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Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

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Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#641

Post by decafninja »

hysan wrote: post #191

I'm for a competitor to LinkedIn, but I never got an answer to what the play was after opening up profiles. I support TripleByte's mission, yet I don't believe that you have critical mass in both job seekers nor in sway to convince companies/recruiters to change their process. What was/is TripleByte's plan to "push the industry to look beyond traditional credentials" ? [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=232…

The Triplebyte process sounds difficult enough that, paraphrasing one user experience I read: "someone who would pass the Triplebyte interview/process is likely someone who probably wouldn't have needed to use Triplebyte in the first place".

From what I understand, Triplebyte is supposed to help candidates that might be "good", but not getting any traction from applying to jobs (either by themselves or contacting a recruiter). And to skip the phone screen.

However, from personal experience, as a candidate with a less-than-awesome profile and resume, I still get contacted by top tech company recruiters. And frankly, most phone screens are not terribly difficult. So I am confused what the value proposition of Triplebyte is.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#642

Post by gliese1337 »

tcbasche wrote: post #535
gliese1337 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, just because a feature got cancelled? Heck, that's every single day at my last job. North of 50% of the code I ever worked on because a C-O insisted it was top priority got thrown in the trash. C-O screwed up, feature won't o to production, hurry up and work on this other thing instead? Oh, I guess it's Tuesday. Paychecks keep coming, I keep workin'....

Seems like it was an entire platform rather than just a feature. I don't know how you do it! I've worked somewhere like that too and I found it so demoralising. Reminds me of the study where people built things out of Lego, and watched on as someone disassembled them and handed them back to be rebuilt, finding this to be deeply unsatisfying. (well duh)

I separate my identity from my job, and my "work product" from my personal projects. If I get paid to make something for somebody else, it belongs to the person or organization who paid for it, and they can do what they want with it--including burning it down and throwing it away. I already have their money; what they do with their property is none of my business. As long as I know that I did a good job on what was asked of me, that's all that matters--I can be satisfied with my work.

Now, if they tried to tell me what to do with my own personal projects, we'd have problems!

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#643

Post by philwelch »

kerkeslager wrote: post #640
philwelch wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the people running the company have a conscience which causes them to feel bad and want to apologize when they harm people? Are we really entertaining the idea that the only reason someone might apologize is if it benefits them? >... And before you tell me that everyone acts selfishly--no, they don't. I've met hundreds of wonderful people in my life who were generous, honest, kind, and/or brave, at great pe…

> I actually kind of agree with the comment you’re responding to, but I don’t interpret it the same way you do. I think akerl_ is saying that companies shouldn't bother apologizing when they do something wrong and get caught. I think that's some "lizard person school of business" shit that has no place in a civilized society.

That’s one way of reading it. Another, more cynical reading is that if companies are amoral in the first place, why do they bother issuing insincere apologies that don’t actually benefit them? Less of a, “companies should be sociopathic” and more of a, “why do these sociopathic companies behave in this way that’s inconsistent with their otherwise-well-demonstrated pattern of sociopathic behavior?”

And sure, maybe the answer is that they’re not sociopathic in the first place. But that’s a very non-cynical answer. Credulous, perhaps.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#644

Post by akerl_ »

kerkeslager wrote: post #640
philwelch wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the people running the company have a conscience which causes them to feel bad and want to apologize when they harm people? Are we really entertaining the idea that the only reason someone might apologize is if it benefits them? >... And before you tell me that everyone acts selfishly--no, they don't. I've met hundreds of wonderful people in my life who were generous, honest, kind, and/or brave, at great pe…

> I actually kind of agree with the comment you’re responding to, but I don’t interpret it the same way you do. I think akerl_ is saying that companies shouldn't bother apologizing when they do something wrong and get caught. I think that's some "lizard person school of business" shit that has no place in a civilized society.

I’d like to live in a world where businesses apologize and adjust their behavior when they make mistakes. I think it would be great if they’d do that regardless of internet mobs.

