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I'm an engineer who was introduced to a startup via triplebyte. I liked the platform because I went through a technical interview to even be allowed to connect

I'm an engineer who was introduced to a startup via triplebyte. I liked the platform because I went through a technical interview to even be allowed to connect with companies (one that a lot of my peers who are junior level weren't able to pass.) I guess my first thought is that doesn't this defeat the initial purpose of Triplebyte? If you allow everyone in, regardless of if they are qualified to be a senior level engineer, will this not just be another job hunt platform where (when I look for another job) I'd still have to do another technical interview at the company itself? How will companies know now who has been vetted as qualified and who is just lying on their resume? Maybe it's shitty to think this way but there is already a ton of sites out there that allow me to send my resume (or allow a company to view mine) before starting a traditional hiring process that Triplebyte prevented, allowing companies to connect with qualified high level engineers and know the person would fit their skill needs. The way it was companies mainly were just testing for cultural fits, etc.

dsr_ 5y ago
When you're coming close to market saturation, you can't maintain unicorn-style growth rates. TripleByte wants that growth rate more than anything else: therefore, this.
jawns 5y ago
Exclusivity and rapid growth don't normally go hand-in-hand, so one would expect that at some point, the company would have to bend on one of them, and it makes sense that they decided to bend on exclusivity. Facebook followed a similar course early in its history, and what allowed it to rapidly grow was diversifying its value prop. When it was exclusive to Ivy Leaguers, the draw was the meet other people at your school. When it was exclusive to college students, the draw was to meet other people at your school. But then when it became open to the world, it became much more of a general-purpose social networking site. That's the course Triplebyte will likely need to navigate if it wants to be successful in the long run.
crooked-v 5y ago
I'll broadly second this. As an experienced dev, what kept Triplebyte on my radar was being able to at least theoretically cut past the initial round of 'can you actually fizzbuzz or are you just lying about it' that most companies need to filter out the people with inexplicably good resumes but no practical skills.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  I think my experience sounds like what the article is trying to say… I tried TripleByte and wanted to like it, but mostly it didn’t seem like anything special. The whole concept of getting pre-screened, getting multiple offers, and jumping straight to final interviews just didn’t pan out. The last company I interviewed with basically treated my application like any other pipeline. I had a standard recruiter call, hiring manager call, and several technical interviews before getting an offer. And the experience with other companies was similar. From the outside looking in, it appeared that there was no special track for TripleByte applicants. In the end it felt like the TripleByte process simply made the interview process longer, not shorter. Eventually I found it faster & more effective to pursue companies on my own. TL;DR — companies I met through TripleByte ran me through the standard process I’d experience through any third party recruiter without the personal touch one might get from a good third party recruiter.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    This wasn’t my experience. Sure they didn’t just make an offer but instead of the usual algorithm test and a second interview my onsites consisted of actually working alongside the founder for a day and then an offer a few days later. I’m totally fine with that what I don’t want is to have to do 2-3 interviews at every company I apply to.
    - devoutsalsa 5y ago
      I’m glad it works for some people!
- ping_pong 5y ago
rachofsunshine 5y ago
(I'm a PM at Triplebyte working on this overall direction, joining Ammon for this thread.) To be clear, we still have quizzes and the ability to show your performance on them to companies. The fact that they’re not completely mandatory to use Triplebyte doesn’t mean that they’re not important or that we won’t build further features around them. Right now, companies can offer an expedited process as part of their reach-out. We’re working on ways to productize this a little bit better. We didn’t announce the feature in this post because it isn’t done yet, but one thing we’re looking at is allowing companies to set individual score thresholds for various types of expedited process (e.g. “if you scored a 3 on algos and a 4 on back-end, we’ll definitely get on the phone with you” or “if you have a 5 on python we’ll skip tech screens for you”). We certainly recognize that FastTrack was valuable to a subset of engineers, and we want to recreate the value it offered in a way that is a little bit more sensitive to the specific company and specific engineer in question. We imagine, for example, that less-prestigious companies (who are more concerned about attracting applicants) will probably set lower thresholds than the Apples of the world. Under the old system, we had to set a single threshold, which would necessarily either be too low for prestige companies or too high for everybody else. And just to lean a little bit back into the pitch we’re trying to make here: if you’re concerned about interviewing process, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to search companies by how their interview process works? That’s not an axis on which companies meaningfully compete right now, but with the right incentives, companies will cut a lot of the annoying hassle that they currently have no reason to get rid of.
- prirun 5y ago
  One thing I didn't like about TB is that I couldn't see my own score, or how I compared to others. They sent me follow-up emails, tried to engage me in interviews, asked if I had any questions, and when I asked about my score or how it related to others (top N% for example), they didn't even respond. If a company asks me if I have questions, and I ask them, and they ignore me, I'm done. I wasn't looking for a job, but thought the test results would be interesting. Who takes a test and doesn't get results?
  - rachofsunshine 5y ago

dsr_ 5y ago

When you're coming close to market saturation, you can't maintain unicorn-style growth rates. TripleByte wants that growth rate more than anything else: therefore, this.

