Why Triplebyte Failed

Understandable :-)

I remember once I worked at a company that was being acquired by another. As part of the screening we all had to go over to the other company to do an algorithms interview. Everyone - including my boss. Our company had a pretty softball interview process and most of our engineers hadn't been through a real gauntlet before.

I knew what to expect, had practiced these things, and made it through. I tried to warn my colleagues that they were in for something a lot more difficult than what they were expecting. But yeah, as you might expect, almost everyone failed.

I remember my boss talking about it, shaking his head slightly, his mouth screwing up into that familiar chagrined smirk so many people get after performing poorly at these things. I told him that these technical interviews are purposely difficult, that most people fail. That it's much better for them to miss a good candidate than hire a bad one. That failing is normal. I could see some of the tension in him subside after I said that. I repeated, "It's normal." He calmed down some more. The word "normal" seemed to help a lot.

I wonder if bringing in elements from psychotherapy might help a surprising amount here. I've found that software engineers highly value rational thought - to a point that they neglect the emotional side of things. A little development of their softer side can go a long way.

Like having a pre and post interview counseling session with a therapist would maybe be a little absurd. But maybe something along those lines would work. Maybe GPT4 could do it.

In 2018 I managed a team at a marijuana startup and was evaluating Triplebyte for recruiting. One evening, after sampling our own product (post-deploy smoke tests), I went through the Triplebyte quiz to see what my candidates would experience.

A couple years later I was job hunting myself, and went back to my Triplebyte profile. I sheepishly admitted that I didn't bring my A-game to the quiz, but was told I couldn't retake it, even though it had been a few years. Odd to me that there wasn't a provision to account for candidate's skills to grow over time. Got plenty of interviews anyways >.>

I used Triplebyte successfully for recruiting as a manager at two companies, and was sad to watch it decay and die while working at a third :(

I hired some of the best people I've ever worked with on Triplebyte.

I'm hoping someone will humor me:

At the beginning the author states the "shorter version" is at https://www.otherbranch.com/blog/rebooting-something-like-tr...

Then in this shorter article:

> But maybe we can fork it. (In the Git sense, not that one!)

With a wikipedia link to the Good Place TV show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Place

I don't get it though, what does The Good Place have to do with any kind of 'forking'?

@rachofsunshine: what the heck?!

Not a pilot but it sounds like 250 hours minimum to become one commercially [1]. My guess is that unless you can buy your own airplanes it'll take more than that for somebody that owns a plan to trust you being in charge on them to get to your 250 hours.

It varies on your state but to become a Master X it often requires >5 years. (ex 5 for CO Master Plumber [2], 4 for TX Master Plumber [3], 7 or 5 + Bachelors in NY [4]). Imagine needing to pair program with somebody for 5 years before you could be considered Senior. That'd probably cause a lot more professional development than the current copy from stack overflow meta but also really irritate a lot of young professionals. You can't even quit and start your own business because you can't write software as a journeyman without senior supervision!

[1]: https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/active-pilots/safet...

[2]: https://dpo.colorado.gov/Plumbing/Applications

[3]: https://tsbpe.texas.gov/license-types/master-plumber/

[4]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/buildings/industry/obtain-a-master-...