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Announcing Starfighter

• bhayden 12y ago
  I wonder if this was inspired in part by the recent Alan Turing movie :)
  • cpach 12y ago
    How so?
    • bhayden 12y ago
      There's a chuck of the movie where they're recruiting potential code breakers by putting a difficult puzzle in the newspaper and telling readers if they can solve it in under 5 minutes to apply to the job. Same sort of premise here.
      • cpach 12y ago
        Ah, cool. I haven’t yet seen the movie. Only a few weeks left till the video release :)
    • jacquesm 12y ago
      It has a scene in it where recruits are approached using a cross-word puzzle in a newspaper followed up by a much tougher test.
• sgt 12y ago
  Would like to try this as an employer, particularly targeted towards developers here in South Africa.
• lexcorvus 12y ago
  This looks fantastic. One possible wrinkle: I predict that, although top-performing Starfighters will be a diverse lot, they will lack "diversity". I hope the Starfighter founders have a plan to push back against the carping complainers a venture such as this is likely to attract. (My suggestion is to point out that CTFs are the ultimate expression of "Shut up and show us the code." [1]) [1]: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6642 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6642
  • bdavisx 12y ago
    I don't understand your point. I've worked with mediocrity far too often in the programming world, and outright incompetence as well. These kinds of contests/games are designed to weed that out. If you're talking about the "winners" having personality issues, then hopefully that will be caught in the interview process. Perhaps I'm completely missing your point though.
    • neilparikh 12y ago
      I think they were suggesting that the distribution of the top performers might not be "diverse" (for some meaning of that term), which would lead to criticism (like how people criticize companies for not having a diverse workforce, or conferences for not having a diverse speakers list).
• tptacek 12y ago
  I'm all, involved? and stuff? You can, like, ask us stuff, I guess. Let me answer the most frequent questions we're getting right here: "CTF" stands for "Capture The Flag". Conventionally, it's a contest with a collection of "flags" each of which is guarded by a programming puzzle; teams of people compete to collect flags. What we're doing is not a conventional CTF, but if you want to get the flavor of what we're doing (without the whole game dynamic), check out MICROCORRUPTION.COM, which is a more conventional CTF we ran last year. Security is one of two problem domains we're starting with. But this isn't a "security recruiting" service, and our take on security uses it as a venue for systems and network programming, not for the minutia of SQL query quoting rules.
  • revorad 12y ago
    Congrats on this new venture, looks fun. What do you expect will be the effect of this on hiring women? Do you have any relevant data from microcorruption (what % players were women)? It'd be great if Erin could also chime in.
    • elptacek 12y ago
      We do not have access to the µc data, any longer. That belongs to Matasano. I am now sad that I did not ask myself the same question and pay closer attention while I did. However, this is what I am hoping and dreaming for: that work-sample testing will completely level the playing field. Regardless of gender, age, or origin, if you can do the work, you should get the job. I believe in this so strongly that I am dedicating the rest of my career to work sample testing and, eventually, training. Getting women to play, though? I'm not so great at marketing, so still working on that. I am writing a blog post to go up later in the week that addresses some of the issues in hiring women, based on my personal experiences and those of my female peers. The tone of the post is as politically neutral as it can be. My hope is to draw out some productive dialog rather than piling on stink for flies. Specifically, vast majority of the people in my professional network, male, female or in between, are genuinely interested in addressing the "women-hiring problem," but they avoid any discussion of it because ... well, it's always covered in flies. The challenge will be to make just enough of a stink that it draws attention and not flies.
• zedpm 12y ago
  I'm excited; tptacek seems to have put a lot of thought into the hiring process and approaches to improve it. I'm in.
• sergiotapia 12y ago
  What skillset do participants have to have to play this game? Is it purely security stuff?
  • tptacek 12y ago
    Enjoy programming in any language. Be fearlessly willing to pick up programming in new languages. No security knowledge is required. Security is a backdrop for what we're doing, but not the only backdrop; it is one of two problem domains we're starting out with. We use security mostly as a venue for systems programming.
    • errantspark 12y ago
      This has piqued my interest more than any other similar challenge/game I've seen in the past. What's the second problem domain you're starting out with? I hope it's to do with graphics/parallelized matrix math sort of stuff.
      • tptacek 12y ago
        We'll send a reading list out to the subscriber list, sometime soon. It'll be pretty obvious from that.
• davidw 12y ago
  > We’re not here to fix the technical interview: we’re here to destroy it, and create something new and better in its place. That sounds pretty bold - some of us are kind of happy to go in and do an interview and talk about our experience and not spend a lot of time playing a game. I could see the game as more likely to work for people with lots of time and not as much experience or proficiency with the typical process. I could see it working very well indeed to find people who might otherwise have been ignored. In any event, it sounds cool, and I wish you guys the best of luck with it!
  • tptacek 12y ago
    If the only reason you'd mess around with Starfighter is to get a job, we've done something wrong. This isn't one of those sites where you solve discrete programming puzzles for badges, or in lieu of a whiteboard interview.
    • ascendantlogic 12y ago
      I'm super excited about it even though I'm happy where I am. I've been doing devops for a while now and I can feel my other dev skills slowly atrophying. This will be (hopefully) a great way to help keep those skills as current as possible.
    • paulhauggis 12y ago
      If it's not going to help me get a job (and increase my exposure to companies that might look at my stats), then why, as a developer, would I play it? I know you mean well, but I improve my development skills by developing applications.
      • tptacek 12y ago
        (a) For the same reasons you'd noodle with any other game (b) For similar reasons to the ones that make you noodle with a programming language you doubt you'll ever use in production (c) For the same reason anyone ever did anything with a BeBox (d) Because for some of the technologies/concepts we work with, our dumb game will be the easiest way to get your hands dirty with them.
• Oculus 12y ago
  Will the CTFs be security focused or more non-traditional, like Stripe's distributed systems CTF?
  • patio11 12y ago
    Starfighter is not a security company. We're going to test for a wide range of skill sets. These may include web app security but will not be limited to that. You can reasonably assume "What skills does the market want to hire for?" is a good proxy for what we'll be assessing for. I love security, but that's 0.01% of the software market. We have... grander ambitions.
