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I'm the third person to finish all the current Stockfighter levels. (I also coded a MineCraft visualizer, a physical hardware stock trading device with an ESP86
by danielvf 11y ago
I'm the third person to finish all the current Stockfighter levels. (I also coded a MineCraft visualizer, a physical hardware stock trading device with an ESP8622 plus cardboard and duct tape, and helped organize PVP games.) I had fun.
When I first finished, the challenges had just launched and the Stockfighter team was busy putting out fires. I think they switched to recruiting mode about a month later.
Patrick of Starfighter sent me an email with an invitation to have a phone call. We talked about the game, then about a job opportunity. If I had been looking for a job, the discussed company sounded great - a distributed team and interesting problems to solve.
I think they spend a week on recruiting, a week on signing up companies, a week on coding the site, and a week on other stuff before cycling back again. This means that it may be awhile from the time you "win" to the time someone gets in touch with you.
Both the players and the hiring companies are high quality. Last time I checked, less than 1% of the people who completed the first level actually finished the last. It seems to be a pretty strong filter.
Pros: Fun game, good hiring companies, great players. Cons: I would not expect to be hired right away if I was needing a job.
- djb_hackernews 11y agoSo you play the game (proving your talents by finishing) and then start from square one in the companies interview pipeline? I thought the whole point was to solve that problem?
- matheist 11y agoNo, the way it worked for me was that I had a short non-technical chat with an internal recruiter and then we went straight to an onsite interview.
- djb_hackernews 11y agoThat sounds exactly like square one in the interview process...
- matheist 11y agoNo, square one would have been several phone screens if they liked my resume at all. So it got me to around square four or five.
- mrfusion 11y agoThey should also least guarantee no whiteboard coding if you pass the game. That would be worthwhile.
- tptacek 11y agoI would love to guarantee things like that. In fact: I'd love to guarantee no whiteboard coding for anyone, because whiteboard coding is stupid. But we're just a goofy game company right now, not a force of nature. Generally: if you're not into the CTF stuff for its own sake, because you like doing this kind of thing for fun, we're not asking you to be involved. We hate the idea of being another hoop to jump through. If you dig CTF stuff and you're looking for a new gig, we're working on trying to be as helpful as possible for your job search. We're still figuring a lot of this stuff out.
- jgalt212 11y ago> because whiteboard coding is stupid not so. I've found it's an effective way to not only judge how people think, but also how they communicate and respond to live feedback.
- tptacek 11y agoI've been interviewing developers since 1996. Everyone who has ever done a whiteboard interview says this. Are you interviewing people for some kind of live coding game show? If so: I concede your point.