I am a senior engineer and have been programming for close to two decades. I picked up Factorio a few months ago and felt overwhelmed. I couldn't finish the tutorial. I think my problem is spatial relations--it is something I've always struggled with (how to arrange furniture in a room, solve a jigsaw, etc).
I don't think this is a detriment to my programming ability at all--spatial relations really never enters into architecting a large system. Of course you need to think about design constraints but none of them exist on a physical plane.
Factorio, on the other hand, requires actual spatial relation ability. You need to visualize how belts intersect and how to best position things so they dont interfere with each other. This is where I struggled.
If factorio interviews fill all roles with competent personnel, reduces hiring of incompetent people, etc., then it could be "good enough". Sure, you miss a lot of people who would also be good [enough].
They're not saying people who can't play factorio can't develop; it's the opposite. The hypothesis is surely that the can't+can't group has a large overlap.
Why not use starcraft instead and filter by apm and multitasking? You are sure to miss out on a few good candidates but you will filter out a lot of people who cannot manage 3 bases really effectively while watching the minimap, while designing custom build orders that can survive in the current meta. It’s like interviewing boxers on their blitz chess playing ability because you want “people who can think ahead under pressure.” Please.
Skipping candidates “just in case” is like not hiring women “just in case” they distract the men. Those defensive hiring practices destroy diversity, diversity of thought, and the chance for a human to be evaluated in a fair or rational way.
I don't think an arbitrary choice of test is "like not hiring women", but other than that yours is a valid criticism (personally I'd suspect it to bias for wealth).
I somewhat buy the anticipatory response elsewhere that essentially it's no worse than some of the other arbitrary choices -- basically, every style of assessment will miss some good candidates.
Also a senior engineer. I tried factorio demo out for maybe 30 minutes, but hated the fact that I actually have to walk the engineer around and do menial tasks like resource collection myself. Why can't I just do stuff with mouse cursor like in most other top-down strategy games? Maybe the game changes in later stages, but the demo seemed to be full of nonsense busywork that is prevalent in survival games.
Independent of the thesis of the article, which is obviously terrible, it does get much better very quickly.
The "gather resources yourself" stage is like the first 5 minutes of the game, more so to force people to automate; I actually think it's an intentional stylistic choice to demonstrate how they are different. Like the first technologies one gets automates all of the resource collection in the game (and later tier resources can't be collected by hand). It becomes a pretty good point and click strategy game very quickly. In fact after the first couple hours you can basically play the game from the map screen if you want, using blue prints to put down large buildings and spidertrons as units to move around, without moving your main character ever again.
The manual resource collection aspect becomes automatic once you have a basic factory setup.
There's also a mod called long reach[1] which allows you to do most things without walking around. If you want to give the game a second chance I'd look into that.
To give an analogy with programming. The demo is more like setting up your programming project, which can be a bit tedious. While the normal game play is more like thinking about the software you're building, defining good abstractions, thinking about how to structure your code both on a macro and micro scale, keeping things DRY etc
I agree with this - having watched the trailer and played the demo, Factorio looks to me like a game of managing logistics of transporting resources around, featuring a conveyor belt system that only works in 2D.
In another game, I'd consider that an annoying micromanagement feature.
I don't think this is a detriment to my programming ability at all--spatial relations really never enters into architecting a large system. Of course you need to think about design constraints but none of them exist on a physical plane.
Factorio, on the other hand, requires actual spatial relation ability. You need to visualize how belts intersect and how to best position things so they dont interfere with each other. This is where I struggled.