• tomjakubowski 12y ago
  Exciting stuff! It's ambitious but with the talented team behind it I'm confident they can pull it off. > We come here not to serve technology recruiters, but instead to replace them with a small shell script.
• cheriot 12y ago
  I wonder if the authors are fans of Stargate Universe. The show's premise involves a key character being identified by success on a puzzle embedded in a video game.
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  • binarymax 12y ago
    I presume it is based on the film "The Last Starfighter" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/ - in which a teen perfects an arcade game, and is then selected as a pilot for the actual spacecraft.
  • ulysses 12y ago
    I'm sure the name is from a much earlier movie (mid-80s), The Last Starfighter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Starfighter
• ChargingWookie 12y ago
  Awesome, I've been waiting for something like this That being said, I've got a couple questions Will all the CTFs be security focused? One of the most common problems coursera ran into was people copying the assignments of other people. How do you intend to prevent copying for the CTFs? I see that you mentioned you're not going to DMCA tutorials or Let's Plays and instead track their every iteration on the code. I guess you can get rid of outright copying that way but I'd love to hear your other strategies. Other than that this seems like a really interesting way to do recruiting. I can't wait to see the actual CTFs. Also you've got a tiny typo in the WHY IS STARFIGHTER THE RIGHT TEAM FOR THIS? section: "I have a folder in Gmail saving messages from geeks who used by career advice or salary negotiation tips to their advantage." I think the by should be my
• japesinator 12y ago
  I’m curious as to how much this will select for people with free time. Many of the CTFs I’ve played in required a quite non-trivial amount of investment of time (which I didn’t mind, as they’ve been quite enjoyable), but there are certainly people who can’t afford n dozen hours to solve problems due to family/work/other obligations. I do think this is significantly better than the alternative, but I’m also concerned that it will just create a new class of people who do unfairly poorly in the hiring process.
  • elptacek 12y ago
    Good point. Something I'll keep in mind as we go forward. I got so far through microcorruption and ran out of time. Thanks.
  • j2kun 12y ago
    Why is it unfair to hire people who spend large fractions of their free time honing their skill over those who don't? I mean, if it shows in the quality of their work... Edit: I know this comment is unpopular, but every craft industry does work like this to some extent. As a programmer you have a portfolio, and all else being equal those who spend their free time coding have larger and more impressive portfolios. That's the career advice you always give someone on getting their feet into the industry: code more on your own.
    • japesinator 12y ago
      Because free time is something disproportionately available to the privileged. I grew up in a household where money, even if it wasn't abundant, wasn't a huge concern, so I could spend my time outside of school learning math/computers. I've never had to keep a part-time job to put food on the table, spend anhours walking because I couldn't afford gas, or generally be forced to trade my time for money at a terrible ratio. There are people who have, many of whom are likely a better candidate than me, who might just not have the time or mental energy to get home and spend 6 hours hacking on microcontrollers.
      • j2kun 12y ago
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• jasonswett 12y ago
  Is it targeted to devs looking for full-time work only or will it make sense for freelancers as well?
  • pakled_engineer 12y ago
    If the scores/achievements can be public accessed then you can use it as part of your portfolio when bidding on contracts.
• hundt 12y ago
  From the blog post it sounds like you primarily plan to be used as a "funnel" for employers that engage you, where you are like a super-recruiter bringing candidates that you have qualified yourself. Do you plan for there to be an option for employers that aren't asking you to refer candidates to still see some view of the performance of a player? Either by paying some smaller fee or by allowing players to have public profiles with some sort of scores?
  • tptacek 12y ago
    There is a long-term PVP element to what we're doing, so we want as many players as we can get. We'll play with a number of different ways of matching talent to very smart employers, but our #1 overriding dominating design goal has to be to make players comfortable, so the game works.
• jameshart 12y ago
  One of the conventional complaints against CS-algorithm-heavy interviewing is that companies ask all these tough questions about distributed cache latency in red-black tree optimizations, then once they hire people, they're just bashing out PHP and MySQL. How do you make sure that the companies hiring your services have challenges that live up to the skills you're selecting for?
  • knd775 12y ago
    Honestly, they probably don't care. If the company is willing to pay, they'll be willing to send them candidates. On the other hand, they may want to be a bit more selective to keep great programmers coming to the site.
  • jameshart 12y ago
    Actually, I guess there's the fact that you're hiring someone who you know is kind of addicted to an online game... and if you don't find anything more interesting for them to do, they'll probably go right back into it.
  • patio11 12y ago
    I've got nothing against CRUD apps, because they make the world go round, but it is unlikely that Starfighter will choose to send our candidates to firms making CRUD apps. The difference will be fairly obvious when you see our client roster. We're geeks with good taste for the kind of jobs a geek would actually want to have. (Sorry for being coy here. Don't want to jinx contract signing.)
    • staunch 12y ago
      The problem is that the great hackers are already inundated with unattractive job offers. Offers that seem very attractive to people who are not them. If you had a deal with Google/Apple/Dropbox/NSA that said "If we find someone who can complete this challenge, you agree you hire them at $500k/year + $100k signing bonus doing work on Skunkworks Project X" you would have an incredible flow of hackers. No one has created a marketplace for world class experts and yet these positions and people exist. Congratulations on launching and good luck!
• mathattack 12y ago
  Hidden in the article is a real gem: The science of hiring practices is settled: work-sample tests are the most effective way to assess skill in potential hires. This is one of the most obvious, yet under-applied truisms in hiring. If they can apply Starfighter beyond Games, or enable non-Game skills to shine while working on Games, it will be industry changing.
  • fixxer 12y ago
    Makes me miss prop trading, where a tax return basically settled it. Now, job hunting ruins a weekend.
• chipsy 12y ago
  Sounds very competitive, achiever-focused. Do all organizations want programmers who are viciously determined to win? Does that lead to society-efficient solutions? (To elaborate a little, Richard Bartle noticed four types of players of MUD. Achievers are just one.)
  • splawn 12y ago
    IIRC, The three other types are Explorers, Socialites, and Griefers
    • dsp1234 12y ago
      The 4th is killers, not griefers. Killers prefer playing specifically against other players. Killers are generallyl looking for the challenge/reward of fighting and winning against other players, rather than necessarily trying to grief someone. Though obviously getting killed in PVP can sometimes feel like griefing.
