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Rethinking Triplebyte

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Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#261

Post by pmoriarty »

slownews45 wrote: post #255
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…

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, p…

Sounds like we wouldn't be compatible.

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

The same goes in my experience for companies which insist on talking salary before the job offer. It's a red flag.

"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"

Of course I have a clue, but I'm not going to put myself at a disadvantage in the negotiation by revealing it before I've been given a firm job offer and heard a number from the company first.

Also, in my experience recruiters are the ones who push hardest to hear salary expectations up front. They know it'll give them a leg up in negotiations, and some of them are even paid specifically to get that number (as one recruiter was brazen enough to reveal to me).

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#262

Post by voxtech »

ammon wrote: post #218
shkkmo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not a combo where the subscription isn't paid until a hire is actually made through the platform?

We experimented with this, as well as with trial periods (which are sort of the same thing, but with a time limit). Trial periods ended up being easier to think about and optimize (each account either converts or not at the end of the period). But we may revisit this in the future.

Why not just offer junior engineers for free? If companies don't want to pay you for junior engineers, they're not going to suddenly start caring when you're giving them 10 instead of 1. If they're paying you for seniors just let them pay you for seniors.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#263

Post by Aeolun »

patothon wrote: post #260

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…

My problem with these platforms is that I never end up ‘matching’ with any companies because almost without exception their ethos is ‘cheap and fast’. The only way to change that is from the inside.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#264

Post by RussianCow »

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.

For a big enough company, you can collect a few data points via Glassdoor[0], levels.fyi, etc to make sure that they pay in the range you're looking for before you even begin the interview process. For smaller companies, you're absolutely right, although I personally tend to give a very broad range[0] at the beginning of the process, and only narrow that down at the offer stage. That's worked well for me in the past.

The nice thing about the explosion of remote work due to COVID is that engineering salaries are beginning to normalize across the US, and there is now a lot more salary data available online, so it's easier than ever to see what you're "worth" on the market on average. This at least gives you an anchor when having these conversations, so you're not going in blind, and gives you a lot more leverage if they low-ball you.

[0]: Yes, I'm aware of the drawbacks of self-reported data, but it's still broadly useful in aggregate.

[1]: I'm making up numbers, but something like $120k - $200k, with the lower number being the minimum you'd realistically take. Usually recruiters are honest up front if they can't even afford your absolute minimum, but it still leaves you with a lot of negotiation room once the offer comes in.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#265

Post by forbiddenvoid »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #225
devwastaken wrote: post #191

As always with posts about employment, the idea that there's higher demand than supply for engineers is a lie. The demand for highly experienced cheap engineers is high, the demand for junior developers is almost non existent. New CS grads struggle to find employment, there are tens of thousands of very capable devs in open source that cannot find employment. Nobody hears about it because only those that succeed are…

This is true, at least of developers who lack both experience and impressive credentials. A new grad from, say, UC Berkeley might be fine, a new grad from my own alma mater (which has a direction in its name) will often struggle, and a hobbyist without a CS degree has an even bigger uphill battle. The reason we didn't talk about it as much in the main post is that our approach to the problem of credentials hasn't cha…

> hobbyist without a CS degree has an even bigger uphill battle

This was me when I tried Triplebyte. I wish it had worked out. I don't really blame TB for the failure, but I think there was a lot of optimism on the part of TB that wasn't shared by the companies I interviewed with. TB was just another placement option for every one of them, and I found it challenging to overcome what felt like walking into several onsite interviews completely blind to what was expected of me.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#266

Post by 41b696ef1113 »

dvt wrote: post #131
wittycardio wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think literal geniuses can't solve sligtly challenging algorithm questions ?

> You think literal geniuses can't solve sligtly challenging algorithm questions ? (N.B. I was being a bit hyperbolic, but, yes, for example, I highly doubt Steve Jobs could.) The spirit of my point is that most smart people don't care about the kind of idiotic minutia typical hiring panels ask. They care about interesting/creative problems.

I think maybe someone like Donald Knuth would have been a better example.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#267

Post by cactus2093 »

towergratis wrote: post #58

The problem with Triplebyte IMHO is that what the originally promised, while a great idea and concept, it cannot scale. Also after interviewing with them for a role in their company I got to realize they don't know how to conduct interviews themselves. I used them two times. The first one was very early on, where I was given a home assignment and interviewed on it by Aaron himself, if I am not mistaken. The dude was…

Just curious, what do you think a better interview for a software engineer should look like?

People hate overly abstract/CS-focused whiteboard problems (mostly for good reason), isn't practical coding the obvious better alternative?

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#268

Post by jlund-molfese »

sergiotapia wrote: post #129
908B64B197 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think about joining a dev team where no one checked if any candidate could FizzBuzz, you can imagine the workplace environment that can end up with. That sounds hilarious How could a dev team not be able to write 5 lines?

It is hilarious but man, you would be really surprised how people choke on this. It's weird. People with 10+ years writing software can't do this sometimes.

I was once accused of lying about my work experience by a $FORTUNE500 interviewer when I failed to articulate what a CSS flexbox was for a backend dev position.

Such an eye-opening experience! Now that I’m on the other side of the table these days, I understand the importance of making interviewees feel comfortable and asking questions that allow them to start off strong.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#269

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

tdeck wrote: post #102
reillyse wrote: post #40

I see a lot of people in the comments describe triplebyte as a “market leader” and discuss how good they are. I can’t believe how gullible everyone is especially on a startup forum. Let me spell it out to y’all, nobody pivots and changes their entire business model if they are crushing it. So the implication is that triplebyte are not crushing it. So, this probably has gone the same way as lots of other tech startups…

I thought this was pretty telling: > We got jobs for over 1000 engineers Given how many years Triplebyte has been running, "over 1000" seems surprisingly low. I wish them luck with their pivot.

Especially when they're probably making on average less than $25k per engineer they place. I can't imagine they're making even close to $100k on average.

$25k*10k = $25M / 10 years = $2.5M / year. That is peanuts compared to how many people they employ. Plus the ads they run...

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#270

Post by RussianCow »

pmoriarty wrote: post #253
usaar333 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I get real-world interview practice, and that always helps me in future interviews.

I hear this a lot, but how much interview practice do you really need? After the third or fourth set of interviews, they start to really blur together for me.

None of your points are false, but if you're casting a wide net and taking every interview without any idea if the company can even afford you, that's a lot of hours spent. The last time I looked for a job, I interviewed at only four companies and spent an average of probably 5-6 hours on each, and it was exhausting. I can't imagine making a habit out of it while also working full-time.

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