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Rethinking Triplebyte

triplebyte.com

241–250 of 463 posts

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#241
> Over time, these problems compounded. Engineers who we rejected held that against us (which was completely understandable).

I was rejected when I did the quiz at university, trying to get a job.

What made me a bit angry is how happily they rejected me with an automated email, after I put effort and time into doing their quiz... I didn't feel like recommending them, or even visiting the site ever again.

Glad to see they're finally aware of how this approach doesn't benefit them as much as it could of if people were still invited into the system.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used TripleByte to recruit people for a startup without paying, by asking people to sign up for the test and screenshot the answers and collecting the scores at the end. I already had an inbound funnel, I just liked your test when I saw it the first time. In 2015, candidates with the same schooling scored about 20 percentage points lower than 2020, the last candidates I used the test for. The number of questions do…

> going to Harvard instead of Berkeley is also worth about 10 percentage points. That's interesting to me. Most reputable rankings put Berkeley at #2 or #3, and Harvard is usually around #7 or #8 (and US News puts them at #16!). I wonder what the cause of that discrepancy is.

CS program rankings are largely based on their graduate programs. The parent comment is almost certainly talking about candidates with bachelors degrees. For undergraduate Berkeley has a 16% acceptance rate and Harvard has a 4% acceptance rate. This will likely act as a filter in combination with the quality of the undergraduate CS program, which could be better at either institution but is hard to get a metric for.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#243
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So fun fact, we built this feature as a pretty low-grade experiment, but when we ran it by actual users we got such a positive response that we ended up putting it at the top of our new front page. Like you, we thought (correctly, as it turns out) that it would appeal to people early in their career. What surprised us is that very senior engineers also told us they loved it - we didn't think it was as much of a conce…

It's ridiculous. You can go through a couple screens, 5 coding interviews, and the end is just a "no" due to liability reasons. Literally zero information about why you didn't get an offer or if you were even close.

It's not just liability.

The last time I was a hiring manager, I committed to giving feedback to anyone I rejected after the very first screening step. This was about 25-30% of applicants, which (even for a role in considerably less demand than engineering jobs) ended up being many dozens of emails. It was a giant pain in the ass - and it's pretty emotionally draining because you're turning down people who would really, really benefit from getting hired. I did it anyway, because I'd promised to, but it was not fun.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never, ever, ever give anyone a number until the salary negotiation stage of the interview (ie. after I've been given a job offer), and even then I only give the company a number as a counter to their offer. I always do this negotiation myself, and never let anyone else negotiate for me. Almost all recruiters have been fine with that, but a couple haven't. To such people I wish a good day and go my own way. There a…

A particular problem with doing that is discussed in the post; you risk everyone's time being wasted if the company will never be able to meet your target.

Yep. I won't get to the offer stage without us having discussed money. I don't want to waste either of our time only to find out someone's only willing to pay 70% of my bottom line.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#245
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair comment. I certainly don't think of us as a market leader. LinkedIn is the market leader. Honestly, the last year has been pretty hard for us (COVID and the problems with our model that I talk about in the post). That said, I think a hiring process that puts engineers in control (no ghosting, get data on when a recruiter looks at your application, search ranking by whether companies lie to candidates) is somethi…

You want to build it, or you want to make money off it? As CEO, you: * Grossly expanded profiles without user permission. * Laid off tons of staff right before the COVID lockdowns. (What has been your personal returns since April 1, 2020 by the way?) * You have been privy to discrimination happening in client company on-sites yet did nothing to the client companies. You’re a CFO, an investor. You’re not a CEO, and yo…

Oof, burn.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#246

As always with posts about employment, the idea that there's higher demand than supply for engineers is a lie. The demand for highly experienced cheap engineers is high, the demand for junior developers is almost non existent. New CS grads struggle to find employment, there are tens of thousands of very capable devs in open source that cannot find employment. Nobody hears about it because only those that succeed are…

I graduated a year ago from a no-name state university with roughly a 3.0 GPA. Today I work for a big startup making ~200K a year… so

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#247
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small bit of feedback here. I tried TripleByte a couple of years ago and the experience was really polished. I passed the interview and got great detailed feedback which I really appreciated. However, I dropped out completely because TripleByte wouldn't let me see companies without entering in a desired comp number. My recruiter at triplebyte said I could just put in "$1 or $1,000,000" to get past it, but that just…

Semi-serious question, asking for an indeterminate person: If your desired comp number actually is $1M/year, will that just flag you as a joke to Triplebyte companies? With post-pandemic stock price increases a lot of engineers at FAANGs are making more than that now.

