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Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

otherbranch.com

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Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#41

Post by timr »

ajb wrote: post #7

Interesting, but the website still does the usual thing of pushing people to the sign-up page without giving much information. If you're pitch is "we are aggressively honest" then an an indication of the jobs available seems like a good idea. Established recruitment firms list them all. I know it's tough establishing a two sided market, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when companies waste my time by inviting me…

> Interesting, but the website still does the usual thing of pushing people to the sign-up page without giving much information. If you're pitch is "we are aggressively honest" then an an indication of the jobs available seems like a good idea. Established recruitment firms list them all.

No, they don't. In fact, the opposite is usually true: established recruiting firms will keep the company name pretty quiet, and only reveal it on outreach to specific candidates.

Just because someone doesn't list that kind of information on the homepage does not automatically mean "dishonest". It's very common for "allow my company's name to appear on your website" to be a negotiated item in a partnership contract. Getting it approved can require involving people all the way up to the CEO. The juice often isn't worth the squeeze, and the companies you can get to agree to it are the ones you least care about putting on the website anyway.

Particularly for recruiting agencies working on contingency, I can easily see why clients wouldn't want their partners to plaster their open reqs + brand on the front page of the website.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#42

Post by dheera »

sitkack wrote: post #40
dheera wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If any job exists solely because of an inefficiency in information flow, it is at least partially replaceable by tech that fixes that inefficiency, and given time, that will happen. I'm stating this more as a sort of universal economic axiom, not taking a hit at recruiters specifically as people. They're nice people, but a lot of jobs are replaceable by tech. Interviewing is a massive information efficiency problem.…

Of course they are, but you can slam your solution into the market and try and fight the whole thing. Or you can slip in as a tool that is effective, eventually anyone can hold the tool, not just a master craftsman.

Unfortunately, in a free economy, all ranges of tools will be built and distributed and ultimately the market will decide.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#43

Post by judahmeek »

baron816 wrote: post #20
sam2426679 wrote: post #8

TripleByte changed my (professional) life. Around 2019, I was in a bit of a professional lull but knew just enough coding to be dangerous. I got roped into the TripleByte funnel through a Reddit ad, which eventually culminated in moving out to SF for a YC startup. Several years later, I had a role at FAANG and reached a level of professional $ucce$$ that was orders of magnitude better than where I had been ~4 years p…

I went through a bootcamp at the end of 2014, then spent the next three years unable to get a job in tech. I didn’t have a paycheck for those three years. Triplebyte was my last ditch effort. I failed the online test the first time I took it, came back and then failed their interview. Came back again, got five in person interviews in the Bay Area. Didn’t get offers on the first four (one place even kicked me out half…

That's still an amazing level of persistence.

What motivated you to push through so much failure?

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#44

Post by rachofsunshine »

edgyquant wrote: post #18
sam2426679 wrote: post #8

TripleByte changed my (professional) life. Around 2019, I was in a bit of a professional lull but knew just enough coding to be dangerous. I got roped into the TripleByte funnel through a Reddit ad, which eventually culminated in moving out to SF for a YC startup. Several years later, I had a role at FAANG and reached a level of professional $ucce$$ that was orders of magnitude better than where I had been ~4 years p…

I was working construction and doing part time web design before triplebyte, afterwards I was working in SV as a senior engineer. To say it changed my life is an understatement

I wrote this post, and TB changed my life, even though I'm not an engineer. They hired me almost literally off the street, and now I'm...well, running an attempt at a successor. Not a bad six years.

If you want one reason I wanted to start this company in particular, it's that it seemed like a good idea to try to make something everyone wants to see exist.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#45

Post by rachofsunshine »

joeatwork wrote: post #12

I ran the interview team for TripleByte FastTrack early on (I’m not part of or in touch with the otherbranch folks) and I’m excited to see something like it return! The program was good at uncovering different sorts of engineering excellence. We could identify and attest for folks who were particularly fluent coders, or particularly deep systems folks, or particularly excellent debuggers, and then match them with sho…

(Otherbranch founder here) Thanks for the support! If you're interested in advising at all, I'd love to have you around. I reached out to everyone whose contact info I had, and I've got a fair number of people back in a room, but obviously didn't hit everyone.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#46

Post by rachofsunshine »

philbo wrote: post #10

Not sure if anyone from Otherbranch will see this but there's a tiny error in the description part of the coding problem on this page: https://www.otherbranch.com/practice-coding-problem Under step 2, the description says: > If the selection is not a mine, > but has adjacent mines in one of the squares next to it (including diagonally), > change that square to display the number of mines adjacent to it. However, the…

Should be fixed now! Thanks for the note.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#47

Post by rachofsunshine »

ajb wrote: post #7

Interesting, but the website still does the usual thing of pushing people to the sign-up page without giving much information. If you're pitch is "we are aggressively honest" then an an indication of the jobs available seems like a good idea. Established recruitment firms list them all. I know it's tough establishing a two sided market, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when companies waste my time by inviting me…

This is a fair criticism. You kind of hit why we don't - established firms list them all. We're not established yet, we're a baby deer trying to take a few steps through the forest. I would like to say that "not actively calling attention to our weaknesses in a way that is detrimental to users on both sides" is different from lying, but I think you could reasonably think differently.

Since you asked: we have two roles currently hiring, and one with a contract out (although I think it's If your criterion is "I don't want to sign up for this unless it'll get me a lot of jobs right now", well...don't. It won't, not yet. The pitch right now is "if you want to see this thing exist and would like a job if we can find you one, give it a shot, you've got nothing to lose".

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#48

Post by rachofsunshine »

banish-m4 wrote: post #3

Triplebyte overhyped their promise by lying to candidates. They told me I "had the highest score they ever saw" on their screening thing. Then, they submitted me as a candidate to Meta without my consent during the middle of the pandemic. (Ironically, it got me a job at Meta but I was laid-off in 2022 due to being remote and new.)

(Otherbranch founder)

The privacy thing is a legitimate criticism. It was not my call (I wasn't part of the leadership at the time) and I disagreed with it both then and now. It was a screwup, and it is a big part of why I want to make aggressive honesty one of our major cultural points - because I think once you start with spin it's easy to roll down a slippery slope to "well it's in our pragmatic interest so sure do whatever".

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#49

Post by rachofsunshine »

peripitea wrote: post #21

Are companies hiring enough for this to be viable and to get 20% of first year salary? I thought all of that had died down significantly, but I haven't been following closely.

Good question! It's certainly not a favorable environment to be founding such a company, although we are seeing some signs of a change in the weather over the past six weeks or so. That's not a huge surprise, one of the optimistic cases for how things might go was "we spend time doing all the awkward experimental stuff while the market is bad, so we're positioned to ramp up when it improves".

Certainly the market is one likely cause if we do fail, though.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#50

Post by rachofsunshine »

smw wrote: post #17

I think you really want to let engineers start attempting problems without manual onboarding. Doesn't cost you much, and gets them the dopamine hit before committing anything? I got job interviews from the original Triplebyte that I almost took just from investigating it as a source to hire engineers!

So the reason we don't do a quiz (I assume that's what you're referring to) is just that GPT makes it way too easy to cheat. GPT would've gotten almost the entirety of the old Triplebyte quiz right.

I have thought about having one available just for nerd-sniping growth-hack purposes, for the exact reason you say, but using it as a filter feels like it's just going to select for what is now very easy cheating. (Not that cheating on the TB quiz was that difficult, but it was nonzero effort.)

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