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Triplebyte acquired by Karat

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Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#61

Post by rachofsunshine »

nrb wrote: post #30
guywithabike wrote: post #19

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 th…

Nearly same journey for me. I can’t thank them enough for organizing everything (including the flights, hotel, and scheduling) and putting me in front of several great companies as someone who at the time did not live anywhere near the bay or have easy access to the SF startup scene. It felt like a really premium experience, and one that I’ll forever be grateful for.

These kinds of stories were really motivating for all of us who worked here at the time, and they definitely soften the blow of the final result, at least for me (and I think for Ammon as well).

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#62

Post by jonahss »

I used Triplebyte from both sides, as a candidate as well as a hiring manager. I hired some great people from them, but over the past couple years watched as their standards slid, pricing models changed, and sales practices went from friendly to cutthroat :/

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#63

Post by rachofsunshine »

subarctic wrote: post #7

I'm guessing the pivot [0] to being more engineer-focused rather than employer-focused didn't end up working out, and they decided to sell the company and move on? [0]: https://triplebyte.com/blog/rethinking-triplebyte , discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27541676

You're essentially correct that that effort didn't work.

That pivot was motivated, more or less, by the fact that we'd never found a good way to attract candidates that wasn't "dump tons of money into ads". (Even in the early days, when our branding was good, most of our candidate acquisition was from ads; only maybe 25% was word-of-mouth.) It just didn't work: senior engineers simply didn't find the things we could offer them compelling enough.

Fundamentally, if you're a hiring market paid by companies, you're selling access to talent. And finding cost-efficient ways to get that talent is a core problem of your business. We tried a few approaches to that, but none really took off. (The most successful was our Screen tool, but the problem with that was that companies mostly wanted to screen candidates they saw as low-value - juniors and international candidates, mostly - and were terrified of screening high-value senior candidates. The product worked well, but didn't get the candidates that would let us stand out, basically.)

During 2022, we pivoted back to a focus on companies, and actually saw quite a bit of success with our last few efforts in a way that, with more runway, we might have converted into some really good candidate experiences. Unfortunately, this coincided with a collapse in tech that both tanked companies' desire to hire and tightened their belts as they braced for a hostile fundraising environment, and we couldn't overcome that environment even with a product that did seem to have reasonable fit.

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#64

Post by rachofsunshine »

noncoml wrote: post #25
guywithabike wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate that their reputation took such a massive hit with the public profile debacle. The folks I talked to / worked with at Triplebyte were all great people with their hearts in the right place. It's just an incredibly tough market to be in.

I think the problem was that what they were trying to do couldn't scale. As I said I interviewed in the early stages with Ammon and it was a great experience. He knew what he was asking and he knew how to evaluate your skills. But how can you have a hundred Ammons interviewing and assessing people? It just doesn't scale.

Interviewers actually did scale reasonably well, which is part of why Karat (which stayed focused on that part) was in a position to buy our stuff to begin with.

What didn't scale was the ability to get high-quality candidates in the door in the first place.

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#65

Post by Apocryphon »

coward123 wrote: post #43
warent wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the feedback I've received, and I conducted like nearly 1000 interviews with Karat. On average we actually heard from people that Karat was their best experience by far, and that we made them feel like we were treating them as worthy individuals. Even people who got declined usually still left feeling quite positive, because we would turn the obviously-failed interview into, basically, a free hour coachin…

My experience was the same as tedvim above - it was utterly dehumanizing and there's no way I want that either for myself or for the people I hire. The interviewers were smug little shits who didn't take feedback to ask questions relevant to the position. Further - you guys lurk all over HN commenting like this every time there's an interview thread. It's submarining and it's gross.

"not trying to sell me a product" indeed.

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#66

Post by IshKebab »

coward123 wrote: post #43
warent wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the feedback I've received, and I conducted like nearly 1000 interviews with Karat. On average we actually heard from people that Karat was their best experience by far, and that we made them feel like we were treating them as worthy individuals. Even people who got declined usually still left feeling quite positive, because we would turn the obviously-failed interview into, basically, a free hour coachin…

My experience was the same as tedvim above - it was utterly dehumanizing and there's no way I want that either for myself or for the people I hire. The interviewers were smug little shits who didn't take feedback to ask questions relevant to the position. Further - you guys lurk all over HN commenting like this every time there's an interview thread. It's submarining and it's gross.

Presumably it depends on the interviewer. And tbf it seems like warent is the only person here defending them.

Still I don't know if I would trust hiring to unknown potentially awful interviewers.

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#67

Post by barcode_feeder »

I used Triplebyte in 2018 and had a great experience with it. I enjoyed the interview process, I found my talent manager tremendously helpful as a new grad, everything about it was great. I was a kid from the midwest who went to a relatively no-name school and it opened a lot of doors for me. A few years later and all the candidates I've interviewed for that came through the Triplebyte pipeline were spectacular. Sad to see the turn it took. At least I've got the jacket :)

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#68

Post by hayst4ck »

I had a friend get a job through triplebyte and generally had a positive opinion of them. I also had a generally positive opinion since I had wasted time phone screening candidates. Every phone screen a company does is at least $100 of wasted time. The value proposition of outsourcing phone screening for fizzbuzz is clear. The value proposition of doing one phone screen for N companies is also clear.

Then they started abusing trust and implementing dark patterns: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27255742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23303037

I was honestly thinking about using them myself until it became clear that they had no ethics. Once trust is lost...

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#69

Post by confidantlake »

warent wrote: post #8
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.

This is not the feedback I've received, and I conducted like nearly 1000 interviews with Karat. On average we actually heard from people that Karat was their best experience by far, and that we made them feel like we were treating them as worthy individuals. Even people who got declined usually still left feeling quite positive, because we would turn the obviously-failed interview into, basically, a free hour coachin…

There is nothing to gain from giving negative feedback. If Karat succeeds in becoming the gatekeeper for interviews it would be a really bad idea to get on their bad side.

Re: Triplebyte acquired by Karat

#70

Post by [deleted] »

guywithabike wrote: post #19

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 th…

[deleted]
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