Comment by Chirael | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Chirael | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's from the length of the message or the general impressiveness of the project, but the first thought that came to mind was, "Wow, I'd have to be unemployed to have enough time to work on this - there's no way I could tackle these challenges in the real world otherwise."

Worse, if this is something that's designed to showcase one's technical skills to potential employers, I don't imagine there's a way for the system to distinguish between "took a long time solving challenges because just not smart enough" vs. "took a long time solving challenges because have a day job and a life outside of work/tech".

Since this is designed, essentially, to showcase how smart someone is to potential employers, assuming solving time is a factor, it's almost better not to compete until you know you'll definitely have lots of time to devote to it, because otherwise there is the risk of taking too long and looking not-good.

I'll add it to the long list of "things I really, really wish I had time for" - or I'll assign it to clone #1023 once that becomes viable :-/

We want it to be playable by people who have demanding commitments like families, jobs, etc. This affects our level design (the first six will actually time out after 30 minutes; they're beatable with the right script in seconds or minutes after you get it working or by hand in ~10 with play at least as good as mine) and how we go about executing on the business.

Ultimately the mechanics of our matchmaking come down to "Starfighter spits a heck of a lot of signal about you at Thomas/Erin/Patrick; we try to decide if it makes sense to introduce to to clients and, if so, to which." All of us are working parents. We will certainly not penalize people for prioritizing piano lessons over being one of the first 5 people to crack a new level.

I won't commit to "I'll never look at time between a level is first opened and when it is solved" but, as somebody who has fed his family with code for as long as I've had a family, that strikes me as being among the least interesting things I could possibly learn about an engineer's ability.

Presumably you're allowed multiple tries, on the challenges that time out?

Yes -- you get infinite resets almost anywhere. (They're presently rate limited to about ~5 a minute.)

After para 1, I was going to ask "what's to stop someone from tossing a solution in a pastebin and sharing it around?" Related, "what's to stop someone from sharing the questions ahead of time?"

From the second, it sounds like you guys will seek out the top performers and weed out the bozos. I like it! Are you looking at a traditional recruiter fee model or something else? Apologies if this is posted somewhere else.

The big problem isn't some bozo posting it to pastebin, it's shady "recruiters" that are set up to make their candidates look awesome. This is extremely difficult to detect without on-site validation.

I'm dumb and slow- can I still submit a solution to know if I'm correct, even if I get a dingus label?

Hiring is an incredibly difficult problem to solve at any scale, though it's different on different scales. As times goes on my impression of how hard the task is keeps shifting upwards.

It's a huge deal for both parties. I think that if there is a way to spend money and/or time to solve it, both sides can come out on top with room to spare.

There's plenty of evidence that both sides are willing to invest a lot in it. For employers that's easily measurable in fees they pay for recruiting services (which usually suck), for referrals and such. For Applicants, it's harder to say. But, people do whole degrees and certifications in order to appeal to employees. Often that stuff is at a total tangent to acquiring useful skills or pursuing interest. It's basically time an money invested in being (more easily) hirable.

Basically, anything that can improve hiring meaningfully may be worth this kind of big investment for an employee as well as an employer. One way it could pay off is higher salary. A higher quality, de-risked hire is worth more.

I think one of the things that rely needs to happen though is that applicants need to be able to evaluate their chances. Spending 3 days interviewing may be no big deal in the context of a job that will last 3 years, but it is in the context of some unknowable probability of getting said job. A third party would probably be helpful here.

Not exactly what you are looking for, but maybe close; check http://InterviewKickstart.com.

I believe that most engineers fail in interviews not because they are incapable, but because they underestimate the prep required. And prep is difficult for experienced engineers because the employers expect a lot of academic stuff which they have forgotten and need to refresh in a short time.

We hence designed a solid program, which takes you through interview important CS in less than two months. We are having fantastic results with that. Good Engineers who would normally not crack into stellar companies, are now cracking in.

This way, candidates don't need additional expensive degrees and employers waste less time hiring . At scale, this is one way to fix the hiring problem.

If we get this right, it will hopefully be the case that we eventually have so much content that most people won't ever get through all of it.

I don't think you have much to worry about in chapter 1, though.

I think you're looking at Starfighter as a much more adversarial thing than it's designed to be. From what they've said, it's my impression that it's supposed to be a fun challenge that demonstrates marketable skills, not a pop quiz. I don't think they intend to grade you on whether you spend all your time on it or do it casually or whatever.

> "took a long time solving challenges because have a day job and a life outside of work/tech"

What's the problem with just saying that? "I worked on this during my commute to work" or "I did this cool thing on my weekends" or "I tinkered with this in the evenings"

There is a lot more you can do with 1h per day than you think. If you're consistent.

Hell, I am currently making decent money on the side with book sales by working on writing and marketing for about an hour a day. My biggest problem has gone from "Fuck I have no time" to "Fuck, I've run out of ideas to try".

”There is a lot more you can do with 1h per day than you think. If you're consistent.”

I’ll second that. This fact is a great opportunity e.g. for people who get bored on their train commute or similar.

> There is a lot more you can do with 1h per day than you think. If you're consistent.

Or, for some of us, there's a lot more you can do with 1h per day than you think, if you're willing to let that one hour consume your thoughts for the rest of the time you're awake. That's much more my concern than anything else --- when I'm at work, I need to think about work.

I felt the exact same way when reading the email. To me it sounded like each level is a sizeable/realistic project for which most companies would probably pay people to develop.

You found us out! This is actually an evil scheme we've cooked up to provide YC companies with free trading platform implementations crowdsourced from unwitting Starfighter participants!

So it turns out that Ender's Game is actually kind of 'the sharing economy'!

I know you're kidding, but wasn't that sort of the plot of "The Last Starfighter"? Now I know why you call it that. Heh.

By the time Alex leaves for space he is not unwitting, he has accepted that the bad guys that followed the good guy recruiter will try to kill him and his family regardless of the choice he makes.

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