Great story!!!
I also got a chance to meet my first hire in a fairly similar situation. Turned out that he was one of the first customers of my Indie Game.
He pointed out a lot of good things, we got into discussion and next thing you know .. I offered him a partnership ...
>> The thing is most research papers are simply not accessible to neophytes
To most neophytes that is. We only need a few of those with recently gained access to turn out to be a dormant Newton or Einstein. Society as a whole gets a better bargain.
I recently read The Three Body Problem and it surely is one of the most interesting and accessible hard science fiction books that I have read in a long time.
Sorry, I don't understand, but wouldn't someone ( suspicious ) also have a photo of yours if they have the access to your account. They could easily upload that photo and pass the captcha test .. Or am I missing something?
Some five years ago, I was having a phone interview for a company that were looking for people specializing in embedded programming with solid knowledge of OS internals and assembly. It seemed a great fit for me as that was what I have been doing since the start of my professional career.
As soon as the phone call started, the interviewer asked a puzzle question which had absolutely nothing to do with what I would eventually have to do if I got the offer. Bemused, I promptly solved the puzzle. He went on to ask three more puzzles after that.
I solved each one of them. Now, it had already been 20 minutes into the interview and not one relevent question had been asked. I was getting a bit edgy.
He then went on to ask me textbook questions like difference between a process and a thread, types of memory management and so on.
It was one hour into the interview and he hadn't asked meaningful question that could justify the lofty requirements they had mentioned of their desirable candidate in the Job description.
When after around 1 hour, he asked me another puzzle, I politely asked him the relevence of that question with respect to the job. He told me that since he was the one interviewing me, he got to decide what was relevent and what was not.
I told him that I would like to end the interview right there. He protested. I hung up.