  • tptacek 12y ago
    We want the Explorers more than the Achievers, but we want to exploit Achiever impulses where they exist to keep the game interesting.
• ratsimihah 12y ago
  Is it significantly different from topcoder?
  • patio11 12y ago
    Yes. I don't know how to describe how until you've actually played it. You know how World of Warcraft and Tetris are both games? Starfighter is a game, too. We're very much not Tetris. Or Topcoder.
• hodder 12y ago
  I am a beginner programmer, but I am curious what this is all about so I have signed up. Hopefully I can learn something from this even if I am just am just a fighter but no star.
• icco 12y ago
  I get what they're trying to do, but did this read like a rant from a crazy person to anyone else? Just the first header block read like they were creating some kind of videogame company... and then finally at the bottom of that text block, "Oh, it has something to do with interviews..." and then halfway down the next section, "oh, it's that kind of CTF". Anyway, seems cool if they can make applying for jobs more interesting.
  • marssaxman 12y ago
    Entirely insane, yes! After reading this article, I have no real idea what they are doing, but it appears that they are related to an entire genre of games I didn't know about.
    • 001spartan 12y ago
      I think it's primarily written to a different audience than yourself, then. I mean that in the best of ways. As an infosec sort, it came across pretty clearly what they intended. I think it's just a culture difference between information security, and the rest of IT.
      • marssaxman 12y ago
        Ah, infosec. Yes, it was clear that it came from some other part of the computer universe, but I had no idea which one.
        • 001spartan 12y ago
          Yeah, for us (infosec) hackers it can be easy to forget there are people in IT who don't understand our culture/terminology sometimes.
  • ChristianGeek 12y ago
    It read like an infomercial to me...I closed the page after the first two sections.
• bearclough 12y ago
  Wonderful, let me add this to the list of things I need to do in my spare time to remain a hire-able resource .... GitHub, Meetups, reading hacker news, preparing for puzzle interviews, , HackerRank, conquering a CTF. Jeez, can we say dance monkey dance.
  • achompas 12y ago
    I think patio11 and tptacek hope this can replace those things, so that you can work towards a new gig on your own terms (instead of going through the usual song-and-dance).
    • bearclough 12y ago
      I admit it's a different song-and-dance but it's still a song-and-dance.
    • jonny_eh 12y ago
      http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/
    • digisth 12y ago
      There are lots of ways to acquire and prove skill and knowledge; ultimately, they are all monkey dances to at least some degree. Until we develop a way to read minds (and it'd be great to also do the reverse: give everyone the ability to insta-learn, Matrix-style), we will continue to have to use some kind of signaling mechanism. Right now, there are many of them, all with various levels of difficulty, entrance requirements, and resource requirements. Many are only available to those with various types of scarce resources: free time, supportive parents and family members, and money. Let's list some examples: - get a degree in any subject (money, family support) - get a degree in a more pertinent subject (money, family support) - continually learn new theory/techniques/technologies on your own (time) - write FLOSS code (time) - get industry certifications (money) - get achievements with HackerRank and other 'challenge' services (time) - go to interviews, answer questions (time, possibly others) Not to mention all of the 'administrative' things people do to communicate their capabilities (as another comment noted. Those take time, too.) Something like this seems like it is taking a stab at replacing at least a few of these, but of course it still requires at least some extra resources (in this case, time.) The go-at-your-own-pace nature of it definitely works in its favor. Things like this evolve similar to technology, and its cycles of consolidation and deconsolidation; where once we may have used separate devices (for music, video, reading, etc.), we now use just a couple, or increasingly, one. Perhaps we could think of things like this as the next steps in 'skill and knowledge acquisition consolidation.' Hopefully, things like this will reduce the need to spread efforts so thinly, and save us more of those scarce resources. So while it may be another monkey dance, perhaps it will allow us to dance less, but in a more focused way. Or at least stay on a smaller number of simian dance floors. If nothing else, it'll be another fun way to learn new things and experiment with theory/techniques/technology you ordinarily wouldn't.
• bradleyjg 12y ago
  There's a small typo that caught my eye. In the 'Why is the Starfighter the Right Team' section, 4th paragraph, 2nd sentence "I have a folder in Gmail saving messages from geeks who used by career advice or salary negotiation ..." It should be my instead of by.
• bearclough 12y ago
  Wonderful, let me add this to the list of things I need to do in my spare time to remain a hire-able resource .... GitHub, Meetups, reading hacker news, preparing for puzzle interviews, , HackerRank, conquering a CTF. Jeez, can we say dance monkey dance.
• marssaxman 12y ago
  I find this announcement fascinatingly incomprehensible; it clearly emerges from a slice of the software universe quite distant from mine. The use of the acronym "CTF" suggests that the authors are very familiar with this genre of game; but how exactly does it work? What does it have to do with programming? I guess they are making programming into a game (?) and this somehow has something to do with hiring?
  • patio11 12y ago
    A CTF is a game that one plays by programming. I wish I could point you to competing CTFs that you can sign up and play right now, but most disappear from the Internet because they are fiendishly difficult to keep running. Ask me (or any team that has shipped one) why if you're curious. One example would be MicroCorruption. https://microcorruption.com https://microcorruption.com Thomas and Erin helped build it back when they were still at Matasano. It's a hybrid of a game -- there's a narrative, flavor text, a progression of difficulty, levels, a leaderboard, etc -- and a programming assignment. The programming assignment happens to be some variant of "Here's assembly code; find an input which exploits the vulnerability we planted in it." Starfighter CTFs will similarly be a game that one plays by programming. Similarities end there. We can do very interesting things with this.
    • bmelton 12y ago
      So, for those of us who fit your archetype, that mostly build web apps in high-level languages like Python, haven't touched Assembly in a decade, but do not have a team of seasoned hackers hanging out with us in our living rooms, what are the odds that we're going to be able to use it to refine our skills in isolation? I fully understand that if your company is looking for pen testers, I'm not the guy you'd hire. That's cool, but since one of the aims is developing and refining skill, how approachable is it intended to be?
