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Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

blog.triplebyte.com

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Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#31

Post by mquander »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #16
Harj wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Sorry, I appreciate that you're trying to add value but I still don't see it. Until you can get the hiring companies to eliminate their onsite interviews and only rely on you to test candidates programming abilities, then there really is no advantage to going through TripleByte. There are only disadvantages. If I have a bad day and mess up the TripleByte interview, then I'm automatically excluded from a bunch of top…

I used Triplebyte when looking for a job recently. The advantage in it for me is that Triplebyte thought about what I said I was interested in and matched me up to a half dozen interesting small companies that I would never have found any other way.

That service is easily worth thousands of dollars to me (and I also used Hired.com for the same thing, where thousands of dollars would have been paid in lieu of my salary if I had been matched up.) Instead all I had to do was spend two or three hours writing some code and talking on the phone.

If there are other recruiters that competently provide this service then nobody told me about them.

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#32

Post by tatterdemalion »

asmdb wrote: post #27
ammon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have specific guidelines / process that we use to measure each. For example, professional coding is a focus on writing clean code, that is well designed on the micro level (good names, good modularity on the function / class level), and good testing. We measure this using a rubric as we watch each engineer code. Low-level understanding is knowledge of how computers work, under the hood (bits, bytes, character enco…

I recall part of the Triplebyte screening process was to implement a solution to a whiteboard-type problem under a time constraint. It occurred to me that not all companies would necessarily place heavy weight on solving whiteboard problems in the interview process, yet Triplebyte seemed to filter applicants right out of the gate based on this measurement. I am curious if the genome project will alter this aspect of…

I went through the Triplebyte process (to the end) and did not ever implement a solution to a whiteboard problem under a time constraint.

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#33

Post by samdk »

Harj wrote: post #3

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 prob…

"Back-end web understanding" seems oddly specific compared to everything else on that list.

Why that and not something more general which might encompass other kinds of domain-specific knowledge? There are a lot of companies on your list which seem like they might care more about other skills that don't really fit anywhere else. (Experience working with databases for example, for one of the 7 or so database companies.)

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#34

Post by Harj »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #16
Harj wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Sorry, I appreciate that you're trying to add value but I still don't see it. Until you can get the hiring companies to eliminate their onsite interviews and only rely on you to test candidates programming abilities, then there really is no advantage to going through TripleByte. There are only disadvantages. If I have a bad day and mess up the TripleByte interview, then I'm automatically excluded from a bunch of top…

We've worked with enough engineers to be confident they're finding value and advantages to using Triplebyte. The feedback has included finding interesting companies (especially earlier stage ones) they'd not known about, skipping technical phone screens (even if you know you'll pass, they still suck), getting feedback on the Triplebyte technical interview, having interview scheduling handled by us, getting a high offer rate and help thinking through offers.

Assuming you can get companies to engage with you (i.e. you already have the right resume credentials) you could invest the time in achieving these same goals yourself as you're saying. For people who don't want to make that time investment, we can save time in a way that other recruiters can't by filtering companies using data about your technical skills and skipping those phone screens. The companies we work with don't trust other recruiters to do this screening correctly.

Our interview also doesn't require taking a day off work, it takes 2.5 hours and is done remotely via Google Hangouts.

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#35

Post by asmdb »

tatterdemalion wrote: post #32
asmdb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall part of the Triplebyte screening process was to implement a solution to a whiteboard-type problem under a time constraint. It occurred to me that not all companies would necessarily place heavy weight on solving whiteboard problems in the interview process, yet Triplebyte seemed to filter applicants right out of the gate based on this measurement. I am curious if the genome project will alter this aspect of…

I went through the Triplebyte process (to the end) and did not ever implement a solution to a whiteboard problem under a time constraint.

If I recall correctly, I was asked to implement a solution to a combinatorial problem within 1 hour.

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#36

Post by choxi »

Harj wrote: post #3

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 prob…

To make it even more complicated, most companies might not even know what they need. The classic example is algorithms: many companies will say they care about algorithms, but few of them actually need those skills.

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#37

Post by [deleted] »

Harj wrote: post #34
pfarnsworth wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I appreciate that you're trying to add value but I still don't see it. Until you can get the hiring companies to eliminate their onsite interviews and only rely on you to test candidates programming abilities, then there really is no advantage to going through TripleByte. There are only disadvantages. If I have a bad day and mess up the TripleByte interview, then I'm automatically excluded from a bunch of top…

We've worked with enough engineers to be confident they're finding value and advantages to using Triplebyte. The feedback has included finding interesting companies (especially earlier stage ones) they'd not known about, skipping technical phone screens (even if you know you'll pass, they still suck), getting feedback on the Triplebyte technical interview, having interview scheduling handled by us, getting a high off…

[deleted]

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#38

Post by gkop »

Harj wrote: post #34
pfarnsworth wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I appreciate that you're trying to add value but I still don't see it. Until you can get the hiring companies to eliminate their onsite interviews and only rely on you to test candidates programming abilities, then there really is no advantage to going through TripleByte. There are only disadvantages. If I have a bad day and mess up the TripleByte interview, then I'm automatically excluded from a bunch of top…

We've worked with enough engineers to be confident they're finding value and advantages to using Triplebyte. The feedback has included finding interesting companies (especially earlier stage ones) they'd not known about, skipping technical phone screens (even if you know you'll pass, they still suck), getting feedback on the Triplebyte technical interview, having interview scheduling handled by us, getting a high off…

Technical phone screens don't have to suck if both parties have a good attitude toward them - they should be fun! Just like our jobs should be more or less fun. Can Triplebyte match me only with companies with this perspective?

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#39

Post by thaumasiotes »

tatterdemalion wrote: post #32
asmdb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall part of the Triplebyte screening process was to implement a solution to a whiteboard-type problem under a time constraint. It occurred to me that not all companies would necessarily place heavy weight on solving whiteboard problems in the interview process, yet Triplebyte seemed to filter applicants right out of the gate based on this measurement. I am curious if the genome project will alter this aspect of…

I went through the Triplebyte process (to the end) and did not ever implement a solution to a whiteboard problem under a time constraint.

I went through the triplebyte process twice; once in the take-home project track and once in the "normal" track.

Their feedback to me on the take-home project track was "we thought you did a great job; very impressive. But you interview so poorly that we decided not to move forward." I don't see anything to do in response to that other than to keep trying to interview, so I tried to do the "normal" track.

It was entirely time-constrained, supervised whiteboard problems.

Re: Triplebyte Engineer Genome Project

#40

Post by thaumasiotes »

impish19 wrote: post #20

Whenever someone decides to hire someone, all of their criteria are heavily biased towards what kind of skills the candidates posses. I wonder if someone can come up with a reasonably accurate way to determine how well or easily can a candidate acquire particular skills. I realize this line of thought might not be popular for most startups who would want someone to get going as soon as they start. But if you're havin…

> I wonder if someone can come up with a reasonably accurate way to determine how well or easily can a candidate acquire particular skills.

This is known as an "IQ test".

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