From my brush with Matasano recruiting, I have one main thought.
When I got the first phone screen, I mentioned that your hiring page said to expect about a month-long hiring process. The response was that that was for someone with experience in the field. OK.
Since I had no relevant knowledge/experience, you (I'll use "you" to refer to Matasano) sent me WAHH, and said to read it, and contact you when I thought I was ready. I wrote back, asking how I'd know when I was ready (remember: no knowledge or experience). No response, ever.
I hope the prerequisite to interviewing at "entry level" in Matasano isn't full mastery of everything covered in WAHH. The last of my textbooks that I've looked at and thought "I know everything in here" was my middle-school algebra text (this one: http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Structure-Method-Book-1/dp/039... ). And there could easily be something mentioned in there that I don't know; I made the determination by looking through the table of contents. Every one of my later textbooks mentions something I don't know in the table of contents.
I don't think I've just failed to accomplish anything at all since taking middle school algebra, and even restricting discussion to school math classes I have some accomplishments beyond that point. So the impression I got was of a ridiculously unachievable standard for interviewing, that maybe I'd be ready to interview after several years of work in the field. Or maybe not.
When I got the first phone screen, I mentioned that your hiring page said to expect about a month-long hiring process. The response was that that was for someone with experience in the field. OK.
Since I had no relevant knowledge/experience, you (I'll use "you" to refer to Matasano) sent me WAHH, and said to read it, and contact you when I thought I was ready. I wrote back, asking how I'd know when I was ready (remember: no knowledge or experience). No response, ever.
I hope the prerequisite to interviewing at "entry level" in Matasano isn't full mastery of everything covered in WAHH. The last of my textbooks that I've looked at and thought "I know everything in here" was my middle-school algebra text (this one: http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Structure-Method-Book-1/dp/039... ). And there could easily be something mentioned in there that I don't know; I made the determination by looking through the table of contents. Every one of my later textbooks mentions something I don't know in the table of contents.
I don't think I've just failed to accomplish anything at all since taking middle school algebra, and even restricting discussion to school math classes I have some accomplishments beyond that point. So the impression I got was of a ridiculously unachievable standard for interviewing, that maybe I'd be ready to interview after several years of work in the field. Or maybe not.