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

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

#591

Post by Exolon »

wolfgang42 wrote: post #27
dorkinspace wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should absolutely be opt-in, not opt-out. Were people that originally interviewed aware before their interview that their profile would become public at a later date?

I interviewed with them last year, and just got this email. There may have been some of the usual boilerplate about “publish, disseminate, or publicly perform your content in order to provide our services” somewhere (actually, I recall a surprising lack of legalese) but there was absolutely not any attention drawn to the possibility that my profile would be shown to anyone other than the companies looking at the roun…

I didn't even "interview", just took one of their tests out of curiosity to see how I did. The announcement was especially unwelcome news given that I'm not even looking for another job.

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

#592

Post by [deleted] »

seebs wrote: post #468
areyousure wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google did something similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz#Privacy

Google did something significantly worse -- and spent ages apologizing for it and never really recovered from the reputation hit, and I suspect that negative impressions Buzz gave people were a contributing factor to G+'s total failure.

[deleted]

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

#593

Post by christopoulos »

errantspark wrote: post #192
remote_phone wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a foolish decision to make. Knowing what you know about HN users, did you expect that this would go well? You can pretty much assume that Triplebyte will be persona non grata henceforth, especially as word spreads that you are publicly exposing people and only giving 1 week to opt out. Extremely foolish and really shines a bad light on your decision making capabilities. Why would I put my trust in a company that…

A lot of people go through YC and while their filter is better than most I assure you this is hardly the most shockingly stupid thing I've seen someone in YC do, ever heard of Meta? That was a dumpster fire from start to finish.

I’m curious on Meta, got a link?

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

#594

Post by ErwinBell »

slater_gordon wrote: post #260
deepaksurti wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you need to have logged in already for the delete to work, after which you get an email to approve the request which ends up with this notice of requiring government id as well. Govt Id, really, what are they thinking here? ``` We're processing your request and should be done within 30 days. We will verify your request using the information associated with your account. Government identification may be required a…

This corresponds to the 30 days allowed for GDPR: "Under Article 12.3 of the GDPR, you have 30 days to provide information on the action your organization will decide to take on a legitimate erasure request. This timeframe can be extended up to 60 days depending on the complexity of the request" I deleted my account today and will issue a GDPR request if It doesn't get deleted.

Problem is, you'll never know. Companies simply append 'deleted' to your email address or other data in your record. This then makes the system reply there is no account.

You think it's actually gone while they still have your data. You should do the GDPR request no matter what and hope they're honest in responding to that...

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

#595

Post by kerkeslager »

anewdirection wrote: post #411
kerkeslager wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly object to characterizing this situation as a PR disaster. The problem isn't that TripleByte is perceived as doing something unethical. The problem is that what TripleByte is doing is unethical.

Just because it is an ethical disaster does not mean it is not also a PR disaster. It looks a lot like both to me, one followed closely by the other.

True, but we're talking about problems here, not things working correctly. The ethical disaster is the problem. An ethical disaster should result in a PR disaster. If an ethical disaster results in a PR disaster, that's not a problem, that's the system working correctly.

I have absolutely no interest in helping companies who pull shit like this recover from their PR disasters. If you do something like this, you deserve all the bad press you get.

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

#596

Post by kerkeslager »

philwelch wrote: post #458
kerkeslager wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly object to characterizing this situation as a PR disaster. The problem isn't that TripleByte is perceived as doing something unethical. The problem is that what TripleByte is doing is unethical.

You’re not wrong, and as far as you and I are concerned, that is the problem. From TripleByte’s perspective it is a PR disaster, or at least we should treat it as such. Appealing to TripleByte’s internal moral compass is unlikely to succeed since they’ve demonstrated that they don’t have one. So we resort to appealing to their self-interest, since that is something they care about.

I'm not ready to write people off and conclude that the Triplebyte team have no moral compass. Certainly many business people do lack a moral compass, and they show a lot of the signs. But writing off people as simply bad people is a pretty extreme step.

But whether these particular business people have a moral compass or not is irrelevant to whether we should be discussing this as a moral or strategic mistake:

1. If they have a moral compass, then the strategic mistake pales in comparison to the ethical mistake, and they'll get that. We should be encouraging people to listen to their conscience, not teaching them to equate their conscience with selfishness.

2. If they don't have a moral compass, then we shouldn't even be talking to them, we should be talking to each other about how we dis-empower them and remove them from positions where they can do harm. Even if we persuade a narcissist or sociopath that it's in their best interest to do the right thing in one situation, they'll just be presented with a new situation where they think it's not in their best interest to do the right thing. If they really are just bad people, they should be treated as the blight on society that they are.

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

#597

Post by errantspark »

christopoulos wrote: post #593
errantspark wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people go through YC and while their filter is better than most I assure you this is hardly the most shockingly stupid thing I've seen someone in YC do, ever heard of Meta? That was a dumpster fire from start to finish.

I’m curious on Meta, got a link?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_(company)

This is the company in question, I'm not sure if there's an online repository for all the ridiculous drama and bad decisions though.

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

#598

Post by philwelch »

kerkeslager wrote: post #596
philwelch wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not wrong, and as far as you and I are concerned, that is the problem. From TripleByte’s perspective it is a PR disaster, or at least we should treat it as such. Appealing to TripleByte’s internal moral compass is unlikely to succeed since they’ve demonstrated that they don’t have one. So we resort to appealing to their self-interest, since that is something they care about.

I'm not ready to write people off and conclude that the Triplebyte team have no moral compass. Certainly many business people do lack a moral compass, and they show a lot of the signs. But writing off people as simply bad people is a pretty extreme step. But whether these particular business people have a moral compass or not is irrelevant to whether we should be discussing this as a moral or strategic mistake: 1. If…

> I'm not ready to write people off and conclude that the Triplebyte team have no moral compass.

I’m not going to pronounce any absolute judgment or certainty about this, but I think it’s a serious possibility for us to consider.

> If they don't have a moral compass, then we shouldn't even be talking to them, we should be talking to each other about how we dis-empower them and remove them from positions where they can do harm.

I won’t ever use TripleByte again; will you?

> Even if we persuade a narcissist or sociopath that it's in their best interest to do the right thing in one situation, they'll just be presented with a new situation where they think it's not in their best interest to do the right thing.

I never accused anyone of being a narcissist or sociopath. Those are relatively extreme conditions. I’m simply describing people who have bad intrinsic moral character. And the world is filled with these people. As a society, we elicit good behavior out of these people by creating and applying incentives. It turns out that PR is one such incentive. Laws are another.

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

#599

Post by dswilkerson »

FYI because of this hacker news post, I just wrote Triplebyte as follows:

  I saw a post on Hacker News that Triplebyte is going to be
  posting to the interenet [sic] the profiles of people who
  have interviewed with you.  I do not give you permission
  to post any information about me and explicitly request
  that you do not.  Please acknowledge this request.
The reply offered to delete my account, and I said yes. They replied that they had deleted my account.

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

#600

Post by executesorder66 »

rurp wrote: post #454
prepend wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rhetorical technique that annoys me the most plays out like this... Me: Thing You: I hate that thing Me: You don’t understand Thing. Here’s Thing explained. You: I understand Thing, I still hate it. Me: You don’t understand Thing. When you understand it, you’ll like it. (Repeat) Sometimes this is stupidity thinking that understanding is missing, but I think it’s usually shady just so they have something to say to…

There needs to be a catchy name for this type of interaction. I loathe it as well and it's annoyingly common. Companies that rely on this behavior should be called out repeatedly.

There is already a name for this type of interaction. It's called sales.
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