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Rethinking Triplebyte

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Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#401

Post by TulliusCicero »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #93
rachofsunshine wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without passing the minimum bar, how does Triplebyte distinguish itself from other 1000 platforms where people post resumes? We still have the quiz, and we still show performance on it prominently on your profile (provided you've chosen to share those scores). In fact, we've put a lot of energy into improving the trust companies place in our quizzes over the past year precisely because we think that skills data is…

> crumple under the pressure of the real thing I think that goes to another ability. If we need a candidate to gracefully handle a 3 AM production outage, we should expect them to handle an interview.

That sounds relevant for an SRE/DevOps position, but less relevant for many SWE's. If I'm an Android dev, "oncall" just doesn't have much meaning.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#402

Post by TulliusCicero »

david-wb wrote: post #393

A lot of research on interviews has shown they basically don't work. You just can't grill someone for a few hours and know how they're going to do on the job. For unemployed candidates, we should do away with interviews altogether and do paid 2-week trials instead. After the first 2-3 PRs it's pretty clear if someone has the skills you need and to what degree. It would also help the candidate decide if they like the…

What I've read before is that the most predictive measures were an IQ test and a work sample test.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#403

Post by TulliusCicero »

ammon wrote: post #5
dawnho wrote: post #2

Interesting idea. But it seems like there’s room for abuse - won’t engineers, who are unhappy that they didn’t get an offer, just report companies? Don’t you just become Yelp in that case, full of reviews from salty customers? How are you going to get useful data when you’re worried about that?

This is certainly an issue. As you say, it’s a problem on yelp and glassdoor. It’s why most nightclubs have low yelp ratings (people they exclude give them low scores). There are a few things I think we think we can do: 1) Look at relative data, not raw ratings. Written reviews or raw numerical scores are what show the nightclub effect the most. What we care about is a ranking of companies (showing the better compani…

> I suspect that questions like "did this company say they could meet at $250 salary and then offer you less?" will get more accurate answers than "does this company have a toxic culture?".

I'm pretty sure many salty people will just lie anyway, to punish the company. Source: I've been on the internet a long time.

I think this model of 'punishing' companies would've worked when you had a high bar for being on the platform in the first place, but if anyone can get on there, you'll have a lot of low quality candidates who are very mad that nobody will take them, and they'll overwhelm the reviews.

Remember that there's a survivorship bias at work: the lower quality people will take longer to get hired, which means they do a lot more interviews, which means a lot more reviews on your platform. Essentially, it's a reverse meritocracy when it comes to evaluating companies.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#404

Post by oezi »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #398
oezi wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that companies use any salary information you provide as a candidate to adjust their offer. A lot of companies that asked me what I made at my previous job (even though it is illegal to ask in Germany) offered me just 20% on top of my number. This makes me think that all jobs position should have rather narrow target ranges which are stated up-front. Then you can discuss if you are too high level/low l…

What would happen if you refuse?

They just kick you out of the process.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#405

Post by twic »

samatman wrote: post #168

My random Triplebyte anecdote is that I did good on the quizzes and gave a solid interview, but they declined to represent me. They were transparent about their reasoning: they saw me as somewhat of a specialist in parsing, and they didn't know how to place someone with that peculiar skillset. Which turned out fine. I found a job where my pre-computer programming work experience was relevant, and here a couple jobs l…

> Two, companies aren't going to want to work with a firm that's allowing engineers to collect detailed information on douchey behaviour that the company might engage in.

On the other hand, if a company does not engage in douchey behaviour, then using Triplebyte could be a way to signal that.

This fails a bit if companies can be credibly accused of douchey behaviour when they haven't been engaged in it. I don't know what Triplebyte's plan is here.

> Does Triplebyte have the leverage and moxie to make them engage anyway? Probably not, see point one.

Indeed. They labour the point that programmers have the upper hand in hiring, but that doesn't translate to Triplebyte having the upper hand!

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#406

Post by hellcow »

andrewnicolalde wrote: post #364
hellcow wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have clarified, the first interview is just a code screen. People submit resumes, and we test them with fizzbuzz. 90% of applicants are removed at this first filter.

How many (if any) of that 90% are just non-replies?

Probably 5%. It's extremely low.

Most either don't show up on time or fail fizzbuzz.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#407

Post by pdimitar »

duxup wrote: post #314
dboreham wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then the candidate will be upset when you lowball them because they're not as strong or experienced as your range max merits.

And you won't feel the same when someone picks a number?

That seems to be the going theory in these circles, yes. If there were no initial expectations then the candidate can't feel low-balled.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#408

Post by sage76 »

The TLDR says : "There is far more demand for engineers than there is supply, and that makes engineers powerful in a way other professions are not."

I can't believe this. I must be a garbage engineer then, because I found the US job market for software engineering roles to be absolutely soul crushingly difficult. I am not the only one, my friends did too.

I have given up several times and then restarted job search. I have been grinding leetcode but companies want nothing less than complete perfection.

I actually thought something like triplebyte would be useful, give a test once and have the score be valid for a couple of years, like a GRE for algos and data structures.

I really don't get it.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#409

Post by pdimitar »

RussianCow wrote: post #270
pmoriarty wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Th…

I agree it's exhausting. And it can feel very bad and demotivating for the whole thing to end up without an offer or some half-assed "culture fit" "explanation" that is likely copy-pasted from an online script collection.

But, in my case, doing many interviews helped me understand what negative signals I am emitting during interviews [according to the interviewers]. There's nothing like an outsider's perspective, even if you disagree with it.

---

Example: in one of my last interviews I was told that I am too "cocky" and "over-confident" because when I was given real-time modifications to a homework assignment (that I completed before) I was smiling and saying "oh, that's easy!" and proceeded to make the changes live in my editor -- while sharing screen.

This feedback left a very WTF feeling in me. Dude, I am (a) enthusiastic about the task and (b) have enough experience to show you, in real time, that I can modify the code right there and then to suit the new requirements, and (c) chatting with the interviewing team while doing it... and all you can gleam from that is that I am overconfident and cocky? Seriously, get a grip.

For the record, I strongly disagree with their take. But it gave me a very interesting perspective -- namely to scan for the more introverted / likely-insecure people in the interviewing dev team and try and act a little more modestly to not rub them the wrong way.

It's a fact of life that most people suck at interviewing -- as I hope that I demonstrated here. One of the guys in that team simply dislikes certain kinds of people and he lets this go against his better professional judgement about my abilities. Not cool, right? Especially when you also take into account that the CTO who also attended all interviews agreed that my tech acumen is top-notch and they seriously couldn't catch me with my pants down no matter what they did.

So again, this helps me gather experience and culture and makes me more adaptive in the future.

Does it hurt your ego? Absolutely. Does it shake your preconceived notions? Much more than one would think beforehand. Is it exhausting? Hell yes, sometimes after an interview I didn't want to do another one for a week.

But, is it also very valuable to help you improve your interviewing and negotiation skills? Yes!

That's why I did lot of interviews the last time around. And I'd do it again.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#410

Post by frozenport »

failwhaleshark wrote: post #256
an_opabinia wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 acad…

Going in my cringe folder
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