Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

blog.triplebyte.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 40 posts

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#3

Post by Harj »

When we started Triplebyte, we'd thought there would be pretty much a straight line from being a bad to great programmer and we'd just have to figure out where to put the cut off when deciding whether to work with an engineer. The biggest surprise has been just how much disagreement there is amongst companies on what a "great engineer" actually means.

That's when we realized we were actually working on a mapping problem and the first step was figuring out a universal set of criteria that all companies care about. Then if we could assign the right weight for each attribute to specific companies, we could route engineers only to companies they'll be a strong technical fit for.

It'd be great to get thoughts on the criteria we chose and experiences from engineers who have done a lot of technical interviewing,

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#4

Post by pfarnsworth »

I still don't understand why I would want to go through the hassle of doing an onsite interview with TripleByte only to have to go through further onsite interviews at the hiring companies?

If TripleByte's onsite interview allowed me to skip the onsite at the hiring company, then I'd be all for it, but it is like it's just a layer of friction.

For the record, I've had zero problems applying to companies by either emailing them or getting contacted by them via LinkedIn, email, etc. I just don't understand what benefit they bring at this moment. Maybe if the job market tightens and they were exclusive providers for companies, then sure, but all the SV companies have teams of recruiters emailing people all day long. As a hiring candidate there's no reason why I would want to go through their onsite.

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#6

Post by Harj »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #4

I still don't understand why I would want to go through the hassle of doing an onsite interview with TripleByte only to have to go through further onsite interviews at the hiring companies? If TripleByte's onsite interview allowed me to skip the onsite at the hiring company, then I'd be all for it, but it is like it's just a layer of friction. For the record, I've had zero problems applying to companies by either ema…

Finding the right company to join is hard, you have to find which companies are doing interesting things that match your interests and then narrow down to the ones where you'll be both a technical and cultural fit. Failed interviews are a big time suck and we see that most people only have the stamina to interview with a few companies and they'll often accept one of the first offers they get, rather than optimizing for the companies they're most excited about. We have the data to match you with companies you'll be a strong technical fit, which saves you wasting time speaking to companies who don't value your particular engineering skills. The end result is a more efficient job search process, giving you more options by speaking with less companies.

We do also reduce the total amount of time engineers have to spend in technical interviews. Triplebyte candidates skip the technical phone screens, usually an hour per company at least. If you're speaking with at least 3 companies (which everyone working with us is), you've already saved time as our technical interview is 2.5 hours.

Happy to talk more about this, harj AT triplebyte.

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#8

Post by minimaxir »

While hiring is indeed a big problem that can be addressed with a data-driven approach, I'm not sure the approach of "we have data, just trust us" is fair to all parties.

The naming of Engineering Genome Project is styled after Pandora's Music Genome Project. The difference is that Pandora uses data to provide relevant and immediately verifiable results by the user, such as music along the same genre and artist. In contrast, an Engineering Genome Project uses criteria such as "applied problem solving" and "professional code" that is impossible for a user to interpret intuitively.

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#9

Post by ammon »

minimaxir wrote: post #8

While hiring is indeed a big problem that can be addressed with a data-driven approach, I'm not sure the approach of "we have data, just trust us " is fair to all parties. The naming of Engineering Genome Project is styled after Pandora's Music Genome Project. The difference is that Pandora uses data to provide relevant and immediately verifiable results by the user, such as music along the same genre and artist. In…

Well, the engineers who go through our process are in a good position to verify the effectiveness of the matching. Granted, the bar to reach that point and check the quality is higher than it is for Pandora (readers can't go check right now what their matches would be). But I don't think that's an argument against trying to do a better job matching engineer with companies. This is an important area that's been largely overlooked.

The categories that you mention (applied problem solving and professional code) really are important. Companies differ widely in how much care about those two things (solving problems in the interview effectively vs. showing clean, well-structured code and good testing process). When an effective but iterative (and sometimes sloppy) programmer interviews at a company that values process highly, the result is wasted time and pain for everyone.

Post reply on HN