by kwi on 2/28/18, 7:00 PM with 175 comments
by tway12 on 2/28/18, 8:32 PM
There were certain areas where the interviewer messed up in their evaluation, e.g. they felt I "was a little weak at hashmaps and API design", which is probably because they did not know what I was talking about when I described the details of advanced hashmap implementations. There seems to be a bias to discredit the interviewee if the interviewer lacks knowledge in an area.
Either way, despite getting great evaluations, I was matched with a total of 5 companies most of which were highly underwhelming early stage companies with minimal traction. Furthermore, I was matched with full stack companies despite begin evaluated as "weak in API design", which is perplexing. I was able to get higher quality offers in my own search and it seems like the TripleByte pipeline consists of many mediocre companies.
If I had known, I wouldn't have wasted my time with this service and invested more time in my job search.
by Harj on 2/28/18, 7:43 PM
Interviewing and evaluating engineers is an area a lot of people feel passionately about and have strong opinions on. We're continually looking for ways to improve our process, if you've any thoughts or feedback please ping me - harj at triplebyte.
by lettergram on 2/28/18, 11:52 PM
In a prior conversation on HN (link below), I brought up some aspect of my interview (interviewer late, argumentative, smug, etc.). Then the interviewer came on to HN and PUBLICLY SHARED PORTIONS OF MY INTERVIEW. Honestly, should have been fired on the spot, but nope.
To the interviewers credit, after I was the number one comment for most of the day he deleted that portion of the comment. I am grateful (looking back now) that was removed, however I think it speaks volumes.
The prior discussion is here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13830444
My two cents, is the idea is good - there is some room for improvement. What's scary is putting one company as a wall between you and the employer. I hope it never comes to pass where they control even 5% of the market. No one should be able to interview better than the company itself and employees shouldn't use a service which upon being declined blocks them from other companies. I don't believe that's the case (yet), so no qualms for the time being.
Given my experience, I hope they've improved and would happily change my view if I had reason to.
EDIT: Added prior interaction for reference
by mrnobody_67 on 2/28/18, 7:41 PM
That means the chances of being hired after doing a TripleByte interview is slightly under 1% if my back of the napkin calculation is accurate.
by dilatedmind on 2/28/18, 9:31 PM
The first thing every company asked for was my resume, clearly they had not bought into the triplebyte process. Some seemed entirely unfamiliar with triplebyte.
Interviewing can be a sad process. Triplebyte gave me a taste for what things could be like, but didn't give me any advantage in the application process.
The companies triplebyte matched me with resulted in some of my worst interview experiences. Think disinterested ceos, hostile line of questioning, and a focus on my previous job experience vs things I would have liked to talk about (open source, personal projects)
by dabockster on 2/28/18, 10:08 PM
EDIT: Their website layout is a classic agency layout.
> header with giant "sign up" button
> "top tech companies" in big print as a selling point
> huge section with the most "famous" companies in their client pool
> free cost (you're the product they're selling, so they're not looking out for a best fit - they're looking to get paid for placing you)
> testimonials
> blogroll that reads like it was built solely for SEO
by thecombjelly on 2/28/18, 8:50 PM
Also, shouldn't we be concerned that giving one company's algorithms control over who gets hired will be too much power in too few hands? And algorithms are not neutral. The people that make the algorithms have biases and discriminations just like regular people do but at least if your company does its own hiring you can work on figuring out what those are and how to address them. How can you do that if you depend on some proprietary algorithm?
And what about disabilities? How does your algorithm handle those? Racial bias? So many unanswerable questions.
I have many issues with the way most companies interview but giving up that process to a proprietary algorithm seems like the worst solution. This is not news to be celebrated.
by montrose on 2/28/18, 8:08 PM
""The metric that companies care most about is what percentage of on-site interviews convert into hires, and the industry standard is 20 percent. Triplebyte’s placement rate is 40 percent," says Taggar."
by haaen on 2/28/18, 8:05 PM
by koopuluri on 2/28/18, 10:22 PM
The current screening process provides a low signal of competence, and so companies have to rely more on credentials (degrees, previous company brands) during screening, which means that a lot of skilled people still can't get their feet in the door at companies if they don’t “look right”, and companies fight over a restricted talent pool.
Lack of hiring data for smaller companies means they copy larger company’s interview processes, but there’s no strong forcing function to drive innovation in larger company’s hiring processes (i.e. their success could be despite a bad interviewing process - because they have a brand and offer a lot of perks, hence attracting the best talent, and so they aren’t in a “we have to fix hiring or we will die” mode).
This also really hurts startups - who aren’t in positions to take risks with hiring, and with a lack of good evaluations, have to rely on credentials, which restricts their pool, and makes them compete with the big cos for that talent.
