4 ms·

It's been interesting working with larger companies through Triplebyte. When we started, we were mostly working with smaller startups making early engineering h

by Harj 10y ago

It's been interesting working with larger companies through Triplebyte. When we started, we were mostly working with smaller startups making early engineering hires. The challenge for these them is letting engineers know the company exists and why it's interesting. Bigger companies like Facebook don't need to let engineers know they exist, a huge number of engineers have already applied to them at some point. What they've realized is the way to hire more is to find the good ones that are sitting in the resume review stage of the hiring process, not getting looked at because they don't have stand out credentials. One thing that's struck out to me in a surprising way about the average startup hiring process compared to larger companies is speed. We've found the larger companies are actually faster to move on the first step of booking a call to speak with our candidates. This completely reverses when it gets to bringing someone onsite and making offers though. Bigger companies take longer to do both and this is where startups have a hiring advantage.

djcapelis 10y ago
How does the matching process work on the other side? How do you figure out the correct interview loop and position to match a candidate with when you're working with large companies that have so many different groups inside them?
- ammon 10y ago
  This differs substantially by company. Some companies have one general interview process, and handle team/role assignment after making offers (for some reason this is common at very large companies and very small companies). Other companies (often midsize) have different interview tracks for different open roles. In that case we just treat each interview track like a different company. We gather an initial guess about what the track wants by talking to the hiring managers, and then refine this with feedback data on candidates. We've found that bringing up example interview questions and asking if it's important that candidates can answer them is the best way to get at what skills an organization values. There's still a lot of noise in this (a hiring manager can't speak perfectly for the the entire organization), so we refine it over time.
itsdrewmiller 10y ago
Why do you think that is? Dedicated staff for the early funnel compared to "not my real job" specialization further down?
tedmiston 10y ago
A year or so ago you guys published the post Who Y Combinator Companies Want (http://blog.triplebyte.com/who-y-combinator-companies-want http://blog.triplebyte.com/who-y-combinator-companies-want) and A Taxonomy of Programmers (http://blog.triplebyte.com/a-taxonomy-of-programmers http://blog.triplebyte.com/a-taxonomy-of-programmers), both of which were quite interesting and insightful in terms of data. How do the types of engineers Apple or Facebook want compare to that?
- ammon 10y ago
  So, those are not (unfortunately!) the primary way that we match engineers with companies. It comes down to questions about how important it is that engineers are strong in academic CS (some organizations think very, others think it's useless fluff), how important programming speed is (some companies think very, others want to see careful testing and think speed is sign of shallowness), or whether it's important that engineers are strong in http / web systems (some think this is the core of what most engineers do, others want problem solving and intelligence and think web programming is teachable). Some companies want the best engineers, regardless of english level. Others value communication over engineers. It's simple stuff. But getting the data is HARD (companies themselves don't know how much they differ), and matching engineers on these criteria significantly boosts pass rates.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    That sounds excellent. What's the best way for an engineer to share their own values with respect to these attributes? For example, is there a way for me to say, "I prefer cultures which emphasize code quality ahead thoroughness and with an above average communication style"? (I haven't used Triplebyte yet.) I totally understand if this is part of the secret sauce and the answer is "just use it".
- conjectures 10y ago
  The taxonomy is interesting, but flawed. What founder wouldn't want a Child Prodigy on their team, someone who's 'going to found a company when they're older'? Someone with hustle and chops but happy to be a junior member. Likewise who'd want an 'idiosyncratic' Academic? Ignoring the fact that massive tools like Scala are some academic's project. Or that Google was founded by two PhD students... Obvs the former is going to get many 'yes please' and the later 'umm, maybe'.
dnautics 10y ago
I had relatively quick (1 week time turnaround) onsites with "big companies" thorough triplebyte. Startups were relatively quick to 'weed me out' as someone with less experience. One of my frustrations was that I was not sure if triplebyte was effectively communicating my junior engineer status to the big companies; one of the companies was pitched to me as a company that had a history of being ok with taking on someone and indoctrinating them in their way of doing things and then turned me down with a reply that they were looking for a senior engineer. In retrospect I kind of realize that Triplebyte is really more targetting as a service for more senior positions (at least for now) but I think this is a great move for Triplebyte to get a bigger marketshare and wish them luck.
ummonk 10y ago
>What they've realized is the way to hire more is to find the good ones that are sitting in the resume review stage of the hiring process, not getting looked at because they don't have stand out credentials. Yup, I was one of those people whose resume kept getting sucked into the review black hole due to lack of stand out credentials. I understand companies are swamped with applications and need some way to screen applicants even before phone interviews, but it was rather frustrating knowing I would do perfectly fine if I only I were given an interview. Triplebyte was an immense help here (just today I accepted an offer from Asana that I got through Triplebyte). I'm really a fan of your philosophy and what you're trying to do to improve tech hiring, and strongly recommend people (especially those without great conventional resumes) to give Triplebyte a go.

