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Rethinking Triplebyte

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Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#71

Post by [deleted] »

manv1 wrote: post #62
guessmyname wrote: post #55

TripleByte is awful. Take a look at the question they just asked me when I was doing their General Coding Assessment: What is the output of the following function? (1m 12s) function foo(a, b) { a += 1 b.push(1) } const a = 0 const b = [] foo(a, b) console.log(a, b)

Depending on the language and how it passes in values, you'll have different answers. Assuming it's javascript the answer is 0,1. In other languages it might be 1, 1. That's a tricky question, and if you're not good enough to understand why they're asking that then you fail!

[deleted]

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#72

Post by rachofsunshine »

manv1 wrote: post #62
guessmyname wrote: post #55

TripleByte is awful. Take a look at the question they just asked me when I was doing their General Coding Assessment: What is the output of the following function? (1m 12s) function foo(a, b) { a += 1 b.push(1) } const a = 0 const b = [] foo(a, b) console.log(a, b)

Depending on the language and how it passes in values, you'll have different answers. Assuming it's javascript the answer is 0,1. In other languages it might be 1, 1. That's a tricky question, and if you're not good enough to understand why they're asking that then you fail!

(For the record, the question does show the language the snippet is written in.)

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#73

Post by MuffinFlavored »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #69
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with Triplebyte is that they say they have companies like Apple and TrueCar posting job listings and hiring but they actually never respond and all you get is offers for companies between 10-200 people in size (aka, startups)

I'm guessing this is your experience - was this more than a couple of months ago? We made some changes about ~6-8 weeks ago to how we order jobs to prioritize responsive companies much more than they were in the past. We also use responsiveness as an input to the "Likely To Accept" score shown for each job (here's a screenshot of a posting from my own prod-testing account: https://imgur.com/wSmGCEL ).

This was my experience twice trying to use Triplebyte in the past 2 years.

It's a great platform, the indicator letting me know companies aren't going to respond is great.

It just doesn't fix the problem that... the quality of companies on Triplebyte aren't companies most senior/lead/architect/advisory level engineers are willing to settle for. I'm being unnecessarily harsh/biased. I'm sure plenty of people use the platform with great success. I've just come to accept "early/mid-stage startups" job offers from Triplebyte and not much else. Not necessarily "garbage" but... for sure lots of risk.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#74

Post by rachofsunshine »

qchris wrote: post #27

By far the most exciting thing about this announcement is this feature: "Detailed information on what a recruiter did with your application." I've been wishing for something like this for years . Especially for early-career engineers or people from non-traditional backgrounds, this is insanely valuable because it helps you to know avoid wasting time on applications that will never go anywhere; avoid typing in your re…

So fun fact, we built this feature as a pretty low-grade experiment, but when we ran it by actual users we got such a positive response that we ended up putting it at the top of our new front page.

Like you, we thought (correctly, as it turns out) that it would appeal to people early in their career. What surprised us is that very senior engineers also told us they loved it - we didn't think it was as much of a concern for them, but sometimes your users surprise you.

It's also a great example of how obvious low-hanging fruit gets missed until you start thinking strictly about "what can we do to make job seekers' lives better?". It's not a particularly innovative or difficult feature, and yet major job sites with a dozen times our engineering resources still haven't done it.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#75

Post by ornornor »

manv1 wrote: post #62
guessmyname wrote: post #55

TripleByte is awful. Take a look at the question they just asked me when I was doing their General Coding Assessment: What is the output of the following function? (1m 12s) function foo(a, b) { a += 1 b.push(1) } const a = 0 const b = [] foo(a, b) console.log(a, b)

Depending on the language and how it passes in values, you'll have different answers. Assuming it's javascript the answer is 0,1. In other languages it might be 1, 1. That's a tricky question, and if you're not good enough to understand why they're asking that then you fail!

I think it would be 0, []

a and b are shadowed in the foo function so the function only acts on the shadowed (and copied) variables. Once you return from foo, the const a and b are unchanged.

Not a great question as a pass or fail test imho because if you use shadowed names often enough to be able to parse this code in your head, you’re writing bad code. There is a reason why shadowing names is a bad practice: it’s hard to figure out what the end result is and account for side effects! But as a discussion on all the points above then it would teach the recruiter something about what the candidate knows rather than using this as a trivia question.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#76

Post by akarma »

Terretta wrote: post #65

A benefit of Triplebyte to big enterprises not mentioned in Triplebyte’s discussion here: acting as engineering assessment proxy for engineering hiring managers stuck with pathologically risk averse enterprise HR departments. Often enterprise HR is paranoid of honestly evaluating anyone for anything, to the point that many HR teams tell one another and engineering hiring managers that it’s “illegal” to assess candida…

Good point!

