Triplebyte Raises $10M from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham • Hacker News Board

Re: Triplebyte Raises $10M from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham

#131

Post by austincheney » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 3:10 AM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #115

austincheney wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are often weak signals of actual competence I disagree. They are weak at separating the top 10% from the rest of the qualified people, but they are excellent at removing the people who have no business being there in the first place. The first two that comes to the minds of most people are law and medical licenses. These licenses don't exist as a job qualifier. They exist as a legal qualifier. That means a gro…

Law and medicine are not relevant examples at all. In both cases, licensing did not arise because of hiring issues, but rather because both law and medicine directly involve human lives and livelihoods. Any field where this can be the case on a day-to-day basis ends up having strict licensing and/or training requirements. Examples include civil engineers, pilots, soldiers, sea captains, heavy machinery operators, and…

> but rather because both law and medicine directly involve human lives and livelihoods.

How does that not describe software? When was the last day you were completely without software? Software powers all manners of our gasoline vehicles and the various traffic signals we encounter. It powers many hygiene products and kitchen utilities. Soon all of these will be part of the internet of things if they already aren't.

> Any field where this can be the case on a day-to-day basis ends up having strict licensing and/or training requirements.

Except software.

Re: Triplebyte Raises $10M from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham

#132

Post by austincheney » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 3:14 AM UTC

echevil wrote: post #121

austincheney wrote: post #72

> We started Triplebyte because we were frustrated by the noise present in every step of the hiring process. This is largely just a software/technology problem. In all other professional industries there are means to validate a candidate's competency before they are allowed to interview for a position: licensing, required internships, legal certifications/authorizations, authorized relationships, and so forth. Techno…

On the contrary, I think software/technology is a field where objective assessment of candidate's competency is relatively easy, and the professions requiring accreditation/licensing are relatively rare. Do you think requiring those credentials would benefit software industry as well? Is that enough for top companies to base their hiring decisions on?

> and the professions requiring accreditation/licensing are relatively rare.

I am thinking that is every professional career other than software. Truck drivers without any education are substantially more regulated than a software developer writing life saving applications in an MRI machine.

Re: Triplebyte Raises $10M from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham

#133

Post by Cyph0n » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 3:35 AM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #131

Cyph0n wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law and medicine are not relevant examples at all. In both cases, licensing did not arise because of hiring issues, but rather because both law and medicine directly involve human lives and livelihoods. Any field where this can be the case on a day-to-day basis ends up having strict licensing and/or training requirements. Examples include civil engineers, pilots, soldiers, sea captains, heavy machinery operators, and…

> but rather because both law and medicine directly involve human lives and livelihoods. How does that not describe software? When was the last day you were completely without software? Software powers all manners of our gasoline vehicles and the various traffic signals we encounter. It powers many hygiene products and kitchen utilities. Soon all of these will be part of the internet of things if they already aren't.…

It seems like you're not understanding my point at all.

> Software powers all manners of our gasoline vehicles and the various traffic signals we encounter.

The automotive sector has its own complex procedures and policies in place for working on vehicular control software. You and I would likely not even be able to land an interview for an automotive firmware design position without prior experience and/or certification.

In many cases, there are entire programming standards that dictate how such systems need to be written.

In other words, the software that runs inside your vehicle is nothing like the software powering our favorite websites.

> It powers many hygiene products and kitchen utilities.

The chance of a kitchen appliance endangering a human is much lower than a car going haywire or a doctor making a mistake due to inadequate training.

Re: Triplebyte Raises $10M from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham

#134

Post by taurath » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 3:53 AM UTC

triplebytelol wrote: post #89

tway12 wrote: post #50

Unfortunately, my experience with TripleByte was terrible and a waste of my time. I completed the interview with a very high evaluation across all categories as provided by the interviewer. There were certain areas where the interviewer messed up in their evaluation, e.g. they felt I "was a little weak at hashmaps and API design", which is probably because they did not know what I was talking about when I described t…

Throwaway, because I'm well-known on HN. I ran the TripleByte course once, and it was 100% not worth my time as a professional. The "coding test" was criminally simple, but got me in the door quickly for an interview. I spent a number of hours building out projects with a paired interviewer, as well as answering questions. This part I enjoyed, it felt like a nice back and forth while building an interesting bit of so…

The giants fail people for the same reasons as well. I've learned over time that qualifications matter far far less than interview skills at software companies, and even a maximally qualified person only has a 60-70% chance of passing any arbitrary interview.

Re: Triplebyte Raises $10M from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham

#135

Post by joshwa » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 3:57 AM UTC

shreyanshd wrote: post #23

Harj wrote: post #13

What was always most interesting to us about starting a recruiting company was seeing what would happen if you treated hiring as a data problem. Partly we've raised more funding for the same reason any startup does, so we can grow faster to get more customers = more revenue = more success, etc. But we're also driven by how the larger the scale we operate at, the faster we can run experiments to answer questions about…

Hey Harj, congrats! Any plans to launch TripleByte in India, or for engineers from India who want to interview with Bay Area companies?

