Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public

#1

Post by winston_smith » Sat, May 23, 2020, 4:10 AM UTC

Fortunately this email made it through my spam filter. Looks like they want to take on LinkedIn and are planning to seed it by making existing accounts public unless you opt OUT within the next week:

Hey [redacted],

I’m excited to announce that we are expanding the reach of your Triplebyte profile. Now, you can use your Triplebyte credentials on and off the platform. Just like LinkedIn, your profile will be publicly accessible with a dedicated URL that you can share anywhere (job applications, LinkedIn, GitHub, etc). When you do well on a Triplebyte assessment, your profile will showcase that achievement (we won’t show your scores publicly). Unlike LinkedIn, we aim to become your digital engineering skills resume — a credential based on actual skills, not pedigree.

The new profiles will be launching publicly in 1 week. This is a great opportunity to update your profile with your latest experience and preferences. You can edit your profile privacy settings to not appear in public search engines at any time.

Our mission is to build an open, valuable, and skills-based credential for all engineers. We believe that allowing Triplebyte engineers to publicly share their profiles and skills-based credentials will accelerate this mission.

Thanks,

Ammon Co-founder & CEO, Triplebyte

Re: Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public

#2

Post by ruperp » Sat, May 23, 2020, 4:49 AM UTC

Seems like an unfortunate decision. Opt-in would have been the more respectable move here.

Re: Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public

#3

Post by pmiller2 » Sat, May 23, 2020, 4:52 AM UTC

ruperp wrote: post #2

Seems like an unfortunate decision. Opt-in would have been the more respectable move here.

Maybe, but, depending on how it's implemented, these profiles might technically be "public" but not indexed by Google or have easily guessed URLs. In any case, it seems like the only information this would leak beyond what would be on a LinkedIn profile is the fact that you've taken a TripleByte assessment and done well. That seems pretty innocuous.

Re: Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public

#4

Post by andr » Sat, May 23, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

If this inspires you to delete your profile, according to the help section, the only way to do it is by emailing candidate.support@triplebyte.com.

Re: Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public

#5

Post by haram_masala » Sat, May 23, 2020, 4:59 AM UTC

This is awful. And announcing this late on a Friday is what news organizations call “taking out the trash,” publicizing something when people aren’t paying attention.

Re: Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public

#6

Post by kylebarron » Sat, May 23, 2020, 4:59 AM UTC

Hard to find the opt-out button. You have to sign in, go to your "profile builder" [0], and then click the very low contrast "Visibility settings" button just below the top of your profile.

[0]: https://triplebyte.com/candidates/profile_builder

Re: Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public

#7

Post by haram_masala » Sat, May 23, 2020, 5:06 AM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #3

ruperp wrote: post #2

Seems like an unfortunate decision. Opt-in would have been the more respectable move here.

Maybe, but, depending on how it's implemented, these profiles might technically be "public" but not indexed by Google or have easily guessed URLs. In any case, it seems like the only information this would leak beyond what would be on a LinkedIn profile is the fact that you've taken a TripleByte assessment and done well. That seems pretty innocuous.

No, the profiles have other information too, like what geographical regions you want to work in, what kind of job you’re looking for, etc. This could give away information to one’s employer that they might have preferred to keep quiet. I predict that a nonzero number of people will be harmed, embarrassed or at least inconvenienced by this.

Re: Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public

#8

Post by kashishhora » Sat, May 23, 2020, 5:07 AM UTC

andr wrote: post #4

If this inspires you to delete your profile, according to the help section, the only way to do it is by emailing candidate.support@triplebyte.com.

You can delete your account via https://triplebyte.com/privacy-center.

Re: Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public

#9

Post by pmiller2 » Sat, May 23, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

haram_masala wrote: post #7

pmiller2 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but, depending on how it's implemented, these profiles might technically be "public" but not indexed by Google or have easily guessed URLs. In any case, it seems like the only information this would leak beyond what would be on a LinkedIn profile is the fact that you've taken a TripleByte assessment and done well. That seems pretty innocuous.

No, the profiles have other information too, like what geographical regions you want to work in, what kind of job you’re looking for, etc. This could give away information to one’s employer that they might have preferred to keep quiet. I predict that a nonzero number of people will be harmed, embarrassed or at least inconvenienced by this.

Counterpoint: they may not display everything you see when you log in to TripleByte. You're complaining about something that hasn't happened to anyone and may not happen at all. This time next week, you may have a valid argument, but not yet.

Re: Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public

#10

Post by ammon » Sat, May 23, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

Hey everyone. Happy to answer any questions about this. Basically, we think that LinkedIn profiles don't do a good job of showing engineering skill (especially for self-taught people or people from non-traditional backgrounds). I'm excited to just build better support for showing side projects and GitHub contributions. LinkedIn profiles have become the default engineering resume (despite the fact that most engineers are not particularly happy with their LinkedIn profile). But there's lock-in. I hope that we have enough scale to be able to chip away at this.