There's an old quote: "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

Large companies tend to be more risk-averse, so if there are two companies you can use for a service — $PromisingStartup and IBM — large companies will generally make a decision that's optimal to the specific decision-maker, not optimal to the company.

There are two options if you, as the buyer, choose either $PromisingStartup or IBM: success or failure.

If IBM or the $PromisingStartup succeed, then you've done your job.

If IBM fails, you can tell your manager "Who could've guessed! It's IBM!"

If $PromisingStartup fails, you'll have a harder time explaining your decision, and the fault will be with you.

The "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" idea is useful to look at every decision large companies make, whether it's pivoting, choosing a SaaS product, or hiring.

TripleByte, in its current form, has been beneficial to candidates as well by giving enterprise employees a justifiable signal towards hiring them regardless of pedigree.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#77

Post by dang »

ornornor wrote: post #75
manv1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the language and how it passes in values, you'll have different answers. Assuming it's javascript the answer is 0,1. In other languages it might be 1, 1. That's a tricky question, and if you're not good enough to understand why they're asking that then you fail!

I think it would be 0, [] a and b are shadowed in the foo function so the function only acts on the shadowed (and copied) variables. Once you return from foo, the const a and b are unchanged. Not a great question as a pass or fail test imho because if you use shadowed names often enough to be able to parse this code in your head, you’re writing bad code. There is a reason why shadowing names is a bad practice: it’s h…

The const on b only applies to the object reference to b, and doesn't prevent foo from changing the contents of b. No doubt that's why the test question includes an array in the first place.

At least I assume that's how const works; I've not used const in JS.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#78

Post by ammon »

ALittleLight wrote: post #52
ammon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a perfect example of why we're making these changes (and the problem that came from us being a gatekeeper). There are lots of different ways to show skill. We don't want to be in the position of deciding who "deserves" a job.

Isn't that what the core value of TripleByte was though? "This person deserves a job." Then some company says "Okay".

I'd say that main value was that we opened doors for people (got them opportunities they would not have been considered for without us). I don't think what we need to be gatekeepers to do this. Yes, not everyone can succeed (get a job at at top company). But we can help everyone show their skills in the way that's best for them. We can fight ghosting and lying and create a less hostile process. We're keeping our quiz (so that people who do well on tests can get opportunities that way), and also creating a job search process for people who do not want to do a quiz (the majority of engineers). The idea is that they will show their skills other ways (past experience, side projects, open source work). By us not being a gatekeeper we open these other paths.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#79

Post by rachofsunshine »

ALittleLight wrote: post #52
ammon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a perfect example of why we're making these changes (and the problem that came from us being a gatekeeper). There are lots of different ways to show skill. We don't want to be in the position of deciding who "deserves" a job.

Isn't that what the core value of TripleByte was though? "This person deserves a job." Then some company says "Okay".

In the case of people who needed us to vouch that they deserved a job, yeah. But:

- In borderline cases, we didn't want to risk our credibility and companies didn't want to skip tech screens. So competent-but-not-amazing engineers got shut out.

- Our quiz is not perfect, so engineers who didn't fit what we were quizzing got shut out.

- Not everyone needs us to vouch for them. Companies (reasonably) trust that someone with a degree from a top school and years of prestigious experiences can probably do fizzbuzz, and demanding that they prove it was a barrier to them using Triplebyte.

We think it's better to have more granular ability for companies and engineers to decide what mattes to them. A prestigious company can say "we'll only talk to people who took the quiz and got a top score" (and that score is us saying "this person deserves a job"). One that desperately needs the headcount can talk to the borderline cases or decide they don't want to put the extra barrier of a quiz in the way.

Like most markets, we think the hiring market on our platform works best when it's able to respond to local conditions.

Re: Rethinking Triplebyte

#80

Post by akomtu »

Here's an advice. The software engineering market, at least the upper end of it, doesn't need a email forwarding proxy middleman. What it needs is a club-like organisation that acts as a negotiator that leverages insider knowledge to get unreasonable parties on both ends to sign a contract. Good devs don't really search for jobs and don't really talk to random recruiters. They get a steady stream of sales pitches from friends of friends or former co-workers and leverage their fairly wide network to get insider info about companies they're considering to join to get a good contract. The "club" would be like a golf club address book with staff working to connect matching parties. It's surely not a dating site for programmers with ahem.. "AI" selling resumes to data brokers.
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