Rethinking Triplebyte • Hacker News Board

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#251

Post by dragon96 » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 11:22 PM UTC

Interesting idea. I love the recognition of current hiring asymmetries. Some of the practices by companies simply shouldn't be tolerated, like the recruiter ghosting, opaqueness on salary ranges, exploding offers, misleading listings or qualifications, lack of feedback, etc., and I wonder if some of these can be solved by a company like TB that facilitates the hiring market and pipelining the process.

So hiring through TripleByte would be conducted in some fixed-length time intervals (e.g. 1 month). Companies specify skills they're hiring for, interested engineers interview for the skills that TripleByte can screen for and supply a minimum salary (invisible to companies), and companies hiring that month bid starting at the min salary for the engineer with all other hiring companies.

If the market determines the hiring timeline, recruiters can't put you on hold if they're interested-but-not-sure, and can't use exploding offer tactics. It also pushes companies to be more honest about salary ranges and required skills. TripleByte would be responsible for providing feedback rather than the companies.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#252

Post by redisman » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 11:25 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #97

akomtu wrote: post #80

Here's an advice. The software engineering market, at least the upper end of it, doesn't need a email forwarding proxy middleman. What it needs is a club-like organisation that acts as a negotiator that leverages insider knowledge to get unreasonable parties on both ends to sign a contract. Good devs don't really search for jobs and don't really talk to random recruiters. They get a steady stream of sales pitches fro…

Companies that are serious about finding software talent already sort of understand that and hire based on recommendation from high performers.

Meh. As someone who has moved around a lot this just sounds like friend nepotism. Based on this system I’d be a garbage tier developer since I don’t have friends in high places.

I much prefer the imperfect systems that at least pretend to be fair and objective-ish.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#253

Post by pmoriarty » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 11:25 PM UTC

usaar333 wrote: post #235

pmoriarty wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never, ever, ever give anyone a number until the salary negotiation stage of the interview (ie. after I've been given a job offer), and even then I only give the company a number as a counter to their offer. I always do this negotiation myself, and never let anyone else negotiate for me. Almost all recruiters have been fine with that, but a couple haven't. To such people I wish a good day and go my own way. There a…

A particular problem with doing that is discussed in the post; you risk everyone's time being wasted if the company will never be able to meet your target.

I don't consider the time wasted because:

1 - I get real-world interview practice, and that always helps me in future interviews. Many companies ask the same or similar questions, and the more I'll be ready for them being asked again. In addition, when I'm surprised by a question I'll research it thoroughly when I get home and won't be surprised by that question again.

2 - I get a bit of an inside peek in to how the companies I interview at work. That's a privilege not afforded to many outsiders, and how some of these companies (some of which are world class) can and has helped me at other companies.

3 - A company might bring me in to interview for one position, but after the interview might determine I'm better suited for another. If I didn't interview with them they'd never know.

4 - As I interview with people I get a chance to make a good impression on them, so even if they don't wind up hiring me for that position they might want me when a different position opens up (whether at that company or another company the people I interviewed with moved to).

5 - By letting companies make the first offer I myself get a good salary survey of the minimum what all the companies I interview with are willing to pay for someone with my qualifications in that position. Of course I try to do my own research ahead of time, but getting salary numbers without getting a job offer is not always possible or reliable.

6 - If I blurt out a number first I'll it may put me at a disadvantage in the negotiation, as they'll just start the negotiation from what I say even if they would have been happy to have paid way more.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#254

Post by opportune » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

shagie wrote: post #219

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> New CS grads struggle to find employment Sorry, but I call major bullshit on this. Sure, if you have a D average at a low tier school, perhaps. But if you are a competent coder who got good grades in school, I see many companies ready to hire new grads left and right (obviously folks who graduated during the height of the pandemic had different issues to deal with). I don't know if we're quite at the "anyone who ca…