My point above is that I don’t think internet mobs incentivize businesses to behave that way, and in fact it seems that apologizing to the mob, or adjusting behavior in response to things the mob does not approve off, are counterproductive for the business. They continue to take heat for the wording of their apology, they get another wave of media coverage about the thing the mob is pissed about, there’s not really any visible upside.

Given that, I’m surprised more business don’t just ignore the angry people on the internet and just proceed as-is, continuing to rake in money from the people who aren’t outraged.

But maybe I’m just a lizard, unfit for your civilized society.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#645

Post by akerl_ »

philwelch wrote: post #643
kerkeslager wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually kind of agree with the comment you’re responding to, but I don’t interpret it the same way you do. I think akerl_ is saying that companies shouldn't bother apologizing when they do something wrong and get caught. I think that's some "lizard person school of business" shit that has no place in a civilized society.

That’s one way of reading it. Another, more cynical reading is that if companies are amoral in the first place, why do they bother issuing insincere apologies that don’t actually benefit them? Less of a, “companies should be sociopathic” and more of a, “why do these sociopathic companies behave in this way that’s inconsistent with their otherwise-well-demonstrated pattern of sociopathic behavior?” And sure, maybe the…

This, essentially. But more specifically: if I were in Triplebyte’s shoes, I’d have probably done one of two things:

Either just release the feature anyway, and maybe default it to opt-in for people with existing content, maybe make it “only content from $now forward is public”, something to that effect.

Halt the feature, but expend the minimum possible effort on the message out: “Hi all, we’ve reconsidered the feature in light of feedback. Thanks, CEO”.

It’s not clear to me that applying more time/effort to explaining themselves to the world has done them any benefit. There’s the bulk of people who didn’t notice / don’t care, there’s people who are permanently angry, and there’s people who are going to want to see actual changes before they revisit.

The people who work for a business are incentivized to live lives that let them sleep well at night, but it’s entirely possible for them to learn from this experience and behave differently in the future without bothering to respond to the mob.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#646

Post by philwelch »

geoelectric wrote: post #631
philwelch wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don’t like the idea of hamstringing the CEO’s ability to make executive decisions because the CEO can’t be trusted to make ethical executive decisions. Processes are fine for preventing operational mistakes, but when it comes to ethics and executive judgment, they’re a poor substitute for having trustworthy people making the decisions.

They should be more trustworthy than this, for sure. But sometimes a poor or harmful decision is still an operational mistake that comes down to poor information or comprehension. If it were to become more apparent to me that this was a deliberate lapse in ethics, I’m sure I’d be more where you’re at. As it is right now, I’m giving some charitable credence to the idea he’s the CEO equivalent of the skydiving photogra…

Maybe so. But in the general case I think individuals typically have much better moral judgment than processes and organizations. And the individual whose moral judgment ultimately prevails is the one who makes the decision. It’s not something that can be delegated.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#647

Post by akerl_ »

kerkeslager wrote: post #639
akerl_ wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will bet you $20 that Triplebyte does not make any long term changes to remove dark patterns within the next year, and that they also continue to do just fine without those 2000 accounts. Additionally, even if the 2000 accounts were enough to cause business impact, the idea that they’d need to demonstrate long-term change to win back those users is effectively irrelevant. They may as well put their efforts into gai…

Well, you're certainly leaving out big parts of the equation. Like: they can court new users and try to repair burned bridges. Or: the people who quit, and the narrative around why, certainly affects their ability to court new users. But ultimately, you might be right--maybe the net effect of not apologizing would be negligibly different from the net effect of apologizing. I don't have numbers to say you're wrong, bu…

I’m not sure how you expect to have a productive conversation when, in this and parallel comments, you’ve made several insinuations that I’m a conscienceless lizard person.

But to be clear: Triplebyte’s specific situation is a an ethical issue only in respect to the fact that they planned to enable by default for existing users. That’s a bad move. They’ve stopped the bad move.

I’m more interested in the overall pattern of “company does thing, people disagree with thing, people express outrage to company, company issues statement”. Which in many cases has zero ethical components.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#648

Post by dllthomas »

tersers wrote: post #471
dllthomas wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what type of company you're looking for that you'd expect to be underrepresented.