      • tptacek 12y ago
        We're not looking for pentesters.
• losvedir 12y ago
  Very cool! Signed up for an invite. Couple questions: 1) Is this a Stripe-like CTF that happens over some caffeine-fueled weekend? Or is it more of an ongoing Project Euler-style drop-in-and-solve type process? I don't think I could handle the former, but the latter sounds quite enjoyable and something I might do in my free time just to learn. I did that with PE for a while since it was fun to earn completion points. 2) You mention "Let's Play" style videos. How do you make it so that the solutions aren't given away? Does each player have a customized CTF somehow?
  • patio11 12y ago
    I loved the Stripe CTF. We're not going to adopt the time-boxed model from them. Starfighter : our CTFs :: Blizzard :: Blizzard games. There's no reason for us to ever turn them off. We'll likely have a particular flagship property but we have the option of dropping a new game on the market any time we want. You don't have to rush through Starfighter games. Some people will, of course, just like there is a metagame to be the first guild on the server to complete a new raid. Players are gonna play. But if you want to pick up our CTF a year after release and just casually spend a few hours learning a new skill, you'll be able to do that, and we'll fully support you in it. How do you make it so that the solutions aren't given away? The same way you do it with math problems. Mastery of the subject material is the easiest cheat code.
    • MichaelGG 12y ago
      >The same way you do it with math problems. Mastery of the subject material is the easiest cheat code. Elaborate? Math questions are the opposite of a good example, aren't they? Even with randomized values it's fairly easy to write generic solutions. People do this even for Project Euler. How much more so for something even cooler sounding? (I'm very excited to see this project and it sounds like a lot of fun. I'd just be worried that it would end up being gamed, since the drive for cheating is so strong everywhere.)
      • tptacek 12y ago
        I actually hope this happens, and that there's a community of code sharing that forms around it.
• soneca 12y ago
  Will you (patio11, tptacek, elptacek) apply to YC someday? That would be uhm... i don't even know the right adjective.
  • tomjen3 12y ago
    Honestly they don't seem to be a good fit. I mean they are going to get in, no issue, but they already know how to run a business (charge more) and they can pretty easily get access to investors. The more interesting question is if they will ever end up teaching at YC.
• EliRivers 12y ago
  Maybe it's a British thing, but the breathless enthusiasm starts to seem a little weird by about halfway down the page.
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• otakucode 12y ago
  I'm sure you've got your own ideas for your CTFs, but if you haven't heard of them before I would recommend you check out the Matasano Crypto Challenges (cryptopals.com). They ran them privately for awhile, you just emailed them and said you wanted in and they sent you the challenges, once you emailed the answers for one batch they gave you another, etc. I've tried various 'code gaming' things before, and the Matasano challenges were, in my opinion, the best ones I've come across. (I am exempting things like Stepic's bioinformatics challenges since their main goal is to expand your knowledge of bioinformatics rather than of programming, though they do get into some advanced data structures later on)
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  • 147 12y ago
    The founders of Starfighter were the founders of Matasano.
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  • tptacek 12y ago
    We wrote the Matasano Crypto Challenges. Besides cryptography, what are some other programming problem domains you'd enjoy playing with? We're particularly interested in problem domains that are hard for ordinary programmers to pick up on a whim. We want to make it possible to seriously engage with interesting problems while in your couch with the Daily Show running in the background.
    • nulltype 12y ago
      I guess what sort of domains do people like to play around with in their own time? For games there's 3d rendering, physics and AI which seem fun (at least to me) but I'm not sure how to necessarily make fun challenges out of them. For non-direct-games things fancier AI like deep learning, audio synthesis, making compilers/parsers/transpilers, math stuff like project euler, puzzle/board game solvers/bots (https://gist.github.com/christopherhesse/51e9baf0e3d440d8afff https://gist.github.com/christopherhesse/51e9baf0e3d440d8aff...) come to mind. Some of the stuff in the 3rd stripe CTF was pretty interesting like making a search engine or dealing with distributed system consensus problems (raft). Maybe using the coolest new framework is fun for some people, like a challenge could involve angular.js so you could get some experience using it without having to go full-on side project or put it in at work without having any real idea if you should. Implementing things that you are familiar with but that you don't understand the internals of has been fun for me in the past (for instance like https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2015-02-20-lets-build-synchronized.html https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2015-02-20-lets-bui...). Maybe you always wondered how this thing works, and now you can figure it out and solve this challenge at the same time.
• oafitupa 12y ago
  You should explain what the hell is a CTF the first time you use the acronym, not later. Anyway I don't expect much from a known surveillance and Google shill (tptacek) and a Bitcoin irrational hater (patio11). These guys are insane in a bad way.
• steakejjs 12y ago
  I actually began working on the exact same thing within the last month or so in my spare time. Having competed in the CCDC for 6 years in college, I found it pretty insane when I saw that employers don't use real hardware during interviews. Looks like I picked the wrong side project now this team is working on it. However, interviews are broken enough that there is plenty of room in the space =]. Can't wait to see what you launch.
  • CamperBob2 12y ago
    Looks like I picked the wrong side project now this team is working on it. Competition is a signal that you picked the right field. Just about everybody gets this backward.
  • patio11 12y ago
    interviews are broken enough that there is plenty of room in the space Amen.
• scoj 12y ago
  Congratulations patio11, you sound excited. I am curious to see how this will work for those like yourself that make CRUD apps. I didn't go to school for programming, but self-taught. I'm afraid it'd be over my head? The best line: We haven’t done any consulting in a while. We will continue doing no consulting, to the best of our inability.
  • joshschreuder 12y ago
    I think that anyone motivated to research and work on these problems, will likely be a decent hire in most organisations. Having done other CTFs and puzzles like Matsano / Stripe's, I have found the research part is quite enjoyable. I have little to no knowledge of crypto but researching and solving some of the Matsano challenges was extremely rewarding. With that said I found the information is pretty thinly spread and it is often hard to find relevant information to the problem domain, particularly with regards to crypto, so I hope they include good starting points for problem research.