I believe a bit of the difficulty that new grads have with trying to find employment is a combination of: * Reluctance to move / restrictions on where they want to move (only SF, Seattle, NYC) * Extreme focus on product development (and not applying for the operations jobs that keep many large orgs running). * Focus on working for a high salary at a big tech company (and not applying to jobs at companies that aren't…

I doubt people only wanting to move to Seattle/SF/NYC is the problem. What about all the people who only look for jobs in their hometown or regional hub where there are approximately 0 jobs for software engineers? From what I’ve seen that is a much more common problem, people basically limiting their search parameters to a very small set of all open jobs, rather than looking at the three cities that have the most jobs.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#255

Post by slownews45 » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 11:26 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #208

tdeck wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small bit of feedback here. I tried TripleByte a couple of years ago and the experience was really polished. I passed the interview and got great detailed feedback which I really appreciated. However, I dropped out completely because TripleByte wouldn't let me see companies without entering in a desired comp number. My recruiter at triplebyte said I could just put in "$1 or $1,000,000" to get past it, but that just…

I never, ever, ever give anyone a number until the salary negotiation stage of the interview (ie. after I've been given a job offer), and even then I only give the company a number as a counter to their offer. I always do this negotiation myself, and never let anyone else negotiate for me. Almost all recruiters have been fine with that, but a couple haven't. To such people I wish a good day and go my own way. There a…

On hiring side we screen folks out pretty quickly who can't discuss money.

I used to be much more relaxed about this, but if you get burned doing a few rounds of interviews and it was a waste you wise up pretty quickly - teams do not like time wasted.

I've also found that folks who can't / won't talk money - usually not great hires for a bunch of reasons.

We're happy to talk through the different positions, levels, progressions and comp ranges for them all. But you have to have a clue about what type of comp would work for you (early on in initial call or two) or it's just not worth continuing forward.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#256

Post by failwhaleshark » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

an_opabinia wrote: post #192

ammon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair comment. I certainly don't think of us as a market leader. LinkedIn is the market leader. Honestly, the last year has been pretty hard for us (COVID and the problems with our model that I talk about in the post). That said, I think a hiring process that puts engineers in control (no ghosting, get data on when a recruiter looks at your application, search ranking by whether companies lie to candidates) is somethi…

I used TripleByte to recruit people for a startup without paying, by asking people to sign up for the test and screenshot the answers and collecting the scores at the end. I already had an inbound funnel, I just liked your test when I saw it the first time. In 2015, candidates with the same schooling scored about 20 percentage points lower than 2020, the last candidates I used the test for. The number of questions do…

Pedigree filtering is most often myopic elitism, especially in a business context. Anecdotally, I avoided MIT and Harvard because of Boston's snow and traffic. CalTech is Pasadena: too frick'n hot. I didn't study at all for the SAT-I and aced the math section. (The SAT should be more like the JEE.) I went to an expensive, "top 50" public university where I liked the area. Also, it was more practical and rigorous academically than most Pac10s (Pac12s now) and Ivys because they had something to prove (no grade inflation at all, they don't care if you turn in homework or not, not much market for homework and tests, and proctored exams). I also didn't do a PhD because of the economic disincentive: if I put in the work and the cost, I could do an MD, JD, or PhD CS but there is no added benefit.

Most clinical doctors have social skills and crystalized intelligence from domain expertise, but aren't typically mistakable for particle physicists.

People don't necessarily require the proper sheepskins to possess fluid, crystallized, and/or other domains of intelligence AND the skills, personality, and experience relevant to excelling at a particular STEM role.

Pedigree is mostly used for social filtering and business leadership board packing, but if someone wanted to create an elite monoculture of staff, lacking in cognitive and personality diversity, by all means, go right ahead.

PS. I. Don't even get me started about a car full of CS IITians talking about the JEE and high-placers who seem normal on the way to snow country for snowboarding and gambling.

PS. II. I bombed an Apple interview for a mid-career role by being too intelligent and too maverick compared to the group of compliant, I hate to say, yuppies. It was an interview panel of about 9 people and they were just speechless. The other time I bombed an interview for being too smart was about 10 years before that when I was 20 at the old Borders bookstore in Palo Alto. Moral of the story: it's important to play dumb where appropriate because most people are relative-intelligence insecure.