I, for one, would love a good bozo filter for folks I interview for my team in India.

Re: Triplebyte Raises $10M from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham

#136

Post by austincheney » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 4:07 AM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #133

austincheney wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but rather because both law and medicine directly involve human lives and livelihoods. How does that not describe software? When was the last day you were completely without software? Software powers all manners of our gasoline vehicles and the various traffic signals we encounter. It powers many hygiene products and kitchen utilities. Soon all of these will be part of the internet of things if they already aren't.…

It seems like you're not understanding my point at all. > Software powers all manners of our gasoline vehicles and the various traffic signals we encounter. The automotive sector has its own complex procedures and policies in place for working on vehicular control software. You and I would likely not even be able to land an interview for an automotive firmware design position without prior experience and/or certifica…

> The chance of a kitchen appliance endangering a human is much lower than a car going haywire or a doctor making a mistake due to inadequate training.

The chance of any device on the internet of things leaking your personal habits online is not low. Furthermore, the risk of death or injury from electrical devices is only due to regulation upon such devices before commercial software was ever imagined. I would also say the hiring and performance of truck drivers is far more regulated than the firmware developers who write the code that powers that very truck.

> the software that runs inside your vehicle is nothing like the software powering our favorite websites.

So website software doesn't need to be written by competent people with regard for your privacy or security? Is insecure online software not harmful? Are credit card data breaches not harmful?

Re: Triplebyte Raises $10M from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham

#137

Post by throwaway0255 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 4:11 AM UTC

nrb wrote: post #126

nikanj wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waste time doing an online test, for an opportunity to waste time with a faux interview, for the opportunity to..have an interview at $bigcorp. What’s the TripleByte value add here, why should I spend time with them? Why not send my CV to $bigcorp directly?

1. If you are out of town and trying to relocate to SF, they handle all the scheduling, travel, lodging, and transportation for you. 2. Skips past the resume filter, HR phone screen, and technical phone screen. After you've gone through the TripleByte technical interview, you skip directly to on-site final interviews at the companies. If your resume is non-traditional (self taught, bootcamp, etc) this is pretty signi…

You don’t get skipped past phone screens, you still have to do those.

I don’t think you skip resume filter either. They claim they don’t share the resume, but on multiple occasions I had someone from the company magically view my LinkedIn soon after I was paired with them.

It’s not difficult for them to find you, there’s not really much anonymity built into TripleByte after you’re accepted.

You do get to skip remote technical screens, which is the primary benefit imo. That might be the only benefit to the job seeker, actually.

Re: Triplebyte Raises $10M from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham

#138

Post by speby » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 4:18 AM UTC

montrose wrote: post #35

This quote from the TechCrunch article was to me the most striking element of this story. They already yield double the rate of good candidates: ""The metric that companies care most about is what percentage of on-site interviews convert into hires, and the industry standard is 20 percent. Triplebyte’s placement rate is 40 percent," says Taggar."

That's nice but averages aside, anything less than 50% for on-site candidates (or final round interview candidates) that don't get an offer means your process is very likely broken somewhere else upstream and you have work to do on your interviewing and sourcing funnel.

Re: Triplebyte Raises $10M from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham

#139

Post by austenallred » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 4:28 AM UTC

amorphid wrote: post #112

lettergram wrote: post #101

My interactions with Triplebyte have been less than good and honestly am concerned about the company as a whole (perhaps my thoughts are misplaced). In a prior conversation on HN (link below), I brought up some aspect of my interview (interviewer late, argumentative, smug, etc.). Then the interviewer came on to HN and PUBLICLY SHARED PORTIONS OF MY INTERVIEW. Honestly, should have been fired on the spot, but nope. To…

It's really easy to game Triplebyte. It's probably really easy to game all the online interview platforms. May be it's hard to game Interviewing.io, because they have you chat w/ an actual person.

How?

Re: Triplebyte Raises $10M from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham

#140

Post by guessmyname » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 4:47 AM UTC

mattm wrote: post #129

jensvdh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to visa constraints there literally is no point in doing this.

Yeah I believe Triplebyte will only accept candidates from countries that have an easy way to get a work visa in the US - Canada, Mexico, Australia and Singapore (I think). (I'm Canadian and am working at my current company through Triplebyte)

That's weird, I am also Canadian and my profile says that they can only proceed with my application with people who hold an US visa and/or work permit. I thought it was a mistake so I contacted their support team and got a reply saying that they can only consider my application if I live in the US.

Did you change your location to some city in the US?

How did you get your application accepted?

On the same note, Hired.com which seems to be a direct competitor, also has restrictions on the locations available for their recruitment process. In Canada, for example, they only accept people living in Toronto. Or people lying about their current location because they are planning to move there.