ideophobia

I would hate this for a number of reasons:

1. You say its not about competing against each other, but I can't fathom how else most people would interpret it. Imagine going to a panel interview, but then finding out the panel was everyone else competing against you for the job. It seems like you would actively be rewarding selfish behavior rather than group success. Any flaw or failure or mishap will immediately lead to finger pointing amongst candidates.

2. If the goal is to measure how well people work in a team, why not have them work with the team that's hiring them? The concept as proposed much less assesses someone's teamwork capability as it does assess someone's resilience against incredibly stressful hiring scenarios.

3. This doesn't sound like something someone could accomplish in a few hours, it sounds like a part-time job. This creates a seemingly biased system that will among many other things: Favor people who do your project while "on the clock" on their current job; Favor people who don't have kids or families or otherwise significant time commitments; Favor people with strong and sometimes overbearing personality traits who often gravitate toward group leader roles.

4. This sounds like a long effort for a hiring process, which can already be too long for some people. Unless the role is someone's dream job, or the compensation measures are bar none, you're going to have to provide significant benefits over your competition to keep candidates engaged, otherwise they'll just seek employment elsewhere that has the same pay, benefits, and role, minus this "trial by combat" hiring process.

5. Even with two groups of 3 candidates each, that's six people ("complete strangers") who are going to need oversight, management, and support to get anything remotely recognizable as a product delivered. How many managers or team leads are willing to take that on in addition to their normal work? How capable are your recruiters/HR people in actually supporting a robust service like this? I suspect the answer to either of those is not promising for most companies.

6. This is the kind of thing you do with your final candidate to assess all the things you're seeking to review, but doing this with a group of candidates all mashed together "thunderdome" style sounds cruel and unusual to me. Overall what you've pitched is an intern program, and its great for that, but I can't see this being functional in a hiring scenario, and I think you may run into legal issues unless you make people sign a bunch of weird documents before they even get a job offer, which could further dismay potential quality candidates.

This would, however, make a great reality show; 4/5 stars, would watch on Hulu.

In my honest opinion, what you're really looking for is a "hackathon" model with hiring capabilities built in.

What would you consider the IRA to be in lieu of anti-government?

I don't think I said the IRA were a militia, I drew a conclusion that this incident, which I speculate as being tied to anti government militia groups in the US, shares similarities with other destructive anti government groups seen in Ireland and Spain. I don't think I said those groups were militia groups specifically, and I don't think the comparison is such a stretch since there are other commenters making the exact same leap to the IRA.

My contradictory wording is likely to be a subconscious defense mechanism of sharing my opinion on the internet. I have not claimed any specific knowledge or authority over this event or even in defense of my own speculation here. In full transparency, the only reason I posted was because people were going all in on the "heist" theory, which I find ridiculous.

First, this isn't an analysis as much as it is pointless speculation on a Y Combinator message board.

I already listed some things that stood out to me in another comment.

I call out the inauguration because it's literally about to happen? Its the next the largest event in American politics on the calendar. And obviously my assumptions that this is tied to anti government efforts means those involved would likely be stirred up by whatever is currently happening in politics. Everyone's bias creeps into everything they do. Neither of us are immune to that. So calling it out here in such a uselessly rhetorical manner isn't some logical fallacy flag, it's a derailment of the discussion. I'm not even sure what bias you're accusing me of, I guess leftist politics?

Yep metcalf is why I'm making the leaps here. Also because metcalf is only one of dozens of similar events that occured throughout the US in the past 8-10 years or so, all similarly targeting infrastructure and energy companies, most of which remain unsolved today.

Yea when I first saw the coverage my immediate assumption was a crazy anti-5g person. But reading accounts of the events leading up to the explosion made it sound too well executed for that in my mind. Obviously anyone who does this, regardless of motive, is mentally ill in some capacity.

Purely my opinion and speculation here, but I'd say the things that stick out to me are the timing and avoidance of random casualties for one. This is a hallmark used by the IRA and the ETA in Spain to inflict damage upon the government without damaging the people, so to speak. The use of an RV also stands out to me, I don't recall many VBIEDs associated with foreign terrorists using that type of vehicle in the US, while I do recall RVs being a common tool in militia groups for movement, travel, storage, etc. Some other things stuck out to me watching videos of the explosion, but it's hard to say anything definitive until more evidence is released.

I saw a bunch of headlines recently that said the FBI had decrypted one of the popular secure messaging apps (telegram or signal maybe?), which, bizarrely enough, fits my narrative perfectly. Though I saw other headlines stating that was incorrect reporting.

Considering the FBI recently foiled a plot by a group who was planning to "take out" parts of the energy grid, it seems likely from my experience that this is another set of people executing a similar plan targeting telecoms. I imagine there is a high probability of more incidents like this happening between now and the inauguration, meant to target various infrastructure and "big government" components throughout the country. This attack screams anti-government militia with it's technique, and we will see in the following days online chats emerging with all the planning details that will likely include someone that had some degree of "insider information" about the ATT facility.

There are so many tools like this popping up, I just wish the creators in this space realized the gap in local implementation. I've worked on numerous teams that would benefit from this type of simplified knowledge management and linking, but having it all stored on someone else's server is a hard pass for the security teams I've been on.

Yea 100% true, I didn't think I suggested otherwise but appreciate the clarification. I only mentioned Trump because he is 1. the current president, and 2. seems to support militarization of police. To me this puts him in an ideal spot to directly rebuke the desired impacts of defunding since the departments could just get their money from UASI (Urban Area Security Initiative) DHS grants, that I'm assuming Trump could get funded with at least some ease.

Like some others I'm a little skeptical of the budget argument. A lot of the equipment that one would typically see employed for a protest or riot response (riot gear, crowd control weapons, armored vehicles) are often obtained via funding from federal Homeland Security and DOJ grants. Hitting the local city/county budget wont impact the militarization argument, and with a president like Trump, I can easily see an increase in federal grants swooping in to offset that, at least partially.

My second concern is that pay for police is often considered not great. Hitting the city/county budget will likely impact salaries, pay increases, health care benefits, vehicle maintenance, and many other areas. Sadly the fastest thing to get cut from municipal agencies is often training, so I'm skeptical we can "defund" the police while simultaneously adding additional training requirements around mental health, de-escalation, etc.

I'm not inherently against the defund argument, particularly when it involves shifting those funds toward more community services that would reduce crime and poverty anyways. It just seems like the problem has less to do with the amount of money police departments actually have and more to do with a lack of oversight on how they're spending it.

Totally agree, which is why I recommended people contact their local Attorney's General if they live in a state or city where one of these are located.