PS. III. Sorry, reader, for the rambling and discontinuous thoughts. Absurd endocrine values of unknown etiology currently... doctor appointments pending. ):

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#257

Post by forbiddenvoid » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 11:30 PM UTC

Triplebyte was an interesting experience for me the time I tried it out. I got lots of calls and several onsites, but my lack of professional experience bit me on every single one of them.

I felt like Triplebyte worked hard to create a good experience for me, but that overall the companies I interviewed with just viewed TB as another placement company. Other than getting to skip the fairly easy phone screen phase, I didn't feel like I got much value from the experience at all, and I had to put a lot of work into it.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#258

Post by slownews45 » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 11:30 PM UTC

llbeansandrice wrote: post #151

mike_d wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to put candidates in control, build a CRM tool. When a recruiter pings me on LinkedIn or emails me, I have a URL I can send them to with an intake form. No more calls wasting my time, I can see the company/role/salary/etc. up front. The trick here is you need to figure out a business model where you don't take money from employers, because once you do its just the long slide to becoming a shittier LinkedI…

> salary Colorado now requires job postings to include something more or less like a "reasonable salary range". It hasn't been perfect, for example there are some companies who now just restrict their online job postings to say "except Colorado" instead of adding a salary. But as someone living in Colorado it's been nice to know the salary range up-front more often and to have confidence that I can ask them for a sal…

I think as they start enforcing things more employers will avoid colorado until kinks worked out.

If you have a janitor in CO, every job is an improvement and potential promotion. Having to first go to that janitor for every position is going to wear out FAST. Posting for the CTO position? Go to janitor first. Posting for CEO position - same thing - that's what is going to drive folks away.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#259

Post by jedberg » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 11:30 PM UTC

WoodenChair wrote: post #242

jedberg wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> going to Harvard instead of Berkeley is also worth about 10 percentage points. That's interesting to me. Most reputable rankings put Berkeley at #2 or #3, and Harvard is usually around #7 or #8 (and US News puts them at #16!). I wonder what the cause of that discrepancy is.

CS program rankings are largely based on their graduate programs. The parent comment is almost certainly talking about candidates with bachelors degrees. For undergraduate Berkeley has a 16% acceptance rate and Harvard has a 4% acceptance rate. This will likely act as a filter in combination with the quality of the undergraduate CS program, which could be better at either institution but is hard to get a metric for.

I was specifically looking at undergrad rankings. The acceptance rate is not a good filter because that's the acceptance rate for the entire school, not the CS program.

From what I can tell, anyone who is a Harvard student can declare the CS major if they pass the pre-reqs. At Berkeley, passing the pre-reqs doesn't get you into the major -- you still have to apply for a limited number of spots, which generally means having a 3.8 GPA or better in your pre-reqs. So effectively both programs have the same acceptance rate.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#260

Post by patothon » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 11:32 PM UTC

10 years ago, I built chooseyourboss.com from scratch for a client of mine (with one of my best friends).

Our principles at the time were very similar to what Triplebyte is trying to do now: give power back to developers.

We build a version of "hired" (did they die?) before "hired" even exist. A matching platform that was matching people with companies that was sharing both their desires and values. Small/big company. Consulting/Product company. How much $$ do you want? What technologies you're interested in? Where do you want to work? All of this anonymously of course.

It was all fine and dandy, the company actually still exists and generates revenue, but I'm overall very bearish on the recruiting space.

It's a sales game. It's a numbers game. And on top of this the people top companies REALLY want to hire aren't hanging out in these recruiting platforms. So as a platform you're only feeding average/average low candidates to companies, and in the meantime, companies that have in house or externalized sourcing resources get better results by going over linkedin and their employees network.

It then becomes a financial game for companies.

And platforms that are not linkeding rarely win.