• paulhauggis 12y ago
  "You will use real technology. You will build real systems. You will face the real problems faced by the world’s best programmers building the world’s most important pieces of software." I'm wondering, what is your business model? Are the users doing free bug fixes and work for the employers while they are proving their skills?
  • patio11 12y ago
    No sane employer would want free bug fixes. Think of what that would do to their IP assignment issues alone. Our business model is explained in the post, under the heading How Will Starfighter Make Money. Briefly: we'll find the best engineers in the world, then broker their introduction to companies who want to hire them. Companies will pay us a substantial amount of money for this service.
• dataker 12y ago
  Part of the current interviewing process is Github and side-projects. I truly understand the reasons for Starfighter, but are you putting any real value behind it? I like CTF, but it's not quite the same as contributing to open source projects.
  • otakucode 12y ago
    You're quite right that a CTF is not the same as open source projects... and I thought the point of this was exactly that. People who contribute to open source projects prove they have a certain set of skills. What if you need people with a different set? What if instead of being able to learn a large codebase, it is more important that they are able to look at a problem and design an algorithm to solve it in the first place? Rarely in an open source project will you be going in and radically changing the fundamentals.
    • dataker 12y ago
      Makes sense. From that angle, we'd even see better contributions.
• apu 12y ago
  You might want to talk about the diversity benefits of this approach. In particular, it would be attractive to lots of companies if you can make a credible case for this attracting traditionally hard-to-reach demographics, and then of course assessing them more fairly.
• jakobegger 12y ago
  Reminds me of a local company who recruits employees exclusively by organizing coding contests: http://contest.catalysts.cc/en/ http://contest.catalysts.cc/en/ It works great for them, but I believe you attract a certain kind of developers with these contests; you attract people who enjoy puzzles, and people who enjoy measuring their abilities against others. It could be that those are the traits that make good employees; but I myself would never take part in such a competition. Then again, I don't actually want to work for anyone else at all.
• mallyvai 12y ago
  Looks fantastic Patrick! Your original blog post on salary negotiation actually helped lay early mental groundwork for what later became http://OfferLetter.io http://OfferLetter.io . One thing I'd love to get your thoughts on, in more detail, is how you see the product and service evolving over time, given that you're charging companies. We believe (as do our customers) that incentive alignment is extraordinarily important. By charging candidates alone, we eliminate the messy incentive dynamics that happen with companies and their sourcing channels. We can go to bat for candidates, every time, unconditionally. That simply doesn't happen under many of the traditional recruiting models. If you've found a way to subvert the original messy dynamic while still charging companies, that's wonderful. Good luck with Starfighter, super excited to see how things go!
• Chirael 12y ago
  Love the concept, can't wait to see it. I don't normally play computer games, but this sounds intriguing. One minor point: "Alt-tab over to your email and click the confirm link in the email we just sent you." If you use web-based email, that's probably Ctrl-tab :)
• rfrey 12y ago
  I'm not looking for a job and am unlikely to be, hopefully ever again. Will this be structured so I can use it as a proxy for a programming mentor? I think it would be awesome as a replacement for MOOCs, which I enjoy but find inefficient for the time invested. Books are efficient but not as much fun.
  • juliob 12y ago
    You might want to check out http://www.freecodecamp.com/ http://www.freecodecamp.com/ . I think they do pair programming
• dennisgorelik 12y ago
  Patrick, What is going to happen with Appointment Reminder now?
  • jschulenklopper 12y ago
    The answer is at the bottom of the announcement: "I have no announcement to make about my involvement with Appointment Reminder at this time. We will, naturally, continue keeping all commitments to our customers."
    • dennisgorelik 12y ago
      Thanks - I just found it myself and came back to edit my question. That's a non-answer though. Let's see how the answer about the fate of Appointment Reminder would evolve over time. In any case, that's an extra proof that being solo-founder while possible - is a disadvantage.
• alain94040 12y ago
  Hum, Thomas and Patrick working together... That by itself is worth keeping an eye on. I didn't do so well on the microcorruption game. I'm curious to see what else they can come up with, hopefully both less specialized, more generic, but also more advanced...
• anigbrowl 12y ago
  This looks very innovative; I hope it's a great success.
• fsniper 12y ago
  This whole interview process is broken. Even with this mind of ctf game, one should not be expected to race through peers with different kinds of tools. Developers are expected to build resumes at work via daily routines, then at home via github, hackerrank, side projects. System administrators are expected to do daily system administration routine, know OSes, tools, cloud/iaas/paas providers inside out and code side projects and build a coding portfolio. With years of experience, one expects to be respected and not lose time on games, tests, unwanted side projects. Interview process is built towards young gals/guys.
  • tptacek 12y ago
    What race/competition dynamics we are going to have are for the benefit of the participants. Microcorruption has been running for over a year; the first finisher finished a few days after we released it. I'd have paid very close attention to someone who finished Microcorruption yesterday, if I was still hiring for Matasano.
    • fsniper 12y ago
      I understand what you are trying to do, but that's another competition in the roots. We already have too many. GitHub, BitBucket, HackerRank, TrueAbility, Certifications, Education, Jobs. It's becoming of a norm that if someone puts more personal time to show off, they are better engineers. Also that's another wrong position in IT. You can not have personal life. I do not want to be a marketeer, I'm an engineer. If you ever ask any of us around here, perhaps most will tell you a scary story about the competition and the time constraints the competition brings on people. Eventually with every racing/gaming/ranking tool out there it's becoming to be harder to get a good position in IT without investing in more and more personal time.
      • kasey_junk 12y ago
        I suspect that the Starfighter crew's answer around this is twofold: 1) Of course there will always be other ways to get technical work. You needn't feel compelled to use their product unless you think the time input is worth the reward. 2) If they haven't made the process fun, that is something you want to spend your valuable free time on, they have failed (at least in acquiring you as a product).
• PanMan 12y ago
  patio11: Why name the company Starfighter, while the domain is startfighterS(.io)? Why not name the business Startfighters? (I understand the other domain was taken).
• andrewstuart 12y ago
  This sounds like the sort of thing that teenagers would come up with to "solve" recruiting.
  • tptacek 12y ago
    I'm going to go ahead and take that as a compliment.
    • andrewstuart 12y ago
      Yes, that makes sense.