Basing your worth around a quiz only further enables whiteboard and leetcode style interviews. I've never seen why these interviews are useful or an indicator of anything beyond someone's ability to sit at home for hours on end doing the same things over and over. A company I would want to work for would be doing something for sustainability/climate change or another social good and would focus more on behaviour and…

> sustainability/climate change or another social good

Ah, yeah, if you get too narrow in your targeting, it probably makes more sense to focus on networking than any sort of recruiter.

That said, I saw quite a range when I went through Triplebyte a bit more than a year ago.

I wound up at a company making 3D printers, which has (temporarily) semi-pivoted to make lots and lots of (clinically validated) NP swabs for COVID testing. So social good can show up in a lot of places :)

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#649

Post by geofft »

philwelch wrote: post #630
geoelectric wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can install business processes that give chances for unethical decisions to be reviewed and identified, though. Committees are shit for innovation but relatively effective for squashing interestingly bad ideas along with any interestingly good ones. I read the apology letter as essentially saying he single-handedly drove the idea, in part because he was flailing due to COVID killing their bottom line, and was tun…

I still don’t like the idea of hamstringing the CEO’s ability to make executive decisions because the CEO can’t be trusted to make ethical executive decisions. Processes are fine for preventing operational mistakes, but when it comes to ethics and executive judgment, they’re a poor substitute for having trustworthy people making the decisions.

I think you'd still want some sort of business process for "hire ethical people" - because there is a huge business process being implemented from all your team managers and all your board members for "make money in whatever way you can" (or, in the case of a startup, perhaps just "grow in whatever way you can"), and you want something to counteract that beyond just one person's conscience.

Potential business processes include "ask about ethics as part of culture fit, and have a good sense of what you mean by 'ethics'," "ask about ethics as part of promo / do not count projects that put user data at risk towards promo," "vet investors for their ethics and see how their other investments are doing before allowing them to take a board seat," etc.

An ethical CEO will probably be doing many of these anyway, which is fine. You don't need to formalize them. It's fine for the CEO to say, for instance, "Ordinarily I would have put the brakes on this via this particular means, but I failed to notice because of this unexpected circumstance. I'm sorry and this is how I'm going to make sure I notice and make the right decision next time." (That is't too far off from what was actually said, actually, except for the bit about how to make decision-making more robust in the future. Everyone, ethical or not, fails to live up to their expectations of themselves at least occasionally.)

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#650

Post by philwelch »

geofft wrote: post #649
philwelch wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don’t like the idea of hamstringing the CEO’s ability to make executive decisions because the CEO can’t be trusted to make ethical executive decisions. Processes are fine for preventing operational mistakes, but when it comes to ethics and executive judgment, they’re a poor substitute for having trustworthy people making the decisions.

I think you'd still want some sort of business process for "hire ethical people" - because there is a huge business process being implemented from all your team managers and all your board members for "make money in whatever way you can" (or, in the case of a startup, perhaps just "grow in whatever way you can"), and you want something to counteract that beyond just one person's conscience. Potential business process…

> I think you'd still want some sort of business process for "hire ethical people"

I absolutely agree. But this only works if the top leadership are themselves ethical people. If they are unethical or even neutral, it’s going to backfire. Instead of hiring people for their backbone in terms of pushing back against unethical decisions, it turns into hiring people for their willingness to conform to what they are told.

> It's fine for the CEO to say, for instance, "Ordinarily I would have put the brakes on this via this particular means, but I failed to notice because of this unexpected circumstance. I'm sorry and this is how I'm going to make sure I notice and make the right decision next time."

Definitely. But you only get to use that excuse so many times before it starts to lose credibility.

> That is't too far off from what was actually said, actually

Here I disagree. To his credit, Ammon has taken full personal responsibility for pushing this through, even over internal objections. It’s not a failure to notice something that happened when you’re the one doing the thing.

The resolution is also more personal than procedural: be more conscientious about your users and listen to people who object to your ideas. Demonstrate that you can do that over time and you can regain trust.

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