by Harj 10y ago

djcapelis 10y ago

How does the matching process work on the other side? How do you figure out the correct interview loop and position to match a candidate with when you're working with large companies that have so many different groups inside them?

ammon 10y ago
This differs substantially by company. Some companies have one general interview process, and handle team/role assignment after making offers (for some reason this is common at very large companies and very small companies). Other companies (often midsize) have different interview tracks for different open roles. In that case we just treat each interview track like a different company. We gather an initial guess about what the track wants by talking to the hiring managers, and then refine this with feedback data on candidates. We've found that bringing up example interview questions and asking if it's important that candidates can answer them is the best way to get at what skills an organization values. There's still a lot of noise in this (a hiring manager can't speak perfectly for the the entire organization), so we refine it over time.

itsdrewmiller 10y ago

Why do you think that is? Dedicated staff for the early funnel compared to "not my real job" specialization further down?

tedmiston 10y ago

A year or so ago you guys published the post Who Y Combinator Companies Want (http://blog.triplebyte.com/who-y-combinator-companies-want http://blog.triplebyte.com/who-y-combinator-companies-want) and A Taxonomy of Programmers (http://blog.triplebyte.com/a-taxonomy-of-programmers http://blog.triplebyte.com/a-taxonomy-of-programmers), both of which were quite interesting and insightful in terms of data. How do the types of engineers Apple or Facebook want compare to that?

ammon 10y ago
So, those are not (unfortunately!) the primary way that we match engineers with companies. It comes down to questions about how important it is that engineers are strong in academic CS (some organizations think very, others think it's useless fluff), how important programming speed is (some companies think very, others want to see careful testing and think speed is sign of shallowness), or whether it's important that engineers are strong in http / web systems (some think this is the core of what most engineers do, others want problem solving and intelligence and think web programming is teachable). Some companies want the best engineers, regardless of english level. Others value communication over engineers. It's simple stuff. But getting the data is HARD (companies themselves don't know how much they differ), and matching engineers on these criteria significantly boosts pass rates.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  That sounds excellent. What's the best way for an engineer to share their own values with respect to these attributes? For example, is there a way for me to say, "I prefer cultures which emphasize code quality ahead thoroughness and with an above average communication style"? (I haven't used Triplebyte yet.) I totally understand if this is part of the secret sauce and the answer is "just use it".
conjectures 10y ago
The taxonomy is interesting, but flawed. What founder wouldn't want a Child Prodigy on their team, someone who's 'going to found a company when they're older'? Someone with hustle and chops but happy to be a junior member. Likewise who'd want an 'idiosyncratic' Academic? Ignoring the fact that massive tools like Scala are some academic's project. Or that Google was founded by two PhD students... Obvs the former is going to get many 'yes please' and the later 'umm, maybe'.

dnautics 10y ago

I had relatively quick (1 week time turnaround) onsites with "big companies" thorough triplebyte. Startups were relatively quick to 'weed me out' as someone with less experience. One of my frustrations was that I was not sure if triplebyte was effectively communicating my junior engineer status to the big companies; one of the companies was pitched to me as a company that had a history of being ok with taking on someone and indoctrinating them in their way of doing things and then turned me down with a reply that they were looking for a senior engineer. In retrospect I kind of realize that Triplebyte is really more targetting as a service for more senior positions (at least for now) but I think this is a great move for Triplebyte to get a bigger marketshare and wish them luck.

ummonk 10y ago

>What they've realized is the way to hire more is to find the good ones that are sitting in the resume review stage of the hiring process, not getting looked at because they don't have stand out credentials. Yup, I was one of those people whose resume kept getting sucked into the review black hole due to lack of stand out credentials. I understand companies are swamped with applications and need some way to screen applicants even before phone interviews, but it was rather frustrating knowing I would do perfectly fine if I only I were given an interview. Triplebyte was an immense help here (just today I accepted an offer from Asana that I got through Triplebyte). I'm really a fan of your philosophy and what you're trying to do to improve tech hiring, and strongly recommend people (especially those without great conventional resumes) to give Triplebyte a go.