jawns 5y ago

Exclusivity and rapid growth don't normally go hand-in-hand, so one would expect that at some point, the company would have to bend on one of them, and it makes sense that they decided to bend on exclusivity. Facebook followed a similar course early in its history, and what allowed it to rapidly grow was diversifying its value prop. When it was exclusive to Ivy Leaguers, the draw was the meet other people at your school. When it was exclusive to college students, the draw was to meet other people at your school. But then when it became open to the world, it became much more of a general-purpose social networking site. That's the course Triplebyte will likely need to navigate if it wants to be successful in the long run.

crooked-v 5y ago

I'll broadly second this. As an experienced dev, what kept Triplebyte on my radar was being able to at least theoretically cut past the initial round of 'can you actually fizzbuzz or are you just lying about it' that most companies need to filter out the people with inexplicably good resumes but no practical skills.

devoutsalsa 5y ago
I think my experience sounds like what the article is trying to say… I tried TripleByte and wanted to like it, but mostly it didn’t seem like anything special. The whole concept of getting pre-screened, getting multiple offers, and jumping straight to final interviews just didn’t pan out. The last company I interviewed with basically treated my application like any other pipeline. I had a standard recruiter call, hiring manager call, and several technical interviews before getting an offer. And the experience with other companies was similar. From the outside looking in, it appeared that there was no special track for TripleByte applicants. In the end it felt like the TripleByte process simply made the interview process longer, not shorter. Eventually I found it faster & more effective to pursue companies on my own. TL;DR — companies I met through TripleByte ran me through the standard process I’d experience through any third party recruiter without the personal touch one might get from a good third party recruiter.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  This wasn’t my experience. Sure they didn’t just make an offer but instead of the usual algorithm test and a second interview my onsites consisted of actually working alongside the founder for a day and then an offer a few days later. I’m totally fine with that what I don’t want is to have to do 2-3 interviews at every company I apply to.
  - devoutsalsa 5y ago
    I’m glad it works for some people!
ping_pong 5y ago

rachofsunshine 5y ago

(I'm a PM at Triplebyte working on this overall direction, joining Ammon for this thread.) To be clear, we still have quizzes and the ability to show your performance on them to companies. The fact that they’re not completely mandatory to use Triplebyte doesn’t mean that they’re not important or that we won’t build further features around them. Right now, companies can offer an expedited process as part of their reach-out. We’re working on ways to productize this a little bit better. We didn’t announce the feature in this post because it isn’t done yet, but one thing we’re looking at is allowing companies to set individual score thresholds for various types of expedited process (e.g. “if you scored a 3 on algos and a 4 on back-end, we’ll definitely get on the phone with you” or “if you have a 5 on python we’ll skip tech screens for you”). We certainly recognize that FastTrack was valuable to a subset of engineers, and we want to recreate the value it offered in a way that is a little bit more sensitive to the specific company and specific engineer in question. We imagine, for example, that less-prestigious companies (who are more concerned about attracting applicants) will probably set lower thresholds than the Apples of the world. Under the old system, we had to set a single threshold, which would necessarily either be too low for prestige companies or too high for everybody else. And just to lean a little bit back into the pitch we’re trying to make here: if you’re concerned about interviewing process, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to search companies by how their interview process works? That’s not an axis on which companies meaningfully compete right now, but with the right incentives, companies will cut a lot of the annoying hassle that they currently have no reason to get rid of.

prirun 5y ago
One thing I didn't like about TB is that I couldn't see my own score, or how I compared to others. They sent me follow-up emails, tried to engage me in interviews, asked if I had any questions, and when I asked about my score or how it related to others (top N% for example), they didn't even respond. If a company asks me if I have questions, and I ask them, and they ignore me, I'm done. I wasn't looking for a job, but thought the test results would be interesting. Who takes a test and doesn't get results?
- rachofsunshine 5y ago