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Why Triplebyte Failed

otherbranch.com

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Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#141

Post by mech422 »

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…

That actually looks pretty good aside from the time limit.. It takes me a while to 'get in the zone' - and especially with you base datastructures you wanna think about it a bit as it has real ramifications on how hard/easy everything else can be.

Still, seems better then most of the 'leet code' type stuff I see :-)

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#142

Post by distortedsignal »

jiveturkey wrote: post #119
perspectivezoom wrote: post #34

I was Triplebyte's first engineering placement. I still remember going to a random SoMa apartment with Harj and Ammon and Guillaume and coding up tetris in ruby, having no prior experience with game loops. That landed me a job with Flexport in 2016. I doubt that I would have gotten that placement without Triplebyte. So I am quite grateful that they existed, for jumpstarting my early career. With that said, when it ca…

You're not evaluating this on a proper A/B basis. I dare say, you might not have landed at Flexport but you would have landed somewhere ? pedantry: surely you didn't go to a random apartment, rather it was their apartment.

I'm another TripleByte placement.

After my (virtual) TB interview (which I barely passed), I had onsites at 5 places. After the five on-site interviews, I had 2 job offers, one of which was a company I wanted to work for since graduating college. I took the other offer.

This was preceded by a four or five month job search. I had received two offers in that time, but nothing seemed great.

I think TB's process kinda worked, but I understand your skepticism.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#143

Post by Aurornis »

marcinzm wrote: post #104
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #3

It's interesting to see how much "standardized cross-company interview for software eng" has been consistently a cursed problem in the industry. Unlike airline pilots (or I'm certain many other professions), every company in the valley insists on re-interviewing a candidate in their own custom and unique way, instead of trusting some sort of an industry-wide certificate only achievable through a standardized test. Wo…

> Unlike airline pilots (or I'm certain many other professions), every company in the valley insists on re-interviewing a candidate in their own custom and unique way, instead of trusting some sort of an industry-wide certificate only achievable through a standardized test. Wonder if this will ever be solved. The airplane pilot interview process on top of the standardized government certifications includes: - On-line…

Not to mention all of the licensing, regulations, and formalized training hours that you have to put in just to reach that point. It’s all substantially harder than studying LeetCode for a short slice of your life.

It’s amazing how often I hear about how easy interviews are in other professions, according to engineers who dislike coding interviews.

Then you look into those other professions and it turns out changing jobs is actually a lot harder than the internet comments would lead you to think.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#144

Post by rachofsunshine »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #137
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…

Standardization reminds me of old stories about 1970-80's blue chip companies trying to hire programmers like they hired secretaries. They'd test applicants for things like word per minute typing speed, simple programming tests, hire in bulk and then dole batches of them out to various departments. Which sounds like triplebytes model, the motivation behind things like clean code and the webshitification of everything…

Standardized process doesn't have to mean a purely checklist-based rubric. Triplebyte wasn't - and Otherbranch especially isn't - devoted to the idea that a good engineer can be reduced to checkboxes. And speaking for myself as a founder, I in particular believe very strongly in the idea of intangibles as important criteria. Having a standard process makes intangibles easier to detect, not harder, because you can look for those ethereal little bits of signal against a familiar backdrop.

The last question on the grading form for our interviewers is, to quote it exactly in its current form:

-----

Full interview overall score

(Would you vouch for this person's skills?)

* No no no no no

* Some redeeming qualities but not someone you'd recommend even as a junior hire

* Good for a junior role, still a bit short of a senior one

* Would recommend for a senior role

* Incredible, get this person a job right now

-----

That, to me, is the opposite of what you're talking about. Expert opinion is a central part of what we do, and a big part of what I think gives us an advantage over something like an automated coding test. We just take treat expert opinion as a type of data in its own right so that we can, for example, adjust for whether one interviewer grades more harshly on average than another and make sure that it is actually producing valid results down the line.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#147

Post by com2kid »

waprin wrote: post #101
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…

People underestimate how much cultural baggage influences things. I'll give a very simple example. I did a few SWE interviews in 2020, and several companies did the initial screen over the phone, and the on-site over Zoom. In both cases it was a remote interview. There was no reason not to do both over Zoom. The only reason was that the previous process was a phone interview and then an in-person onsite, and they rea…

> but it was certainly part of Google / Facebook's messaging.

It entered the online cultural zeitgeist before that, with Microsoft talking about their interview processes, and indeed early interview books were written targeting the MSFT hiring process that many other companies copied afterwards.

I graduated college in 2006 and some companies still did traditional interviews for software engineers (all soft skills, and personality tests, no real focus on technology, except maybe some buzzword questions), and then you had the insane all day interview loops from MSFT and Amazon.

Back then, Google famously only hired PhDs and people from Ivy Leagues, so us plebs didn't even bother to apply. In comparison, Microsoft would give almost everyone who applied from a CS program at least a call back and a phone screen.

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#148

Post by rkachowski »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #133
Glyptodon wrote: post #128

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 schedule…

Oooh, this lets me tell a great anecdote that didn't have a place in the post. So it turns out you were not alone. Getting people who did well on the quiz - whose parameters were trained on interview performance, by the way, so "did well on the quiz" was synonymous with "had a good shot at the interview" - to sign up for interviews was a major problem for a while. The solution? We told them the first booking was just…

this is some straight up Ender's Game shit

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#149

Post by mech422 »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #115
evantbyrne wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar pattern exists in tech startup hiring practices and which ones attract VC funding. Not unusual to see funded startups with founders who have no work experience but Stanford degrees. Before my time at The Atlantic, I had a couple recruiters for no-name startups tell me I didn't have a prestigious enough background to be hired. There is a highly-visible class hierarchy in tech that many people in the industry…

100%. I'm not sure if this was always the case or if it was a slow result of tech becoming overrun by finance, but it's a very motivating thing for me. I started a company for a lot of reasons, and this isn't the top one, but I sure would love to show success without playing the class-signalling games that the valley seems overrun with. On the other hand, I'm posting my content post here in part because I know the HN…

After 30+ years in the field..it definately wasn't always the case. All the leet code and take home stuff is a pretty new thing. Can't say I've seen it result in higher quality teams. Seems mostly a way to rank recent grads that are working from memory and not experience?

Re: Why Triplebyte Failed

#150

Post by elbasti »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #3

It's interesting to see how much "standardized cross-company interview for software eng" has been consistently a cursed problem in the industry. Unlike airline pilots (or I'm certain many other professions), every company in the valley insists on re-interviewing a candidate in their own custom and unique way, instead of trusting some sort of an industry-wide certificate only achievable through a standardized test. Wo…

IMHO, it's because the single most important characteristic for software engineers, at the vast majority of companies, is that they ship features.

And that's a skill that's incredibly hard to test for.

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