Another important implication of fixing hiring is that it will introduce a powerful forcing function on higher education institutions. If students know that they can get jobs without having “traditional” credentials, but if they can pass, say TripleByte’s, or some other company’s, assessment which is more aligned with what’s required on the job, and is a signal that companies believe in, then students can use money that they would have spent on college to instead actually learn the skills that would be useful on the job.
This movement of money out of higher education, would fund a lot more experiments in learning and education.
I can’t stress how important I think this problem is to solve, and I’m glad companies like TripleByte, interviewing.io, are working on it. We need more companies, more approaches, more experiments in this space.
by austincheney on 2/28/18, 9:49 PM
This is largely just a software/technology problem. In all other professional industries there are means to validate a candidate's competency before they are allowed to interview for a position: licensing, required internships, legal certifications/authorizations, authorized relationships, and so forth.
Technology doesn't have this. The big difference is that in those other professions they are using the interview to actually interview the candidate, as in the person. In software and technology the entire interview is used to gauge basic competency and even then the trust relationship is inherently broken.
Contrary to what technologists will tell you the problem isn't the hiring process or low salaries (preposterous answer unless you live in the bay area). These are symptoms of a broken trust relationship. Hiring companies inherently do not trust the people they are interviewing as basically competent unless they have been told otherwise by somebody they know personally.
Hiring companies shouldn't trust a candidate is minimally competent, because there is no means to a standard baseline on which competency is measured. That is the primary problem. Solve for this problem and the resulting symptoms are easily addressed by the marketplace as a matter of economics.
---
The problem is very clear to see when you have two simultaneous careers: one as a software developer and a different one in an unrelated industry that has professionally addressed these concerns with required professional education and accreditation/licensing.
by abraham_s on 3/1/18, 5:20 AM
by taurath on 2/28/18, 7:44 PM
by bhuga on 2/28/18, 8:39 PM
Their process is fantastic. I can see them replacing first round interviews entirely at some companies if they can look for all the candidates companies need, not just the most senior.
I'm glad to hear they're expanding.
by joshribakoff on 2/28/18, 11:10 PM
by Alex3917 on 2/28/18, 7:52 PM
What does this mean exactly? E.g. does the test successfully identify the people who have the best portfolios of things they’ve built previously?
by zitterbewegung on 2/28/18, 7:30 PM
by aerodog on 3/1/18, 2:01 AM
by crabasa on 3/1/18, 6:22 AM
Does anyone think that social proof could work here? If 15 peers endorse Sally for React Native and those 15 people are likewise found to be credible, could such a network effect be more valuable than a coding test?
by lunchbreak on 3/1/18, 1:11 AM
by nightsd01 on 2/28/18, 10:00 PM
I got to interview with some pretty exciting/interesting companies.
The only problem with Triplebyte, in my opinion, is that I don’t think they track job success AFTER the hire. I imagine this is probably a problem they’re working on. But it’s hard to build a successful recruiting company if you don’t know what happens to the employees once they actually get hired.
by mindhash on 3/1/18, 5:06 AM
The problem with raising the bar for interviewing engineers is the work that they end up doing isn't moving at same pace. With more frameworks, better languages and open source building stuff is getting easier
by wheresvic1 on 3/1/18, 1:24 PM
I think hiring is a difficult process because we need to work with others and people are different in general.
I have personally worked with people who started programming just because they were interested in it - they had no knowledge of algorithmic complexity but they were very open-minded, had a great perspective on the domain and were a pleasure to work with.
This is very anecdotal of course but I sincerely hope that they would have been able to make it past the online quiz...
(If you're thinking they should be smart enough to be able to game the quiz, then my question would be - why not just screen everyone in person then? Of course, that's not scalable and not worth the 50 million then...)
by quadcore on 3/1/18, 4:53 AM
Thing is, a startup cant do like amazon and actually dive into every random applicant. It's too big of a work. So, a startup is limited and can only use recommendations in order to even think about interviewing someone.
Now, what if a company would do the grunt work and select a few of those random applicants and submit them to the companies. That would bring a shitload of value because now startups would have a new source of relevant applications to tap in.
I think triplebyte is actually a good investment.
by bitL on 2/28/18, 8:01 PM
by pmuk on 2/28/18, 7:30 PM
by thingsilearned on 2/28/18, 10:31 PM
by cvittal on 2/28/18, 8:30 PM
This is the most exciting thing to me. I would love to use Triplebyte to try to find a position, but relocating is just not an option for me right now.
by ChrisDiNicolas on 2/28/18, 10:32 PM
by lnnaie on 3/1/18, 2:19 PM
by jasonwilk on 3/1/18, 2:24 AM
by farnsworthy on 3/1/18, 9:18 AM
by pankajdoharey on 3/1/18, 9:04 AM
Marissa = Disaster. I hope she doesnt overemphasize her position as an investor and again runs an enterprise into the ground.