You don't have to check out the repo (I didn't). It takes five minutes or so to solve, so it's not that time-consuming if you are at least a bit technical.
I don't know why they gave away the \a clue; you'd think they'd want to select for people who want the job bad enough to actually have a Reddit checkout.
They are going to get flooded with job apps because they have a community of geek users who love them. It's actually another reason not to apply; supply/demand works in your favor right now almost everywhere else but at Reddit.
Kind of the same reason you don't want to work for a game company.
This is all true. reddit is a great place to work if you want to learn a lot, get some great experience, and have a really strong influence on the product. But it is not a startup -- there is no big upside.
Did anybody get a reply from reddit if you sent an email to the solution? I am wondering how long should I wait to be vindicated.
By the way, to get around the problem of slow, asynchronous bounce for the wrong solution address, I connected over SMTP to see if the answer email address(recipient) is valid or not for reddit.com. You can probably use that as a quicker test to validate if you have the right answer.
If you made a serious attempt to solve the problem, and got three alpha-numeric characters followed by a null byte, I'd say you're pretty much guaranteed to have the right answer.
If you want to triple-check, I registered an HN user with that name at about the same time jedberg submitted this entry. Don't want to spoil his fun, though, so I'm not going to post anything with that name just yet :-)
[+] [-] jacquesm|15 years ago|reply
Very funny way of weeding out the non-coders. I also hope it will stay secret long enough and that the reddit repository can handle the traffic ;)
[+] [-] StavrosK|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aresant|15 years ago|reply
a) You work as a contractor, are not guaranteed to be hired as an employee anytime soon, receive no benefits and no stock.
b) The company has already been acquired.
c) Reddit's corporate overlords seem most interested in pumping the asset vs. expanding, may be a stifling environment.
If it was me I'd do the app but send it instead to Hipmunk (Reddit co-founder's new start-up)
[+] [-] tptacek|15 years ago|reply
Kind of the same reason you don't want to work for a game company.
[+] [-] jedberg|15 years ago|reply
And I don't think Hipmunk is hiring yet. :)
[+] [-] spocksynder|15 years ago|reply
By the way, to get around the problem of slow, asynchronous bounce for the wrong solution address, I connected over SMTP to see if the answer email address(recipient) is valid or not for reddit.com. You can probably use that as a quicker test to validate if you have the right answer.
[+] [-] studer|15 years ago|reply
If you want to triple-check, I registered an HN user with that name at about the same time jedberg submitted this entry. Don't want to spoil his fun, though, so I'm not going to post anything with that name just yet :-)
[+] [-] jedberg|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wihon|15 years ago|reply