2 ms·

I'm guessing the pivot [0] to being more engineer-focused rather than employer-focused didn't end up working out, and they decided to sell the company and move

I'm guessing the pivot [0] to being more engineer-focused rather than employer-focused didn't end up working out, and they decided to sell the company and move on? [0]: https://triplebyte.com/blog/rethinking-triplebyte https://triplebyte.com/blog/rethinking-triplebyte, discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27541676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27541676

rachofsunshine 4y ago
You're essentially correct that that effort didn't work. That pivot was motivated, more or less, by the fact that we'd never found a good way to attract candidates that wasn't "dump tons of money into ads". (Even in the early days, when our branding was good, most of our candidate acquisition was from ads; only maybe 25% was word-of-mouth.) It just didn't work: senior engineers simply didn't find the things we could offer them compelling enough. Fundamentally, if you're a hiring market paid by companies, you're selling access to talent. And finding cost-efficient ways to get that talent is a core problem of your business. We tried a few approaches to that, but none really took off. (The most successful was our Screen tool, but the problem with that was that companies mostly wanted to screen candidates they saw as low-value - juniors and international candidates, mostly - and were terrified of screening high-value senior candidates. The product worked well, but didn't get the candidates that would let us stand out, basically.) During 2022, we pivoted back to a focus on companies, and actually saw quite a bit of success with our last few efforts in a way that, with more runway, we might have converted into some really good candidate experiences. Unfortunately, this coincided with a collapse in tech that both tanked companies' desire to hire and tightened their belts as they braced for a hostile fundraising environment, and we couldn't overcome that environment even with a product that did seem to have reasonable fit.
- nullfield 4y ago
  If I want to burn all my data there before Karat “anonymizes it for analytics purposes” on 2023-03-31, so they don’t get it, is there a method for doing so?
  - rachofsunshine 4y ago
    At this point you'd need to talk to Karat about that, as they now own all of that data. I would imagine that they have (but don't have any special knowledge of) some sort of compliance around that, given various privacy laws, but you'd need to speak to Karat's support at this point (TB's support does not really exist at this stage).
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  > It just didn't work: senior engineers simply didn't find the things we could offer them compelling enough. I wonder if you would would have had better luck targeting engineers on the cusp, or people with significant experience who didn't have the confidence to identify as senior. That was my situation when I started using Triplebyte, and the assessments did wonders for my confidence. I did however end up taking a counter-offer from my company that promoted me to lead. However, I raved about Triplebyte to everyone I knew (similarly unconfident engineers considering a job change), and would have loved to continue doing so, as well as using it on my next job search. I'm really sad to hear you couldn't make it work, it was excellent from the candidate side of things.

rachofsunshine 4y ago

You're essentially correct that that effort didn't work. That pivot was motivated, more or less, by the fact that we'd never found a good way to attract candidates that wasn't "dump tons of money into ads". (Even in the early days, when our branding was good, most of our candidate acquisition was from ads; only maybe 25% was word-of-mouth.) It just didn't work: senior engineers simply didn't find the things we could offer them compelling enough. Fundamentally, if you're a hiring market paid by companies, you're selling access to talent. And finding cost-efficient ways to get that talent is a core problem of your business. We tried a few approaches to that, but none really took off. (The most successful was our Screen tool, but the problem with that was that companies mostly wanted to screen candidates they saw as low-value - juniors and international candidates, mostly - and were terrified of screening high-value senior candidates. The product worked well, but didn't get the candidates that would let us stand out, basically.) During 2022, we pivoted back to a focus on companies, and actually saw quite a bit of success with our last few efforts in a way that, with more runway, we might have converted into some really good candidate experiences. Unfortunately, this coincided with a collapse in tech that both tanked companies' desire to hire and tightened their belts as they braced for a hostile fundraising environment, and we couldn't overcome that environment even with a product that did seem to have reasonable fit.

nullfield 4y ago
If I want to burn all my data there before Karat “anonymizes it for analytics purposes” on 2023-03-31, so they don’t get it, is there a method for doing so?
- rachofsunshine 4y ago
  At this point you'd need to talk to Karat about that, as they now own all of that data. I would imagine that they have (but don't have any special knowledge of) some sort of compliance around that, given various privacy laws, but you'd need to speak to Karat's support at this point (TB's support does not really exist at this stage).
pcthrowaway 4y ago
> It just didn't work: senior engineers simply didn't find the things we could offer them compelling enough. I wonder if you would would have had better luck targeting engineers on the cusp, or people with significant experience who didn't have the confidence to identify as senior. That was my situation when I started using Triplebyte, and the assessments did wonders for my confidence. I did however end up taking a counter-offer from my company that promoted me to lead. However, I raved about Triplebyte to everyone I knew (similarly unconfident engineers considering a job change), and would have loved to continue doing so, as well as using it on my next job search. I'm really sad to hear you couldn't make it work, it was excellent from the candidate side of things.