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TripleByte is literally the perfect example of a company that should be centralized. They work because they have a reputation that companies can trust. Trying t

TripleByte is literally the perfect example of a company that should be centralized. They work because they have a reputation that companies can trust. Trying to make it decentralized takes away any value that TripleByte provides.

EGreg 6y ago
That's exactly right, it does take away that value from TripleByte and gives it to everybody. The value that TripleByte provides is because of the current state of technology. Take for example the telephone industry. We had telephone switchboard operators, and it cost $1-3 a MINUTE to make overseas calls. You could make the same argument: "AT&T is the perfect example of a company that should be centralized. They have a reputation for connecting your calls reliably, and you trust them to not broadcast your calls to others. But, of course, in the last 20 years the Internet has introduced Voice over IP and now ANY company can provide faceless, nameless infrastructure and get paid, while your calls go end-to-end encrypted via the wire. Are we all better off? Yes! Having decoupled infrastructure from power over your data (calls), we have dropped the cost to zero. We went from monopolies and cartels and feudalism to "dumb pipes". We have videoconferencing right now, something unimaginable 20 years ago not just because of bandwidth but because there were "perfect examples of companies that should be centralized" and "reputations that we can trust". There is far more at stake. In the past, we had human calculators, printers, mailmen, etc. They provided a lot of value. Lots of industries did. Today we don't. Don't blame TripleByte. Blame the lack of good permissionless, encrypted alternatives.
- gbear605 6y ago
  Unfortunately, TripleByte’s solution has nothing to do with technology. When a company is looking to hire, the reputation of TripleByte means that they can trust that whoever TripleByte gives them is high quality. It’s work just as well if TripleByte didn’t even have a website and required all their candidates to come into their office - that’d just need a lot more capital and be discouraging for potential users. That’s different from the type of trust that AT&T had, where you’re trusting the quality of the software but not their trustworthiness to not lie to you. (Although there is some of that when you’re trusting that generally people can’t listen in on your call)
  - EGreg 6y ago
    I hear you. And yes, this reputation thing is different. But how do we know we can’t decentralize this trust? Remember, the phone company was the canonical example of a “natural monopoly” by economists even including Milton Friedman. That’s why I chose that example. It eventually got decentralized too.
sfgweilr4f 6y ago
Not trusted so much now.
zebnyc 6y ago
Given that interviewing is a skill unto itself which needs to be practiced, what happens to candidates who need to take a few interviews before they start hitting their stride. For me, I can see that using Triplebyte once the candidate is "warmed up" makes sense. If TripleByte was the only game in town then a new candidate would fail their test and then it is game over. No more job search.
- wolfgang42 6y ago
  I agree with your concerns about a monopoly, but just wanted to respond to your point about needing to “warm up”: Triplebyte gives you a free practice interview that doesn’t count (unless you ace it), and also lets you retry in a few months if you fail the actual interview.

EGreg 6y ago

That's exactly right, it does take away that value from TripleByte and gives it to everybody. The value that TripleByte provides is because of the current state of technology. Take for example the telephone industry. We had telephone switchboard operators, and it cost $1-3 a MINUTE to make overseas calls. You could make the same argument: "AT&T is the perfect example of a company that should be centralized. They have a reputation for connecting your calls reliably, and you trust them to not broadcast your calls to others. But, of course, in the last 20 years the Internet has introduced Voice over IP and now ANY company can provide faceless, nameless infrastructure and get paid, while your calls go end-to-end encrypted via the wire. Are we all better off? Yes! Having decoupled infrastructure from power over your data (calls), we have dropped the cost to zero. We went from monopolies and cartels and feudalism to "dumb pipes". We have videoconferencing right now, something unimaginable 20 years ago not just because of bandwidth but because there were "perfect examples of companies that should be centralized" and "reputations that we can trust". There is far more at stake. In the past, we had human calculators, printers, mailmen, etc. They provided a lot of value. Lots of industries did. Today we don't. Don't blame TripleByte. Blame the lack of good permissionless, encrypted alternatives.

gbear605 6y ago
Unfortunately, TripleByte’s solution has nothing to do with technology. When a company is looking to hire, the reputation of TripleByte means that they can trust that whoever TripleByte gives them is high quality. It’s work just as well if TripleByte didn’t even have a website and required all their candidates to come into their office - that’d just need a lot more capital and be discouraging for potential users. That’s different from the type of trust that AT&T had, where you’re trusting the quality of the software but not their trustworthiness to not lie to you. (Although there is some of that when you’re trusting that generally people can’t listen in on your call)
- EGreg 6y ago
  I hear you. And yes, this reputation thing is different. But how do we know we can’t decentralize this trust? Remember, the phone company was the canonical example of a “natural monopoly” by economists even including Milton Friedman. That’s why I chose that example. It eventually got decentralized too.

sfgweilr4f 6y ago

Not trusted so much now.

zebnyc 6y ago

Given that interviewing is a skill unto itself which needs to be practiced, what happens to candidates who need to take a few interviews before they start hitting their stride. For me, I can see that using Triplebyte once the candidate is "warmed up" makes sense. If TripleByte was the only game in town then a new candidate would fail their test and then it is game over. No more job search.

wolfgang42 6y ago
I agree with your concerns about a monopoly, but just wanted to respond to your point about needing to “warm up”: Triplebyte gives you a free practice interview that doesn’t count (unless you ace it), and also lets you retry in a few months if you fail the actual interview.