Re: Gild/Coderloop gamification

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

I don't understand why there is a greater advantage to doing this than
just becoming a Debian developer or just posting your own code up on your
web site.

Seems like a scam from its inception.

 > From: Noelle <http://dummy.us.eu.org/noelleg>
 > Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 09:28:51 -0700 (PDT)
 >
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 > 
 > Ask the CEO of just about any Silicon Valley tech company, large or small, and 
 > they'll tell you it's a bear to find good engineers these days.
 > 
 > Sheeroy Desai saw the problem firsthand as chief operating officer at Internet 
 > strategy firm Sapient. The company employs more than 9,000, and he says, "The 
 > whole process of looking for and finding people just takes too much time."
 > 
 > So four years ago, he left Sapient to found Gild, a San Francisco startup that 
 > aims to make the job-search process less of a headache for hopefuls and hirers 
 > alike. Bolstered by a recent cash infusion from venture firm Globespan Capital, 
 > 
 > the company on Wednesday will announce its first-ever acquisition.
 > 
 > Early online job-bank efforts such as Monster.com, Desai said, "are dying -- 
 > there's too much noise and spam." While he credits newcomers like LinkedIn for 
 > trying new approaches, "it all depends on who you know. When you talk to 
 > recruiters, what matters is what you know."
 > 
 > In search of a novel way to let applicants showcase their skills while building 
 > 
 > new ones, Desai hit on "gameificaton" -- a tech buzzword for applying the 
 > principals behind social gaming to other business disciplines. In Gild's case, 
 > it means offering prizes like smartphones, tablet computers and, perhaps most 
 > important, bragging rights to users who solve coding challenges.
 > 
 > The service, which made its debut last year, now has nearly half a million 
 > registered users in 170 countries.
 > 
 > Right now, Gild isn't a jobs site per se; instead, Desai has been building the 
 > network by offering users a place to connect with one another and build their 
 > skills. Members can see what projects others in their network are working on 
 > and 
 > what recent challenges they've passed. They can recommend or endorse one 
 > another 
 > based on accomplishments. And a new "face-off" feature lets users compare their 
 > 
 > skills to those of other members -- and guides them to fill any holes via free, 
 > 
 > downloadable curricula that teach more than 30 programming languages.
 > 
 > Desai sees the purchase of Italian startup Coderloop as the next step. Founded 
 > last year by two Vodafone alumni who were wrestling with how best to assess the 
 > 
 > coding skills of potential hires, they decided the solution to the puzzle was 
 > puzzles: Specifically, the "Facebook Puzzles" the social networking phenomenon 
 > posts on its website to challenge aspiring hackers (and, along the way, suss 
 > out 
 > which ones might make the best employees).
 > 
 > Coderloop co-founders Federico Feroldi and Luca Bonmassar devised their own 
 > algorithm that creates puzzles, then automatically grades the solutions coders 
 > submit. They launched their site in April and, Desai claims, "People will spend 
 > 
 > hours, if not days, on their puzzles."
 > 
 > By combining Coderloop's technology with his own, Gild will be able to give 
 > developers "real tasks, as opposed to asking them questions about the 
 > technology," Desai said.
 > 
 > Brian LaRochelle, a junior engineering student at where-I-live State, joined Gild 
 > four months ago and uses it to size up his C++ programming skills. Given that 
 > most of the programmers he's facing off against are working professionals, he 
 > said, the results "make me feel pretty good."
 > 
 > To build his proof of concept, Desai is concentrating for now on software 
 > developers, though he plans to expand Gild's offerings to other professions.
 > 
 > "The irony of the time we live in is that as unemployment has never been higher,
 >  
 > the ability to hire engineers has never been harder," said Venky Ganesan, a 
 > Globespan partner in Palo Alto who joined Gild's board last month as part of a 
 > $2.4 million investment.
 > 
 > "Anybody who posts an opening on a website gets 1,000 applications," he said, 
 > perhaps exaggerating a tad. "But ironically, the best engineers are not 
 > necessarily getting the best opportunities because they're not out there 
 > working 
 > the crowd: They're coding."
 > 
 > While Ganesan says recruiters are already asking Gild for access to its 
 > database, Desai is in no hurry to focus on revenues. He envisions charging 
 > recruiters a subscription fee in exchange for tools to find and connect with 
 > developers.
 > 
 > "Eventually, we want to be able to alert them if a great Ruby on Rails 
 > developer 
 > shows up in the database," he said, referring to the programming architecture 
 > on 
 > which much of cloud computing is based.
 > 
 > And yes, Desai says -- Gild is hiring.
 > 
 > Contact Peter Delevett at 408-271-3638 or http://www.mercurynews.com/~pdelevett. Follow him 
 > at