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Why Triplebyte Failed

otherbranch.com

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Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#121

Post by chowells »

reidjs wrote: post #103
Uehreka wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just out of curiosity, what are some of the problems with "Clean Code"? I thought most of it made sense as basic guidelines. It's been a while since I read it though

I think https://qntm.org/clean makes a good case that the advice it gives can be taken to very bad extremes -- and that the author of the book does so in some cases when providing "good" examples. That's not to say that the advice is all bad, but that the book as a whole is not a good presentation and inexperienced programmers can enthusiastically learn the wrong lessons from it.

Edit: grabbed the wrong link from my history. Updated to the correct link.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#122

Post by stevula »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #76
Apocryphon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current system is already gamed and virtually standardized. The only difference that official standardization would present is that applicants would no longer have to go through the Leetcode gauntlet each time they want to switch jobs , which would save a breathtaking amount of time and effort currently occupied by wasteful redundancy in the interview process. Corporations can use that standard exam/license as a…

> 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…

This might be a regional thing, but I have done probably around 100 technical interviews in my career (both enterprise and startups) mostly in the Bay Area and the vast majority of these involved algorithm questions that had no relation with the job function. Most were around the difficulty of "find the largest palindrome in a string" or "reverse a singly linked list". On the harder end were things like "serialize and deserialize a tree".

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#123

Post by fragmede »

monknomo wrote: post #107
listenallyall wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do law firms ask people to write a short opinion based on a toy problem?

They might ask for a writing sample, but because filings are public anyway, it's easier to share work you've done before. You could always change or redact the names on ones that aren't public and still get the substance of the candidates work.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#124

Post by Uehreka »

reidjs wrote: post #103
Uehreka wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just out of curiosity, what are some of the problems with "Clean Code"? I thought most of it made sense as basic guidelines. It's been a while since I read it though

Honestly it’s DRY that I oppose more than anything else, I’ve watched too many codebases turn into unreadable spaghetti because engineers thought everything needed to be abstracted. With regard to Clean Code, I think Uncle Bob’s takes on function length are ridiculous (something like “functions should almost never be over 4 lines”). In general, I just feel like he thinks very little of programmers and comes up with rules with an eye towards constraining bad programmers, not empowering good programmers.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#125

Post by stackskipton »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #108
duped wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seriously, if you've never hired before, you have no idea how bad this can get. Here's [1] our practice coding problem. It's quite similar to the one we use on our interview, and not too far from the one Triplebyte used in the past (ours is tuned to be slightly harder at the beginning and slightly easier at the end). The vast majority of candidates, even with some reasonable pre-filtering, do not get past the first s…

I have and you are right, it's terrible. However, I'm coming from Ops side of the house so my knowledge on Dev Hiring is talking to them and making sure they are not going to launch LedgerStore without talking to us first. Ops I'm more experienced with.

However, looking at Other Branch example test, it's another data structure question which I would totally bomb. Is this really the end all be all to dev hiring? If they can't do Data Structures, are they worthless to Silicon Valley companies? I'm honestly stumped because we get dev candidates that crash and burn with Fizzbuzz or our REST API test.

I MUST KNOW.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#126

Post by pie_flavor »

blindriver wrote: post #109
Fripplebubby wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post gets into _so much_ depth around what the company did that worked and didn't work and why it failed as a business. Your comment is about why you personally, one of >250k people who used the service as a candidate, didn't overwhelmingly approve of the product (and, it sounds like you may have still used it...). Do you really hold your own opinion in such high regard that you think it is more privileged than t…

Yes. I’m the target customer for this service. Me. I have had 10+ jobs in Silicon Valley, from YC startups to FAANG. They failed because their core product had no value to its customers above and beyond what currently existed and only created friction. This is the crux of it. If they delivered value that their customers benefited from they would still exist. I have probably 100 coworkers I could text right now and ha…

This sounds like you are the exact opposite of the target customer for this service, i.e. a developer lacking connections and struggling to get past resume hell but having all the necessary skills.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#127

Post by Darkstryder »

I am not very familiar with Triplebyte but I really appreciated this (seemingly) candid yet lucid writeup about how it was all went down from the inside.

These kind of insider perspectives, even if they come with their own biases, are very interesting nevertheless.

I wish I would see these types of articles more often.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#128

Post by Glyptodon »

I took their quiz without thinking once from a throwaway account because I was afraid of taking it from a real account and also because I had no context about what would be in it, which made it seem high risk. That made me realize it wasn't as scary a thing as I was afraid it might be, but also kind of summerizes what I don't love about it.

Later, I think I took the quiz from a real email. I think could have scheduled an in-person or something. But I was always afraid to: just like with the quiz, it felt like another layer of high risk, where being slightly off on one thing would kind of potentially blacklist you forever. (Which sort of sounds absurd to me now, but young me was like "what if it matters?" and "it'd be humiliating to not make it through.")

I work for a company that's been invested in by reputable venture firms so I don't think I'm bottom of the barrel as an engineer or anything. But the above anecdotes are to illustrate that I always found that the platform push my deeply ingrained risk aversion buttons. Which is interesting to think about.

With job interviews it's extremely annoying to prove you bona fides over and over, with every interview or application. But having the opportunity to do so only once seems even worse.

Edit: that said, I think doing a professional exam after college wouldn't have seemed risky in the same way as a ~12 question quiz and a couple interviews being so potentially determinitive.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#129

Post by wonderwonder »

I remember taking the quick for this. Passing and then I scheduled the interview.

The first question was to code an app just like excel. I totally blanked. It was my first experience ever coding live with an interviewer watching me. When I say I blanked I mean I could not even remember how to code a class.

Was a unique experience and I definitely learned a lot from it. The interviewer was great and very understanding. Made me appreciate how hard a tech interview could be. Interviewer was a good dude though, hope he is doing well.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#130

Post by neilv »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #88
Jianghong94 wrote: post #86

I can't help but want to draw the parallel between triplebyte and dating app: both are marketplace for 2 parties, or say networks; both networks are inherently two-tier, one premium tier and one, let's say subpar tier. For the premium tier, the problem is less so the efficiency of the matching process because participants have powerful signals, I would say the problem is the efficiency of negotiating a fair term beca…

We talked about the dating-app analogy a LOT, and I think it goes quite deep. It applies to almost all competitive markets, especially matchmaking ones. > I would say the problem is the efficiency of negotiating a fair term because both parties are not incentivized to go to a public auction, hence no market price. Are you referring specifically to salary negotiation here? I think this is one of the things that makes…

> > Okay, what are your salary expectations? [...] This is just so we know what jobs you might be interested in - the only thing we'll communicate is whether you match a client's salary range or not and vice-versa.

> [...] I'm trying to get an amazing developer with a mediocre resume an amazing job, or a good eveloper with a mediocre resume a good job - one better than they could have gotten on their own.

Is the reason that you can get employers and workers to commit to salary ranges like this, that you're focusing on mediocre resumes?

That is: Workers with mediocre resumes can't afford to be too greedy and play their cards too close, and companies aren't too hesitant to filter out someone with a mediocre resume?

(BTW, the below sounds like it could be a good/great thing. I'm not criticizing it, just curious whether that's also why requiring salary ranges upfront would work here, when normally both parties would be resistant.)

> I'm trying to get an amazing developer with a mediocre resume an amazing job, or a good eveloper with a mediocre resume a good job - one better than they could have gotten on their own.

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