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Why Triplebyte Failed

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Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#91

Post by rachofsunshine »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #72
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Obviously the current situation is crazy, but part of the issue is that the specific asks for a particular developer job are dependent on 1) the stack in use and 2) the org chart at that company. 1 is obvious: if you need JS devs, most hiring managers won't want to hire Pascal devs and hope they figure it out. We can question the wisdom of this, but it is the reality. 2 is less obvious but not super obscure. Dependin…

To (1): this is true, and more true than it should be, but I think this falls into the category of "trying to optimize expected value" moreso than "a hard requirement" at most employers. There's usually only like...maybe 1-2 hard tech requirements even for pretty picky roles if they're confident someone is good. It's just that they don't know ahead of time who is, so they may as well bet on the better-matched candidates.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#92

Post by ryandrake »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #58
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Every airplane flies pretty much the same way, and pilots all get paid pretty much the same* Every website stack, and the level of complexity under it, is unique, and there's also a huge pay differential. *could be false assumption on my part

> Every airplane flies pretty much the same way

Not exactly, but that's why we have different certificates, endorsements, and type ratings that show demonstrated competence with each type of airplane.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#93

Post by imzadi »

I went through the triplebyte process around 2020. I was accepted into the program and assigned a manager (or whatever they were called). He setup one interview for me, but it didn't lead to a job. Shortly after, he sent out a message that the company was changing directions and he would no longer be part of it. They changed it to basically a job board with more steps.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#95

Post by nostrademons »

moshegramovsky wrote: post #87
nostrademons wrote: post #62

So I founded a couple hiring-related businesses a year or so before TripleByte. I eventually decided to get out of the space for reasons that are touched on in this article, but I would sum that up even more bluntly: Hiring is a market for lemons . The really good employees are almost never on the market [1]. They'll get one job, stay for years, and then if conditions change so that that job no longer fits their need…

I think the set of people employed at corporations provides overwhelming evidence against this.

I'm including small corporations and startups in this, not just the faceless megacorp. You still have an employer and it's still a corporation even if it's just a half dozen guys who all enjoy each others' company, code up some great stuff, and go out for beers together after the workday.

You have to know yourself well enough to understand what type of environment you want to work in. Some people perform better in startups; some in big multinational corps; some in small mom & pop shops. Some would even do better as independent contractors, although if you're smart you're still an employee of an LLC that you own to shield your professional liability from your personal assets. The dysfunction I'm referring to is in not making a choice, or not having enough definition of the types of work available to understand that you could be very happy at some places but miserable at others.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#96

Post by rachofsunshine »

nostrademons wrote: post #95
moshegramovsky wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the set of people employed at corporations provides overwhelming evidence against this.

I'm including small corporations and startups in this, not just the faceless megacorp. You still have an employer and it's still a corporation even if it's just a half dozen guys who all enjoy each others' company, code up some great stuff, and go out for beers together after the workday. You have to know yourself well enough to understand what type of environment you want to work in. Some people perform better in st…

> You have to know yourself well enough to understand what type of environment you want to work in. Some people perform better in startups; some in big multinational corps; some in small mom & pop shops.

This really is a huge factor, and one that is REALLY personal to me. I went from "can barely get out of bed to do the small amount of part-time work I could get" to "enthusiastically hammering out 50+ hour weeks" once I got into the startup environment, which was stunning to me. If I hadn't stumbled into that world, I'd never have known the version of me that exists today was even possible.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#97

Post by neilk »

Rachofsunshine: for what it's worth, I appreciate that there are people who insist on trying to change the market, rather than doing what the market wants.

I did some early interviews with TripleByte and appreciated they were trying something different.

It's just a different kind of effort and it's hard to change people's minds with just money. Often, a grassroots movement arises that slowly changes consensus, over years, and only then some well-funded player can come in, see which way the trends are going, and capture the value. My current startup is so remote we had to move Friday meetings to Thursday to accommodate Japan and Oceania. In my experience the Silicon Valley practices of the 2000s and 2010s already seem antique.

So maybe TripleByte they were just early? Or as the post mentions, maybe the funding environment was wrong.

We are often told that a loose funding environment encourages new ideas to prosper. But whatever happened in the 2010s with ZIRP seemed to concentrate wealth for people who had already gotten through various gatekeepers. I am sort of in the Silicon Valley ecosystem and sort of not, working remotely for American companies, so this stuff just feels like a distant thunderstorm to me. I can see new graduates getting my salary or higher for doing very basic, mistake-laden work, and I can't figure it out. But this helps put it in context.

Anyway, perhaps a downturn is a better time to start trying to change minds, although that's going to be a very long battle and the TAM is going to be "???" for quite a while.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#98

Post by Scubabear68 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #81
giraffe_lady wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The current system is already gamed and virtually standardized. This is only remotely true if you're looking at a very narrow slice of software development jobs. Those companies and jobs are overrepresented here, but remember that even in the US the majority of developers do not work at recognizable "tech companies." Much less the rest of the world. I've been a professional software developer for over a decade, cha…

You're not wrong, but Triplebyte exists to service that very narrow (but very well-funded, very lucrative, and very influential) segment, and so does this site, the fund behind this site, and most of the commenters in this thread.

True. Except that should be past-tense. Triplebyte existed to serve a narrow market, and failed largely because of that narrow view.

I think people really do underestimate how much FAANG and Silicon Valley practices have skewed the viewpoint of engineers and technology jobs in the United States. Not just in terms of comp, but in terms of architectural and technology approaches as well. Most of what the big guys do works for them at their enormous scales, but are plain dumb for the vast majority of companies and use cases. Yet we are all infected by the FAANG approach.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#99

Post by janalsncm »

listenallyall wrote: post #7
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…

A standardized test exists for lawyers (two, if you count the LSATs) but law firms still interview potential hires.

Is law a good example? My understanding is if you didn’t go to a top 14 school (whoever came up with that arbitrary number) it basically forecloses on the best opportunities.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#100

Post by duped »

dataminded wrote: post #6
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…

It's because companies don't want capable, experienced or well-equipped. They want genius and it is really hard to test for genius. Granted, almost nobody that gets through any process is an actual genius....

I'd say it's the exact opposite. There are hordes of unqualified people applying to every software dev role imaginable regardless of what you put in the job description or requirements. The tests are there because people are good at lying but bad at faking skills.
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