• akavel 12y ago
  Is there any protection planned against people who would be paid to solve the puzzles on someone else's behalf, i.e. against cheating by hiring someone to "train" your account?
• serve_yay 12y ago
  Wow, what an idea. And I couldn't have more respect for the people who started it. Nice!
• sargun 12y ago
  I feel like this is an implementation of my idea here: https://medium.com/@sargun/interviews-as-a-service-dfa6d4a03401 https://medium.com/@sargun/interviews-as-a-service-dfa6d4a03... -- Or at least a competing alternative to traditional interviews.
• FLUX-YOU 12y ago
  - Do you think there will be some threshold where people get past a certain stage and then start getting offers, with nothing being offered below that? (my only experience is basic OverTheWire challenges, so not sure if this will have similar progression of 'levels') - Is it going to hurt?
  • tptacek 12y ago
    Based on my experience with the crypto challenges and Microcorruption: there will be a lot of players, and most of them will just be there to twiddle the knobs and see how things work. There will be a subset of participants for whom it's worth their time and ours to have a conversation. Our job will be to identify that subset and start that conversation.
• idibidiart 12y ago
  How about a game to discover and formally describe new problems? The ability to find new problems is just as important if not more important than the ability to solve already known problems (especially those that have been solved by others) Obviously, the ability to do both (find new problems and solve them) is the most important of all. Focusing on solving known problems is NOT that interesting... Can you imagine building an environment that allows programmers to discover and formally describe absolutely novel problems in computer science? Just curious.
• ebbv 12y ago
  This is neat, but is it really that hard for people to tell who has the skills they're looking for and who doesn't? Every developer I've interviewed it's been really obvious to me what they know and what they're bullshitting about. I guess there's value is all in assembling a pre-qualified pool for employers to recruit from, though. But in that way this is kind of like the 2015 version of CNE. Except it's free, which is good. And hopefully less miserable.
  • wglb 12y ago
    If you read http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/ http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/, you will see that this approach is looking to find folks that were not obviously good, as you say, but they found someone that is a stellar crypto breaker.
• ChuckMcM 12y ago
  And then there were four. This theme (test your coders, don't interview them) is spreading about, I keep getting spammed by them as a way to "only hire top talent!" its an interesting proposition and I can't wait to see a bit of history behind it. At the very least it will weed out people who think they are programmers when they are not.
  • jacquesm 12y ago
    It might employ programmers by people who are not.
• bayesianhorse 12y ago
  May be interesting. But the claims made in the announcement are very hard to believe. The admission of not being ready to show that the claims have been achieved aren't helping my scepticism either. Still... if it works, and is actually better than most other attempts at code-gaming this may be fun. Profitable? They will have to see.
  • tptacek 12y ago
    The origin story of this company is the application of exactly this process in a real business, to great effect.
    • mbesto 12y ago
      But it worked in a very specific context (security) and a specific company (Matasano), no? I know Stripe has done these CTFs in the past (and mostly security related), but they only spin them up on occasion. If the promise of such a technique is so effective, then why wouldn't Stripe invest the money (they've got plenty, let's be honest) in doing this all of the time? Especially given that a recruiter who would place someone at Stripe is probably taking home $20-40k on a placement. Also, what are the plans outside of security related (if any)? Can you do a CTF style process for non-security?
      • kasey_junk 12y ago
        The answer to the "why hasn't stripe done this" question is simple. They aren't in the business of doing it. You might as well ask why stripe doesn't sell database systems. I mean, they probably have some expertise in building those out as well. Stripe is going to hire a couple of hundred developers over the next decade (assuming things go well). It sounds to me like Starfighter's goals don't translate to a couple of hundred X 20-40k. They seem a touch more ambitious.
• lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  I get that this is work sample testing - but it seems to be for an extremely limited work sample. Most / much of the success of a valuable developer is not in their specific technical talent, but in areas like expounding a vision, documenting, running a team, navigating politics and fund raising. (Bit vague here I admit, personal experience of success is problem for me) Patio11 made a name for himself saying "tech is a necessary but not sufficient condition for business success - now learn about basic marketing" Something similar seems to be applied here - how can a CTF program ever handle politics or investor problems or documentation issues. Getting good technical capable people is important - but not sufficient. Will be interested in seeing the CTF program however ... Good luck.
  • thedufer 12y ago
    > expounding a vision, documenting, running a team, navigating politics and fund raising It sounds like you're mistaking "developer" for "tech startup founder". Someone looking for a developer needs at most 2 of those skills (documenting for sure, navigating politics in an organization full of bureaucracy).
• nsheth17 12y ago
  tptacek: ever heard of Cicada 3301? It's this mysterious group that has anonymously posted very involved cryptopuzzles. Not clear why, but one theory has been for recruiting people into intelligence agencies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada_3301 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada_3301 I love what you're doing but I agree with other commenters that presenting it as a game to programmers but a recruiting channel to companies might not align well. What do you do if a lot of your top players aren't interested in getting a job? There are probably exceptions, but do you think people who are good enough to beat your CTF have that much trouble getting a job?
  • tptacek 12y ago
    ---> VERY YES. <---
• jorgecastillo 12y ago
  This sounds insanely fun & reading this got me really excited, just subscribed a moment ago!
• elliotec 12y ago
  >Unfortunately, the technology industry is fundamentally unserious as to how it presently identifies and employs engineers. Ok, so lets replace whiteboarding ancient algorithms and useless trick questions with a capture the flag game!! That'll make the industry seem less "unserious." This is so unfathomably ridiculous. I can't believe you're marketing this as an interview replacement. If I get asked what my "Starfighter score" is before a job interview, I will be running as fast as I can in the other direction before they finish their sentence. There will be people who become great at this game, and if (god help us) this gains momentum, they will get jobs. I can only hope the rest who are developing applications and actually writing programs will come out on top, and employers will recognize that some people want to build things and not just improve their ranking in a game.
