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Triplebyte acquired by Karat

karat.com

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Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#11

Post by zitterbewegung »

madamelic wrote: post #6
minimaxir wrote: post #2

I remember when Triplebyte had a blog post and/or job ad every other day on Hacker News, and a bazillion physical ads in San Francisco. It's surprising how quickly after the public-profile-incident ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23303037 ) they fell off the radar.

Might be a little elitist but it always seems like these sites go for the broadest applicable market rather than sticking to their lanes of catering to at the very least experienced engineers. TripleByte felt like a premium product that cared about both sides of the transaction but when I came back to it years later, maybe I had changed but the site just felt... bad, like that it was just a job mill. It didn't feel p…

I had a weird experience with Triplebyte. First I take their intake test and then I’m ghosted for a year or two. I email them and I got unghosted somehow. They said it was some kind of glitch but it didn’t really appeal to me…

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#12

Post by tedivm »

I demoed Karat as a customer and I think they're just awful. They pretended that the interview process was customizable, so we sent them what we wanted. Then to demo it I signed myself up as a candidate.

Literally all of our feedback was completely ignored. They didn't touch on any of the topics they said they would, and even though we explicitly told them it wasn't an algorithms heavy position that was their entire focus. On the plus side I did pass the interview, but we ultimately decided that using Karat would have had a real negative impact on our hiring.

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#14

Post by 0x0000000 »

warent wrote: post #4

I worked with Karat as an interviewer for a few years at the most senior level and loved the experience (back then they were still Karat.io!). Pleased to see this success for them; it seems like a partnership made in heaven.

I briefly worked as an interviewer -- it wasn't for me, but I like and appreciate everything they're doing to make things fair across candidates and removing subjectivity where possible. Of all the bad ways we interview SWEs, Karat is one of the better ones, IMO.

The way I saw it, it removes a lot of stress and pressure for the candidate, and puts some of it onto the interviewer.

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#15

Post by warent »

tedivm wrote: post #12

I demoed Karat as a customer and I think they're just awful. They pretended that the interview process was customizable, so we sent them what we wanted. Then to demo it I signed myself up as a candidate. Literally all of our feedback was completely ignored. They didn't touch on any of the topics they said they would, and even though we explicitly told them it wasn't an algorithms heavy position that was their entire…

I don't get this. Karat provides their customers with full, detailed text writeups of every single interview, as well as full recordings both of the interview video call and the code timeline. Why didn't you just review that material?

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#16

Post by titanomachy »

madamelic wrote: post #6
minimaxir wrote: post #2

I remember when Triplebyte had a blog post and/or job ad every other day on Hacker News, and a bazillion physical ads in San Francisco. It's surprising how quickly after the public-profile-incident ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23303037 ) they fell off the radar.

Might be a little elitist but it always seems like these sites go for the broadest applicable market rather than sticking to their lanes of catering to at the very least experienced engineers. TripleByte felt like a premium product that cared about both sides of the transaction but when I came back to it years later, maybe I had changed but the site just felt... bad, like that it was just a job mill. It didn't feel p…

I had the same experience. In 2017 it was amazing and I felt like I'd discovered an incredible career-boosting hack. I told all my friends about it. By 2020 it felt exactly the same as every other low-grade career mill.

To be fair, none of my friends that I referred to TripleByte actually passed their (2017) screening process. So it was a site that was very useful to a very small subset of engineers. I'm sure there's a viable business in that premium market, but probably not a unicorn scalable tech company.

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#17

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

candiddevmike wrote: post #5

I hope all of these interview assessment companies go out of business. They don't produce quality candidates, and they're dehumanizing for the folks that have to use them.

I’ve only been interviewed through Karat once, but it was a positive experience. It was a coding screen round. The interviewer was personable and fun to talk to, which made the whole process more pleasant. He was skilled at listening and asking the right questions to gauge where I was at throughout the conversation. He also transitioned smoothly into follow-up questions, and I got the impression overall that there was a wide range of skill levels he could evaluate (ie. the result was not just pass/fail, there was a high ceiling).

Given the usual nature of coding screens - intentionally generic and standardized, so a company can use the same screening process for different teams - it made a lot of sense to me that a task like that could be outsourced. Since you are usually not developing a relationship with the interviewer at that point, there’s no real reason they need to be and employee of the company you are interviewing for. A couple of times I’ve had coding screens where the interviewer didn’t seem to be paying attention. Since some engineers get forced to do these screens, they might not be focused on giving a good candidate experience.

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#18

Post by tedivm »

warent wrote: post #15
tedivm wrote: post #12

I demoed Karat as a customer and I think they're just awful. They pretended that the interview process was customizable, so we sent them what we wanted. Then to demo it I signed myself up as a candidate. Literally all of our feedback was completely ignored. They didn't touch on any of the topics they said they would, and even though we explicitly told them it wasn't an algorithms heavy position that was their entire…

I don't get this. Karat provides their customers with full, detailed text writeups of every single interview, as well as full recordings both of the interview video call and the code timeline. Why didn't you just review that material?

I absolutely did review the interview, that was the whole point. I just wasn't willing to risk sending a potential candidate through a pipeline I myself hadn't gone through. I'm happy I caught the problems in advance myself, rather than subjecting someone I potentially wanted to hire to a useless interview.

I do want to stress the useless part here too- even with the notes of how the interview went I wouldn't be able to make a decision on things, since they didn't hit the points that were actually relevant to the role.

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#19

Post by guywithabike »

6 years ago, I did Triplebyte as a candidate, got 6 interviews at good companies and 4 fantastic offers (including one from them, directly!). I ended up accepting an offer for a company that had a life-changing exit for me, and it wouldn't have happened without Triplebyte. So I have a lot of love for them. It was sad to see them stumble with the weird public profile stuff, but I wish only the best for them. I hope this was a good outcome for the folks that I talked to all those years ago.
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