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Why Triplebyte Failed

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Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#41

Post by parpfish »

blindriver wrote: post #11

Triplebyte failed because: 1) They were useless friction. As a candidate I could apply directly to the companies I was interested in, and take a phone screen and then on-site. With Triplebyte I had to take their much more time consuming process and get to the same point of either another phone screen or on-site. They added absolutely no benefit to me as a job seeker. Especially during the hiring heydays of 2019-2022…

re point 1: whenever i looked at triplebyte, i didn't see a lot of companies/positions that i was interested in so I wouldn't get the benefit of removing the redundancy of interview at each.

maybe they had a bunch of roles i'd like that weren't visible, but that's a mistake -- I need to know it's worth my time to apply.

if you have one or two jobs i like, i'll skip triplebyte and apply directly. if they had 10+ jobs I liked, it's worth going through them to not do the same interview ten times

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#42

Post by probably_wrong »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #15
aidos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you trying to achieve here? Are you looking to remove a bunch of competent developers by asking weird trick questions?

1. It's the dumbest algorithm for sorting possible (bubble sort). Compare two objects, swap them if one is bigger than the other, go down the list, repeat. If a developer doesn't know that algorithm, what algorithm could they possibly know? It's the lowest bar. 2. 2 Languages of your choice is enough to show you aren't a frameworker and can think in more than one box. Doesn't matter if you do it in JavaScript and C#,…

> or some other overly-thought-through math that is bogus.

So the mathematically-correct answer would be a minus while "in my opinion" would be a plus?

I think your interview question brings you to your intended answer: the reason why every company makes their own process is because what's good for you would probably get you an instant fail in NASA and would get you labeled as "experience not relevant" in some research settings.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#43

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

Uehreka wrote: post #35
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #3

It's interesting to see how much "standardized cross-company interview for software eng" has been consistently a cursed problem in the industry. Unlike airline pilots (or I'm certain many other professions), every company in the valley insists on re-interviewing a candidate in their own custom and unique way, instead of trusting some sort of an industry-wide certificate only achievable through a standardized test. Wo…

If you create a standardized test it will be gamed. Even with the small modicum of standardization around interview questions that we currently see, people have published books like Cracking The Code Interview, making it easier for people who don’t have the skills for a particular job to pass interviews at any place that uses standard-ish questions. Furthermore, as an avowed enemy of “Clean Code”, I don’t want to see…

How do we let someone fly hundreds of people through the upper atmosphere with a certificate, but you can't make a login page with javascript without a unique multi-day interview for each distinct company?

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#44

Post by jkingsman »

alephxyz wrote: post #36
blindriver wrote: post #11

Triplebyte failed because: 1) They were useless friction. As a candidate I could apply directly to the companies I was interested in, and take a phone screen and then on-site. With Triplebyte I had to take their much more time consuming process and get to the same point of either another phone screen or on-site. They added absolutely no benefit to me as a job seeker. Especially during the hiring heydays of 2019-2022…

As a junior at the time I found that triplebyte actually removed a lot of friction. Being able to do the screening/tech interview step once instead of for _every_ role you apply to was great. It was also good to be able to give feedback after interviews (e.g. these guys want me to do another technical quiz or are just trying to advertise their Blockchain platform).

Yes, this. Of course, there's always a tech interview even if Triplebyte claims to eliminate that, but they DID eliminate the "hello new grad, do you even fizzubzz" step which was great.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#45

Post by jandrewrogers »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #3

It's interesting to see how much "standardized cross-company interview for software eng" has been consistently a cursed problem in the industry. Unlike airline pilots (or I'm certain many other professions), every company in the valley insists on re-interviewing a candidate in their own custom and unique way, instead of trusting some sort of an industry-wide certificate only achievable through a standardized test. Wo…

For many roles the interview is as much a cognitive function and socialization test as it is a skills test. You can have exquisitely detailed knowledge of systems internals (skill) but if you have limited working memory (cognitive) then you will struggle to design non-trivial systems software. These are orthogonal dimensions. You might prefer someone with high cognitive aptitude and low skill, since the latter is readily trainable.

