptacek
Those employers aren't going to be our clients.

------
32bitkid
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.

~~~
jameshart
I've learned to be cautious whenever anybody says "You can tell a lot about a
person by..."

You probably can't. You can probably justify a lot of preconceptions about a
person. But unless you've done statistical studies that demonstrate high
correlation between what you're testing, what you think you're observing, and
what you're actually looking for, then no - no you can't tell a lot.

Young male candidate, lets a big stack build up on one side, then clears the
lot down with a couple of well-placed four-long blocks down the edge. Shows an
easy confidence, clearly worth considering for the role.

Female candidate, lets a big stack build up on one side, what is she doing?
Does she even know how this game works? Then she drops a four-long down the
side and clears some rows. Huh - lucky break.

"Not that Tetris would be the only input into the decision, but it was a
thing."

Hmm.

------
westoncb
My sci-fi scale projection/evolution of this concept: because the things we do
at work aren't intrinsically unenjoyable to begin with, but the way we think
about them has the potential to make them feel that way—slow fusion of games
that resemble work and work itself produces games that do work, and the
distinction between the two is forgotten, a relic from a cruder era.

Seems possible since the activity in games (for all the examples I can think
of) has a pretty strong relation to 'work' activities to begin with: puzzle
solving, mastering agility-dependent procedures, military stuff, social
finesse, exploring etc. —though typically it's more 'primordial work'
(exploring, hunting/gathering), which makes sense since atm we'd be putt off
by something that resembled contemporary jobs too much. Dislike of one's work
is not pervasive in human cultures/history.

~~~
pmiller2
>My sci-fi scale projection/evolution of this concept: because the things we
do at work aren't intrinsically unenjoyable to begin with, but the way we
think about them has the potential to make them feel that way—slow fusion of
games that resemble work and work itself produces games that do work, and the
distinction between the two is forgotten, a relic from a cruder era.

There was an episode of Black Mirror that hinted at this.

------
swatow
I'm not very familiar with this style of programming puzzle, but I wonder how
this is less arbitrary than whiteboard coding topcoder or kaggle. I know
people who were hired based on all of these, but the latter two are different
from Starfighter in that they exist for their own reasons (competition for its
own sake, and getting answers to data science questions) with providing a
signal to employers being a side effect. I wonder if the selection bias in a
system set up for the purpose of employment will be better or worse.

------
pqomdv
This only works assuming you can't hack the game itself, publicize the
solution, or pay someone to do it for you.

~~~
patio11
We're probably one of the few games where exploiting a security vulnerability
in the game gets you Achievement Unlocked.

------
edem
I wonder whether the name has something to do with the movie "The last
Starfighter":
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/)

