Video games beat interviews to recruit the very best

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.

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.

I'm only asking because if it's actually a fun standalone game (independent from the job hunt aspect) this is going happen.

More specifically, are you planning to use this to eventually teach very specific skills (i.e. you'd use Starfighter to learn a specific new programming language?)

P.s. Incredibly excited about this. The last time two heroes of the programming community built something together, we got StackOverflow!

They're going to have a tough road ahead of them selling everyone on that idea, both employers and potential employees. But if they get some high profile success stories, it's possible. Hiring is faddish, there's no reason these guys can't leverage that to their benefit.

Personally, I think it's really cool they're trying this. And that the two HN posters I disagree with the most often (maybe because they post so often) are the ones doing a startup I think is really interesting. They've chosen a domain area that can have huge leverage effects on the industry as a whole (and thus the economy as a whole) if it works. I dunno if they're thinking of it like that, or would admit it if they are, but it's one of those frighteningly ambitious ideas.

Are you satisfied with they way hiring works today? If not, how do you propose it could be improved?

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.

This doesn't sound like that though.

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!

Knack, the other company mentioned in the article, seems to have profiles with pictures and names that I assume are visible to hiring managers and others. In my opinion that's a bad move. I want to see a completely objective view of how a candidate is performing without age/experience/appearance getting in the way. These gaming funnels aren't perfect solutions but they are certainly a step in the right direction.

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!)

In fact I would not be sad if v1 of Starfighter was playing Robot Odyssey on a web page. :-)

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."

[1] Meet the new standard; same as the old standard, and in addition to it.

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.

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

There isn't much point spending a lot of time on something if it's only going to get you an interview or two (if even that). And if I'm looking for a game I still have a lot of stuff in my Steam account from bundles that I haven't had time to play.