Cataloging a list of skills is insufficient information to determine if a person is suited for a role. I don't find it likely that software engineers will be subjecting themselves to a battery of standardize cognitive function tests any time soon.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#46

Post by PaulHoule »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #15
aidos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you trying to achieve here? Are you looking to remove a bunch of competent developers by asking weird trick questions?

1. It's the dumbest algorithm for sorting possible (bubble sort). Compare two objects, swap them if one is bigger than the other, go down the list, repeat. If a developer doesn't know that algorithm, what algorithm could they possibly know? It's the lowest bar. 2. 2 Languages of your choice is enough to show you aren't a frameworker and can think in more than one box. Doesn't matter if you do it in JavaScript and C#,…

If I want to separate the real algorithm masters from the rest I’d avoid questions about sorts with total ordering but instead cover algorithms with partial ordering such as topological sort, BSP trees and such which are super-beautiful and I think quite useful but obscure.

Bubble sort is quite interesting from an algorithm analysis perspective (prove it completes, prove it gets the right answer, prove how it scales with N) but I’d almost rather a programmer I work with not know about it from a coding perspective because it increases the chance they code up a bubble sort than use the sort function that comes with the standard library.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#47

Post by parpfish »

there is also the user expereience of feeling like you've been rejected at scale.

you're used to getting rejections from applications you send out, but getting a rejection (or even just being slow at getting an offer) makes it feel like the entire industry has turned you down

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#48

Post by kenschu »

minimaxir wrote: post #29
kenschu wrote: post #22

I'm the founder of a new tech assessment co - I hear "you guys remind me of Triplebyte" at least 1x per week. Clearly they were onto something originally - there's a lot of lingering love among eng leaders. Our thesis is that LLMs unlock a lot in this space - and that we can provide more signal to employers, while giving candidates a better experience. There's a lot of open/difficult questions to doing this well - we…

LLMs + hiring is a very very risky combination.

One that we have to tread carefully!

I should have clarified - we're not just putting an LLM on the other side of the candidate and letting it drive decisions.

Instead think of things use cases like content generation (we don't have a problem library - we create custom problems/modules for each customer of ours), etc. That's where I think you can improve signal a lot, by setting up a better situation to assess the candidate.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#49

Post by gjsman-1000 »

probably_wrong wrote: post #42
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's the dumbest algorithm for sorting possible (bubble sort). Compare two objects, swap them if one is bigger than the other, go down the list, repeat. If a developer doesn't know that algorithm, what algorithm could they possibly know? It's the lowest bar. 2. 2 Languages of your choice is enough to show you aren't a frameworker and can think in more than one box. Doesn't matter if you do it in JavaScript and C#,…

> or some other overly-thought-through math that is bogus. So the mathematically-correct answer would be a minus while "in my opinion" would be a plus? I think your interview question brings you to your intended answer: the reason why every company makes their own process is because what's good for you would probably get you an instant fail in NASA and would get you labeled as "experience not relevant" in some resear…

> So the mathematically-correct answer would be a minus while "in my opinion" would be a plus?

My opinion was only that it would be relatively easy to figure out. As far as I know, it is a certainty that sectioning a bubble sort, more or less than CPU cores, is less efficient. 16 threads on an 8 core CPU just means balancing 2 threads on every CPU core, each doing their own sorting and needing eventual merging back together. There's no way that can be more efficient.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#50

Post by kenschu »

soared wrote: post #38
kenschu wrote: post #22

I'm the founder of a new tech assessment co - I hear "you guys remind me of Triplebyte" at least 1x per week. Clearly they were onto something originally - there's a lot of lingering love among eng leaders. Our thesis is that LLMs unlock a lot in this space - and that we can provide more signal to employers, while giving candidates a better experience. There's a lot of open/difficult questions to doing this well - we…

Feels very similar to when I took a test that asked me questions about my life and then I was auto-denied for a role. Very qualified, I knew many people at the org, ~$150k/yr or something. The recruiter emailed me later that day saying I actually could continue on with the interview process, but I declined.

There's a lot of "AI Recruiters", etc floating around asking you about a time you failed, etc - we don't like that approach at all.

We're (1) only running technical (coding) assessments, and (2) still letting live evaluators making final hiring decisions

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