  • tptacek 12y ago
    Nobody is going to ask you what your "Starfighter score" is. Without opening up a pointless vein of second-guessing about Patrick's writing: I think the timing of this post has led people to believe that this right here is my answer to The Hiring Post. No. The Hiring Post itself contains what I believe the answers to The Hiring Post are. There are two halves of the recruiting problem: OUTREACH and QUALIFICATION. Companies need to be smarter about qualification. We have a lot of thoughts on how they can be smarter and I am in full-on insane street preacher mode about those thoughts, which are not directly remunerative to our business. Starfighter is about the OUTREACH side of the recruiting problem. Our goal is to be a credible pipeline of candidates who are not effectively identified by the resume/interview/github process. We are looking for buried talent, and to have fun doing it along the way. I know HN all too well, and I think the instinct people will have reading this comment is to try to reconcile it with exactly the words Patrick chose to use in his blog post and then object to the perceived discrepancies. Please, no: that's a waste of all our time. Patrick speaks for Erin & I. I speak for Erin & Patrick.
    • elliotec 12y ago
      Thanks for your well thought reply to my regrettably snarky comment. I agree with you on many points, particularly how companies need to be smarter about qualification. But yes, this post does seem to directly correlate, in timing and in content, to Patrick's Hiring Post. I'm surprised to see you say this is not your response to that, especially considering that it addresses many of the questions we should ask ourselves as outlined in The Hiring Post (namely consistency, data, and the idea of one being a “natural”). Also the post itself is linked in the statement: >We’re not here to fix the technical interview: we’re here to destroy it, and create something new and better in its place. I disagree with the fact that outreach is a problem in recruiting. There is an entire industry of companies and teams created for the very purpose of reaching out to software developers for their skills. How many of us reading this thread get multiple recruiter emails a week? Are the recruiters effective? Maybe or maybe not, but I (who am apparently one of seemingly only few) just don't feel that a competitive game needs to add itself as another middleman in the realm of software recruiting with the intent of "destroying the technical interview."
• sfink 12y ago
  Hey job seekers. I'm level 45 in starfighter with a power VI blaster in C++ and IX in Python. $100 to get you to level 30, x1.5 per level above that (though obviously I can't get you above 45, but I know a guy so I can subcontract up to 52.) You just have to set up a port forward from your machine and I'll take care of the rest. Contact info is in my profile. Don't get suckered into using a bot. They may be cheaper in the short run but you know you're going to get lifebanned. My prices are nothing compared to your future earnings.
  • deleted 12y ago
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  • olivercreashe 12y ago
    I like this idea, but I also like the one proposed here http://ortask.com/a-better-way-to-hire-developers-and-tester.. http://ortask.com/a-better-way-to-hire-developers-and-tester.... I fear that starfighter will overlook goood candidates simply because they are not good at gaming, which makes the second approach by ortask more interesting and maybe balanced.
    • tptacek 12y ago
      It's a legit concern, but remember, we use the word "gaming" in the loosest sense here.
    • kosoy 12y ago
      The "overlooking" problem comes inherently with most heuristics. There should just be an option to forgo this system of measurement and use another one.
    • dlss 12y ago
      As long as starfighter isn't the only way technical recruiting happens, I think that's not really a problem. There will always be lots of ways to demonstrate talent :)
    • thisisit 12y ago
      Not that I completely understand the process for Starfighter. But what are the chances of something like this happening? http://www.wired.com/2012/07/how-a-startup-used-a-5000-contest-to-raise-millions/ http://www.wired.com/2012/07/how-a-startup-used-a-5000-conte...
• agentultra 12y ago
  Another attempt to apply data analysis to produce a concrete number that represents the merits and talents of a fellow human being. How utterly irrational. It's ideas like this that make me question why I bother being a programmer for anything more than leisure these days... except that I have no idea what else I could do to keep a roof over my family's head this late in my life. You call yourselves, "engineers," but I've yet to work for any company that treated you like one or even invested in your future. You're offered a salary well above average for most working adults. They lure you with frivolous perks and stock options. They never send you to school for training, offer you a pension to keep you secure in your golden years, and I've never seen any unions you could join to demand these things from your employers. Your career is probably not going to be on the line if you merge a patch that degrades performance or introduces a timing error. But don't think they'll care about you when it comes to the bottom line. Someone else seeks to profit off of your talents and abilities and nothing else. If they can hire someone to automate you away, they will. And we're all the poorer for it I think.
  • obituary_latte 12y ago
    Well that's certainly one point of view. So how you are working to make us all the richer? How can I join in?
    • agentultra 12y ago
      I haven't yet cultivated any answers to my own questions to have fomented any clear ideas or call to action. I'm presently mired in Andrew Keene's The Internet Is Not The Answer, Alexis O'Hanian's Without Their Permission, and my own hunches and experiences from my lived experience and those of people I've met. Perhaps there's an essay in it somewhere. Unfortunately there's no clean, quantifiable solution to human problems like labor relations that I can see. High-tech companies want to filter out potential hires to get the most highly-skilled candidates for the least amount of money they can get away with. They ultimately want to make more money with less capital and labor costs in order to maximize profits for their founders and investors. Which seems rather contrary to other engineering disciplines where, it has been related to me, they took in the hires they came across and made them into the engineers they needed.
• deleted 12y ago
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• kasey_junk 12y ago
  I am curious about a biz dev kind of thing, and it may be entirely too early to answer, but here goes: "Contingent recruiting" has an extremely negative connotation to me. Quite literally, I have to constrain my bias when designing hiring pipelines to not throw recruiter backed resumes away. I understand that you are only taking the payment model, and are trying to undermine the business model, but have you run into any problems associating with the industry? Or, more interestingly, have you encountered anyone on the consumer side (HR, C-Suite management, etc) that has pointed out a non-obvious advantage to typical contingent recruiting. I for one would love to hear why companies keep going back to that obviously terrible well. I'm excited to see what comes of this.
• jstoiko 12y ago
  The Last Starfighter is by far the most underrated scifi movie of all time.
• olivercreashe 12y ago
  I like this idea, but I also like the one proposed here http://ortask.com/a-better-way-to-hire-developers-and-testers/ http://ortask.com/a-better-way-to-hire-developers-and-tester... I fear that starfighter will overlook goood candidates simply because they are not good at gaming, which makes the second approach by ortask more interesting and maybe balanced.
• nate_mcfeters 12y ago
  Awesome news, best of luck Tom!
