7 ms·
This is our perpetual messaging conundrum: are we a game company or a recruiting company? Yes. When we talk to our clients, we're a recruiting company which u
by patio11 10y ago
This is our perpetual messaging conundrum: are we a game company or a recruiting company? Yes.
When we talk to our clients, we're a recruiting company which uses online challenges to a) source and b) pre-qualify very good engineering candidates.
When we talk to engineers, we're a company which makes fun engineering-y things you can do on the Internet. (Hack a stock exchange through it's REST API! Code a market maker! Buffer overrun a C program running on an AVR microprocessor to corrupt a FIX message to steal a billion dollars!) And we can also, potentially, introduce you to a job if that is interesting to you. Our estimation is approximately 95% of our users are not in the market for a job at this exact moment in time.
You can see the two-sided messaging on our website:
For companies: https://www.starfighters.io/approach https://www.starfighters.io/approach
For engineers: https://www.starfighters.io/players https://www.starfighters.io/players
- nickpsecurity 10y agoOk, so I wasn't crazy thinking there were two companies with the name haha. That's a very interesting approach to talent selection. Sounds like an evolution over the programming puzzle's in interviews except not a waste of time or stressful. I like that you make it fun and extremely relevant to security skills at same time. Extra props for the Bobby Tables reference. Thanks for the answer!
- davidw 10y ago> Yes Which one pays the bills - or will pay them? Given this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11692083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11692083 I'm kind of curious how you guys - who have a boatload of startup/bootstrap smarts - managed to go off "into the weeds" of geeking out on the tech and ignoring the company's business. If you want to talk about it, of course. Good luck in any case!
- chrisseaton 10y agoI understand the trading game aspect and the recruiting aspect... but then why is it called 'Starfighter'? That name doesn't seem to be related to either and makes the think there's some third aspect I don't know about.
- dragonwriter 10y agoBecause The Last Starfighter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter
- nickpsecurity 10y agoLet me try this one cuz I was hoping tptacek and patrick were cool enough for it to be true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7NaxBxFWSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7NaxBxFWSo They used a game to recruit warriors to protect the galaxy or universe or something. Lost with my memory. I remember loving the movie when I was younger. Gotta rewatch it some time.