Slashdot Mirror
Mystery Company Recruiting Talent With a Puzzle
An anonymous reader writes "Google has previously used coding competitions to locate top talent. In a new twist on the idea, an anonymous tech company is posting a help-wanted ad that challenges developers to find out who the company is. A little digging and text mashing reveals a website containing a Web 2.0 puzzle that makes notpron look like child's play. So, fellow developers, who is this company, and, well, what is the significance of the date '01-18-08?'" Update: 12/12 20:20 GMT by KD : Replaced link to a removed Craigslist ad with a mirror.
Cloverfield. 01-18-08 is the release date.
Nothing is impossible. It just hasn't been figured out yet.
If the mysterious company makes you jump through hoops to get into the door, will they jump through hoops to make you feel like a valued employee or just break out the whips since you're lucky to have the job?
I'll bet you dollars to donuts that that company creating all of this is the same one to submit the story.
The significance of the date "01/18/2008" (the eleventh question) is that the company is American and does not use ISO date formats. The particular date is unambiguous, but in general that is not true with their format, e.g. "02/03/2008" could mean either February 3rd (for American readers) or March 2nd (for European readers). ISO is the global standard, and the format removes ambiguity: 2008-01-18. A small additional benefit is that it makes sorting trivial.
If these people were really as committed to quality as they pretend to be, they would be promoting the ISO format, to facilitate less-ambiguous global communication.
"Drink more Ovaltine"
we would like to extend a job offer to you.
by hitting upon the clever solution of submitting the puzzle to slashdot as a story subject and letting random slashdot commentors solve the puzzle for you, you have displayed a high level of ingenuity and cleverness. we therefore would like to hire you as the manager of the 3 other programmer applicants who slogged and plodded it out and solved the puzzle through brute mental force on their own. your salary will be 250% of theirs.
congratulations again,
anonymoustech inc.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Its a find-and-replace that turns the title:
Wanted: Master Software Developers
Into:
http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/
... and the test continues...
but it's also my birthday. Do I get the job?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Am I the only one who grabbed their /js/ and peeked at the code...
... That was easy.
"// Note: It is not necessary to reverse-engineer this file in order to complete the contest"
I did no testing of any sort... inside framework.pack.js it says
p.setAttribute("title","list, uniquify, relativity");
p.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Ford's, success, has, the, country, almost, financially, industrially, mechanically, exhibits, in, higher, than, persons, have, thought, possible, contradictory, requirements, of, efficiency, increase, great, workers, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, workers, workers, workers, workers, to, repeated, great, increase, quality, increase, great, great, increase, quality, efficiency, efficiency, which, are, of, contradictory, contradictory, requirements, of, possible, have, have, thought, possible, have, have, persons, than, than, most, persons, persons, than, most, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, financially, financially, financially, financially, almost, the, the, country, almost, Ford's, Ford's, success, has"));
"Dictator Flakes. They WILL be delicious."
That's TinyURL's IP. At the bottom it says /* 34w4wa */
http://tinyurl.com/34w4wa redirects to http://groups.google.com/group/wanted-master-software-engineers
Helmsville McDonald's Hiring Fry Cook Seeking highly motivated candidates. Inquire at drive-through.