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Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

otherbranch.com

71–80 of 92 posts

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#71
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, okay, but turn it round: what do you have to lose by listing the jobs? Some people will be convinced to sign up without them, but if you list them, some additional people will sign because they are interested in those jobs. Maybe some that would have given you their CV would be put off if they see only listings for jobs they don't match - but they don't match them, so they're not going to help your business any…

> Well, okay, but turn it round: what do you have to lose by listing the jobs? Years ago, Triplebyte had a blog post on the front page of this very site where we mentioned, offhandedly, that we'd gotten jobs for "hundreds of engineers". That was true - the number was roughly 800 that we could track, probably into the low thousands counting ones we didn't - but there were extended threads analyzing that number to prov…

Okay, that's a good analysis. I'm too tired to work through the math bit right now, but you may be right.

One question in my mind, though, is why is it that that most recruiters solve the coordination issue the other way - first finding companies, and then hunting for candidates to match them. IE, there must be some reason why it's more effective for them to do it that way round, and theoretically this presents an obstacle for you. But perhaps Triplebyte already figured out the answer.

I only know of one established recruitment company which does it the other way round - they don't hunt for candidates - and that's ecm selection. They operate in science-heavy areas mainly, and the chip industry, where there's a particular need for the recruiter to have a good grip on what the role means, otherwise they end up flooding their client with inappropriate candidates. But they are probably not as scalable as you want to be.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through a bootcamp at the end of 2014, then spent the next three years unable to get a job in tech. I didn’t have a paycheck for those three years. Triplebyte was my last ditch effort. I failed the online test the first time I took it, came back and then failed their interview. Came back again, got five in person interviews in the Bay Area. Didn’t get offers on the first four (one place even kicked me out half…

That's still an amazing level of persistence. What motivated you to push through so much failure?

Overconfidence. I had built some cool stuff, but I didn’t know much I didn’t know. So having interviews where I wouldn’t get any feedback left me in the dark about how far off I was.

I’ve always had sterling reviews as long as I’ve been in a job. I’ll leave it to you to wonder how much of that is competence and how much is successfully pretending to be competent.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#73

Triplebyte overhyped their promise by lying to candidates. They told me I "had the highest score they ever saw" on their screening thing. Then, they submitted me as a candidate to Meta without my consent during the middle of the pandemic. (Ironically, it got me a job at Meta but I was laid-off in 2022 due to being remote and new.)

(Otherbranch founder) The privacy thing is a legitimate criticism. It was not my call (I wasn't part of the leadership at the time) and I disagreed with it both then and now. It was a screwup, and it is a big part of why I want to make aggressive honesty one of our major cultural points - because I think once you start with spin it's easy to roll down a slippery slope to "well it's in our pragmatic interest so sure d…

@sama was hyping 3B on podcasts ~2016-2018. I thought it would've had an iota of integrity because he put his name out there with it, so I gave it a go not expecting much. I've interviewed ~100 candidates, have been on the other side of the table ~300x lifetime, and been a client-facing consultant with basic sales experience. I've seen and heard pointless shit, crazy shit, and illegal shit in hiring process but thankfully these situations revealed themselves early enough in process so I could bounce before getting too involved in less professional shops.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#74

The volume and compensation of high paying tech jobs that made all these companies possible doesn’t exist anymore. There was so much value to be captured that these companies could survive on the sidelines just eating the scraps of tech compensation, and those scraps fed them well. Now the scraps are far too small to support a company.

One of these reasons these sites failed is they tried to scale to $1B companies, which made sense 10 years ago. They were successful except for scaling. These sites can totally exist as $XX million companies even today.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#75
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m getting multiple emails a week for web and mobile roles all over the country. Seems to me hiring is back at least for mid-senior level.

Anecdotally seeing similar things. Had a FAANG hiring manager tell me that they over indexed on new grads in the 2010s, and the hiring was now focused on 5-10 years of experience. So basically the same cohorts, just at a different career stage.

Would not be surprised if hiring showing a trickle of coming back, is partly due to the AI overhyping showing a trickle of coming down too, based on a couple of recent articles I've read (e.g. recent GS (1) one), and also on based on common sense, which is not very common, as Voltaire said, starting to trickle back too.

Pardon the grammar, no AI used ;)

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#76
post #64

How is Otherbranch different from traditional recruiting? (IE, the article talks a lot about how they are different from Triplebyte, but I never used Triplebyte.) FWIW: I really like the idea of the recruiter doing in-depth technical screens and matchmaking: When I'm in the US job market, the most frustrating aspect is dealing with recruiters. Most have so little "tech" experience that they can't evaluate companies o…

The biggest difference is that we do interviews ourselves. That means we aren't relying just on resumes, it means we can make stronger, more data-backed recommendations to companies, and it means we can cast a wider net in terms of candidates without strong resumes. As an example, we have a candidate doing onsites as we speak that had a few years of a somewhat job-hoppy resume who, as it turns out, is an amazing engi…

> I'll take yours if you want, just to make the point

Really? I really enjoy interviewing candidates. If you visit my profile there should be a way to get in touch with me.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#77
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest difference is that we do interviews ourselves. That means we aren't relying just on resumes, it means we can make stronger, more data-backed recommendations to companies, and it means we can cast a wider net in terms of candidates without strong resumes. As an example, we have a candidate doing onsites as we speak that had a few years of a somewhat job-hoppy resume who, as it turns out, is an amazing engi…

> I'll take yours if you want, just to make the point Really? I really enjoy interviewing candidates. If you visit my profile there should be a way to get in touch with me.

I'll send you something later this evening.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#78
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One, you wouldn't be giving away hundreds of dollars of your time unless we had a role for you (unlike Triplebyte, we interview you only if, conditional on you doing well, we have a job you'd be interested in). So the only time you'd be losing is the time to do a signup form. But to answer your question: > How many fully remote jobs paying over $200k base do you have in your pipeline? Depends on your standard for "pi…

> unlike Triplebyte, we interview you only if, conditional on you doing well, we have a job you'd be interested in That sounds really prudent. > What you're saying, in essence, is "you should lie to me and tell me you're bigger than you are if you want to get off the ground". I'm not asking you to do that, I'm glad you're being so honest. You're right the network effect is challenging and fomo/dishonesty is a common…

That is a fantastic suggestion, and I would love to do something like that if we can make it work logistically. I'm not at all sure that's on the table, but it's a great idea.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#79
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have a designer. In fact, I appreciate your optimism in thinking the website was built by an engineer , because it wasn't (I did it myself over a weekend). We're a bootstrapped startup in a hostile environment being funded by me throwing a chunk of my savings at the problem. Do you think that's the most important thing for us to spend money on?

You do what you want, but you might consider listening to potential users and being a little less defensive. Nobody is forcing you to use your savings for this, I can understand that you’d take any feedback personally but you should try not to.

You know, that's fair, I was a little defensive about it. Sorry about that.

I do still think you're expecting something somewhat unreasonable from a company at our stage, but I shouldn't have said so and my mindset replying earlier was not in the right place.

Re: Rebooting (something like) early Triplebyte

#80
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll take yours if you want, just to make the point Really? I really enjoy interviewing candidates. If you visit my profile there should be a way to get in touch with me.

I'll send you something later this evening.

I also just signed up, so you can dig me out of your user base. I'm https://github.com/GWBasic/soft_matrix

(I turned off all GitHub email awhile ago due to SPAM.)

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