> If your desired comp number actually is $1M/year, will that just flag you as a joke to Triplebyte companies? With post-pandemic stock price increases a lot of engineers at FAANGs are making more than that now.

For any reasonable definition of "a lot", no they absolutely are not. A lot of people with 2+ years of experience who've either been promoted once and received a strong annual review, or switched jobs as a mid-level industry hire are making in the 200s and 300s, a few pushing into the 400s. Much more than that and you're looking at the top 1% (or less) of engineers at the top companies. Not a lot.

Source: was a mid level engineer at a FAANG until I left late last year, knew seniors and principals and their comp. Nobody was making $1M/year.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> New CS grads struggle to find employment Sorry, but I call major bullshit on this. Sure, if you have a D average at a low tier school, perhaps. But if you are a competent coder who got good grades in school, I see many companies ready to hire new grads left and right (obviously folks who graduated during the height of the pandemic had different issues to deal with). I don't know if we're quite at the "anyone who ca…

I know 3 of them. They only receive responses from jobs similiar to, but not actually software dev. Basically tech support jobs but you have to know the basics of a windows/bash command line. No dev work involved. Companies advertise they're hiring. Like they advertise that they're profitable, make the best products, and are better than their competition. That doesn't mean it's true. Many positions are "nice to have"…

The data doesn't bear this out though -- the median* salary for a software developer is not only substantially higher than the national average salary, the rate of growth is also higher:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5n4R_Osks_fVsVmedxJKsp9zPu...

That's empirical evidence of a tight labor market that's difficult to fake. Why else would salaries rise so quickly from such a high base? Even if employers lie (they do), the salary numbers from BLS are separate from that.

Of course, there are always people who slip through the cracks unfortunately. But avoiding anecdotes and looking purely at the numbers, it's difficult to find a labor market in the USA that's tighter than the one for software engineers.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#249

As always with posts about employment, the idea that there's higher demand than supply for engineers is a lie. The demand for highly experienced cheap engineers is high, the demand for junior developers is almost non existent. New CS grads struggle to find employment, there are tens of thousands of very capable devs in open source that cannot find employment. Nobody hears about it because only those that succeed are…

> As always with posts about employment, the idea that there's higher demand than supply for engineers is a lie. The demand for highly experienced cheap engineers is high, the demand for junior developers is almost non existent.

Yeah I don’t think this is true. I teach undergraduate CS and our data shows (which we publish at admissions so is public) we regularly have close to 100% job placement within 6 months, with 90+% of that being CS related. I know many of the students personally and they are almost all landing good software development jobs. I think we have a good program but I hear the same from colleagues at other schools.

“Good software development jobs” of course is a relative term. CS related does not mean Amazon at >$100k, although a few achieve that.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#250
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small bit of feedback here. I tried TripleByte a couple of years ago and the experience was really polished. I passed the interview and got great detailed feedback which I really appreciated. However, I dropped out completely because TripleByte wouldn't let me see companies without entering in a desired comp number. My recruiter at triplebyte said I could just put in "$1 or $1,000,000" to get past it, but that just…

Semi-serious question, asking for an indeterminate person: If your desired comp number actually is $1M/year, will that just flag you as a joke to Triplebyte companies? With post-pandemic stock price increases a lot of engineers at FAANGs are making more than that now.

They are making that on their 3-4 years vesting and refreshers etc that they can't sell. So yes, in past few years some folks have been making great to really great money especially if they have a bunch of equity in various vesting stages + get a big refresh / bump on a position switch to drive retention. I wouldn't say a lot but many maybe?
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