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I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

triplebyte.com

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Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#41

Post by shawn »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #16
dep_b wrote: post #14

Getting rejected at Triplebyte was actually a pretty good investment time wise. Guess the whole thing costed me three hours in total and I got quite a list of things to improve and how. It was clear it was tailored towards the interview not just a larger generic mail. There are tons of companies that give you a generic email after you completed an IQ test, a questionary, open questions and of course the 8hours+ homew…

> "Try again in three months" > Why? I wouldn't do anything different. But they will. The interview process is stochastic; exactly the same performance from you will lead to different results on different attempts. > Getting rejected at Triplebyte was actually a pretty good investment time wise. Guess the whole thing costed me three hours in total and I got quite a list of things to improve and how. It was clear it w…

While we specifically designed the take home project track to help overcome the difficulties of coding under time pressure with someone watching, we do still need to see a certain level of programming during the interview.

“How to set up a test that works and then completely ruin the results by doing nonsensical things during a dumb ritual that our entire industry seems set on preserving.”

Question for Triplebyte: when’s the last time that a single hour of coding — while being watched — determined whether you’d get to keep your job? Not acquire a job, but keep it.

I’m gusssing “never.” It’s a fake ritual.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#42

Post by kulahan »

apetresc wrote: post #38

> I work at Triplebyte, and over the last year I’ve written over 3,000 detailed, individual rejection emails. Wait, what? That means you're interviewing on average 12 people every single working day of the year. Even for someone who's job title was "Technical Recruiter" that would be a TON, let alone for someone who is a Team Lead and presumably has other duties. How is that possible?

It's possible his job is JUST to write these rejection letters. He gets feedback forms from all the interviewers, compiles them, reviews them, condenses them, touches them up, then sends them out.

That could easily be a full-time job for a large company.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#43

Post by pandler »

hunterjrj wrote: post #11
Insanity wrote: post #3

At least you get a response even if it is a rejection letter. I have heard - not experienced - that sometimes you just don't hear back from the company at all, which seems worse to me.

This happened to me. Several rounds of interviews with a well known colored-hat company, then... nothing. No response to follow-ups either. What was especially frustrating to me was that up to that point, the tone of both the conversations and email exchanges was very positive and cordial. I would have expected a "Thanks, but no thanks" follow-up at least, especially considering I was an internal referral from a Sr.…

When this has happened to me before with bigger companies, I finally get a rejection letter months after the fact. My guess is that it’s them hedging and not wanting to reject until they’ve filled the position.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#44

Post by nosseo »

faitswulff wrote: post #35
nosseo wrote: post #2

Article author - I'm on the writing team at Triplebyte. Most of what we do is summarize candidates' technical performance for their introduction to companies, but we also send feedback to everyone who takes our two-hour interview. I took this responsibility over from our first engineer, who built a bunch of software to make the process faster - it lets me quickly autogenerate emails by clicking all the resources I wa…

As a writers for TripleByte, how much technical background do you and the rest of the writing team have?

I did a degree in symbolic systems (CS + philosophy + linguistics; I have some CS background but less than I'd have gotten from a CS degree), I did one software internship, and Triplebyte was my first job when I graduated. I'm sure every candidate I send feedback is a stronger engineer than I am, but I do have some technical background. Most engineers want to write code all day, not emails, but I think a technical background does help us do our jobs.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#45

Post by nosseo »

mpeg wrote: post #28
nosseo wrote: post #2

Article author - I'm on the writing team at Triplebyte. Most of what we do is summarize candidates' technical performance for their introduction to companies, but we also send feedback to everyone who takes our two-hour interview. I took this responsibility over from our first engineer, who built a bunch of software to make the process faster - it lets me quickly autogenerate emails by clicking all the resources I wa…

It's interesting that you pat yourself on the back about it, I think the whole Triplebyte interview process is poorly thought out, including your email comms. I did your online code quiz and got sent an email about doing a 2-hour technical interview, without really knowing much about what the job I was supposed to be applying for was. On the interview, since I didn't really want to waste 2-hours on something I didn't…

Yeah, another disadvantage of feedback is that some people really resent suggestions on how to improve - they can come across as condescending. I definitely would rather get feedback to someone who wants it even if this annoys someone who didn't, but I think lots of companies are making the opposite tradeoff - and that's part of why feedback is so rare in the industry.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#46

Post by draw_down »

I don't think legal risk is the main reason companies refrain from elaborating on why they chose not to hire. That's just a convenient thing to point to (in other words, lazy). It's more like, there's all downside and no upside. I can't think of one benefit that would accrue to an employer for doing that, but I can think of a lot of bad (or just undesirable) things that could potentially come from it.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#48

Post by nosseo »

apetresc wrote: post #38

> I work at Triplebyte, and over the last year I’ve written over 3,000 detailed, individual rejection emails. Wait, what? That means you're interviewing on average 12 people every single working day of the year. Even for someone who's job title was "Technical Recruiter" that would be a TON, let alone for someone who is a Team Lead and presumably has other duties. How is that possible?

I don't conduct the interviews, you're right that that'd be impossible. I take the notes from our interviewers and turn them into feedback emails.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#49

Post by dmitrygr »

tptacek wrote: post #40

When someone can’t answer an interview question about relational databases, it might be that they don’t know anything about relational databases. I thought you all were better than this. Why are you asking questions about relational databases? Why not just have candidates accomplish the thing you're assessing with an actual relational database ? I know you're work-sample-literate! But if your feedback emphasizes comm…

Because sometimes understanding the base concept is important. I cannot possibly ask you to solve 1,000 scenarios in 45 minutes. But if you get the basic idea of how the concept works, I can be sure that when you encounter scenario #945, you'll have the basic grasp on the concept to at least know where to look, and when scenario #487 comes up, you'll know the basic idea of how to handle it.

Asking you just to do one thing in an interview risks accidentally hitting one of the ten-twenty things you do know how to do, leaving me with no proof that you can solve the other 980-ish possible problems.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#50

Post by rdl »

I'd settle for "do you at least send a rejection email of any kind to the candidate?" vs. the "dropping someone on the floor and not responding for weeks/months/ever". Even without detailed or personalized feedback, it's a huge improvement. Also if an internal person refers someone, you should let the internal person know if you're passing, I think (depends on other factors, though.)
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