• weaksauce 12y ago
  What do you expect low 700's rank as of now on micro corruption to equate in the new venture? Salary estimates?
• captn3m0 12y ago
  So, we launched a long running CTF platform a few days back: https://backdoor.sdslabs.co https://backdoor.sdslabs.co. I guess more in the space is merrier. My prediction is that Starfighter will become something akin to HackerRank where companies host their own CTFs to recruit people. While it sounds fine, making CTF problems is significantly harder than making algo problems. I'm sure the team is right for this, so it might just work. I hope they do release some work in the open (such as their sandbox environment).
• dkarapetyan 12y ago
  This is awesome. Sign me up.
• Natsu 12y ago
  You buried the lede here: you're selling BCC! Somehow HN won't feel right without regular updates on BCC's progress.
• dba7dba 12y ago
  So this site is about helping recruiters narrow down candidates more effectively by presenting real coding challenges. I want to point out trueability.com that does same thing with Linux. I find it a very good and fair source for judging Linux admin candidates.
• jCanvas 12y ago
  I am surprised that Patrick is moving onto yet a different project. After leaving his job he works as a freelance online marketing expert. Then quits that despite implying making a lot of money. Instead wants to create online marketing courses to reach bigger audience, but takes forever to produce any content and is now abandoning that track. Creates AppointmentReminder with some good initial success but reading between the lines that is going to be sold/abandoned as well. Now moving onto yet another project. Seems you have created several great opportunities for yourself but cannot stick and focus on any one thing?
• deleted 12y ago
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• srum 12y ago
  What sort of range of engineers will this be aiming to recruit? Only the very best (and most expensive)? Or a range including more junior / less well-paid positions?
• michaf 12y ago
  The next step could be to crowdsource the design of challenges or puzzles. Like a 'masters tier', where you get special points for designing particularly clever puzzles. This could help remedy the constant demand for new puzzles due to writeup contamination. BTW, I completed microcorruption, foobar and two stripe CTFs. It was lots of fun and I am really looking forward to Starfighter!
• sfk 12y ago
  So, apart from GitHub, we now have another opportunity for coding slaves to prove themselves worthy. Spartacus, open your mouth, I want to see your teeth.
• galois198 12y ago
  The sign up form isn't accepting my email address: _@gmail.com Edit: rather, (9 characters long) @gmail.com
• Sremobeekik 12y ago
  Hello
• snarfy 12y ago
  "You will use real technology. You will build real systems. You will face the real problems faced by the world’s best programmers building the world’s most important pieces of software. You will conquer those problems. You will prove yourself equal to the very best. Becoming a top Starfighter player is a direct path to receiving lucrative job offers from the best tech companies in the world, because you’ll have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can do the work these companies need done." What an absolute waste of time. You can do all of those things as hobby projects which are yours and actually do something useful in the world besides exist as an achievement to be unlocked. Show your future employer your github, not your starfighter score.
• djb_hackernews 12y ago
  I'm not sure how this solves the topcoder problem. That problem being is it attracts only certain kinds of software developers and while it is used as a recruiting tool it basically changes nothing when it comes to the interview and hiring process. Even if you are recruited on topcoder you sometimes still need to submit your resume to some online resume eater "to get you in the system". And then you go on the same time wasting interviews as everyone else. Personally, I don't play games of any sort but I like to write software and solve puzzles so I find topcoder SRMs more appealing than a programming game, but I'll definitely check it out.
  • tptacek 12y ago
    Topcoder challenges were not at all relevant to the kinds of programming problems I needed solved, and were not credible enough for me to consider whether they were predictive.
• gsaines 12y ago
  Very cool guys. As a long time HN reader, I have a lot of respect for what you guys are doing. I also spent the last two years of my life building CodeCombat, which started life with a very similar mission ("a game that finds developer hiring leads"). We were YC W14 and roundly failed at that business model. I just sent Patrick an email at his Kalzumeus email, but I'd be happy to chat with you guys about we learned and potentially connect you to others who can help you avoid the most common mistakes. My email is in my profile.
• moriara 12y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I would love for the current system to go away, since every interview I had got me one step closer to an imminent hear attack. But, I think the most we will get out of Starfighter is that it will become just another step in the process, MAYBE replacing the phone interview. Nothing is preventing a group of people from sitting in front of the computer, collaborating on a solution, there is absolutely no way to catch that. Also, none of the companies that are most in demand will abandon their dreaded on-site interview any time soon. It works for them, they need to weed out as many people as possible.
• scobar 12y ago
  Many on HN, including myself, are very excited about Starfighter. However, many HN readers are probably already employed or can easily find employment if they desire. You guys and gal know that maximizing outreach will be critical to your success. You aim to find buried talent, but that talent must first know Starfighter exists and understand it well enough to be enticed to try. I assume you want to both find talent whose ability is not accurately represented in a typical technical interview, but also those who have aptitude for these skills but whose resume wouldn't even be considered. I grew up near a small town surrounded by family farms. I've really enjoyed manipulating code and finding bugs in games and other software since middle school, and I suspected I was the only one when I was younger. There were very few "nerds" at our school who focused on computers, and even those that did almost never discussed the discovery or exploitation of bugs. Although I stumbled upon a few communities online that shared my interests, I hadn't found one that just clicked. I happened upon HN while learning more about startups, and it was just right for me. I'm grateful I found HN, but I wonder why it took me so long to find the community I was looking for. I didn't even know about CTF games until tptacek's recent hiring post, and it was another "How could I have been oblivious to this awesome thing for so long?" moment. There are many people who are a great fit for your clients, and they won't know about Starfighter unless you cast a wide or deep enough net. How do you plan to address this challenge? Good luck, and thank you for building this!
• SonicSoul 12y ago
  Isn't it about putting in the time ? How would kalzumeus know if candidate is doing it for the first time vs after 500 hrs of experience. I presume the latter would have a huge advantage
• Rami114 12y ago
  Is the second problem domain web perhaps? So people can learn that <script> tags can not be self-closing, and so they won't break the JS includes so bootstrap.min.js doesn't load and their burger menu in mobile-view actually works! Hint-hint-nudge-nudge /endOCDpost