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Harj Taggar Is Building a New Technical Hiring Pipeline with TripleByte
- soham 11y agoIn 2007, researchers published a seminal paper which shows that the more meritocratic you think your company is, the more biased you are:(http://www.socialjudgments.com/docs/Uhlmann%20and%20Cohen%202007.pdf http://www.socialjudgments.com/docs/Uhlmann%20and%20Cohen%20...). While that is also human to do, and company cultures obviously develop flavors over time, when it comes to technical hiring, we sorely need an effort to first prove and then to reduce biases, based on data. This is a great effort. At http://InterviewKickstart.com http://InterviewKickstart.com, we're trying to do this indirectly in a small way. The better you are at solving problems, the less the biases affect you.
- Peroni 11y agoIf TripleByte’s software was even trained on a sufficient volume of data, Taggar imagines it could even make the hiring decision if technical ability is the sole criteria. When is technical ability ever the sole criteria? Granted it would be incredibly useful to know up front if a candidate is technically strong enough but you still need to establish if a candidate would work well with your team. Technical ability is worthless if the candidate has a horrible attitude. That being said, the idea of accumulating significant data over a significant period of time and actually defining what makes a successful engineer is intriguing.
- ammon 11y agoHey, founder here. Yes, we totally agree that things other than technical ability matter. Some of these things (productivity, ability to work on a team, communication ability) we think we can evaluate. Others (company culture) we can't. As you say, however, getting better at identifying good engineers (outside of any company's specific requirements) is valuable.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- vonmoltke 11y agoTripleByte, like many other people and companies, refers to "software engineers" as if they are a monolithic group. Is this another case where there is an implicit "web and mobile" attached to "engineer", or is the process really flexible enough for engineers of all skillsets?
- Harj 11y agoFounder here. We wrote some more here about our thinking behind what we want to do: http://blog.triplebyte.com/announcing-triplebyte http://blog.triplebyte.com/announcing-triplebyte Our plan is to continually experiment with new ways to measure technical ability, that aren't as adversarial as most standard practices today. We'd love to hear any ideas for more experiments we could run.
- Alex3917 11y agoI think the idea of judging people primarily on strengths is key. But I think you actually understate this, when you say on the FAQ that 'Everyone's bad at something' -- in the sense that the amount of skills, knowledge, and abilities that any one person lacks is essentially infinite.
- soham 11y agoPeople analytics is a fascinating problem and I think it's high time someone tried to introduce concrete data to it. Several companies are tackling it in their own ways. At http://InterviewKickstart.com http://InterviewKickstart.com, for example, we're starting to find some interesting correlations between personal confidence-level of an engineer coming in, and their employability. Yet another correlation is between academic achievements and employability. Small data, but interesting still.
- JacobAldridge 11y agoCongrats on launching Harj. Have you any plans to extend beyond the Technical assessment to help quantify "a good fit with the mission and team"? I'm working with a couple of companies doing interesting things in that behavioural space - and would be fascinated to see outcomes in that field from your data-driven approach. Good luck to you Guillaume and Ammon.
- lukasm 11y agoTo save most of you the hassle. It's Visa and US work permit only.
- ammon 11y agoFounder here. Yeah, sorry about that. We totally intend to work with people without visas (it's actually where the idea started). We're just doing a phased launch. Talking to lots of people on the phone is hard to scale. We'll be removing the restriction as soon as we can. EDIT People without visas are free to register now. They just can't book phone calls. We'll let everyone who registers know when they can book a call.
- jnotarstefano 11y agoUhm, something weird happened. I tried booking without a visa to see the error, but it let my booking through (I then cancelled my reservation).
- beyti 11y agoThank you for pointing out the most important answer.
- ryanSrich 11y agoAnd I assume no remote work allowed as most YC companies stance on distributed teams is hilariously archaic.
- Harj 11y agoTriplebyte founder here, we're managing the application process for this. We wrote some more here about how we're running our process: http://blog.triplebyte.com/announcing-triplebyte http://blog.triplebyte.com/announcing-triplebyte If you have any feedback or thoughts, we'd love to hear them.
- paragpatelone 11y agoHow do you guys compare to HackerRank?
- nphyte 11y agoor gradberry?
- Harj 11y agoOur online programming questions are more FizzBuzz than the challenges and puzzles HackerRank use to test skill. We're doing most of our work in the interview process and looking at ways to make that more effective and less adversarial. We think the hiring process is broken enough that there is likely enough room for multiple different approaches.
- quadrature 11y agoI really like the idea, I just completed the programming questions. I understand that you can't have the test in every conceivable language but I feel like a few of the questions were too pythonic for really no reason at all. Do most YC startups use python ?
- ammon 11y agoWhich ones? We're thinking about offering all the questions in a bunch of languages, and letting people pick.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tejasm 11y ago
- wasd 11y ago> As for their revenue model, TripleByte takes a 25 percent cut of an engineer’s first-year salary, which is a fairly typical model for recruiting agencies. Hey Harj, Do you think that by charging a flat % of the first year salary that TripleByte might be adding downward pressure on the potential salary for an engineer?
- Harj 11y agoI think the upwards pressure from companies not being able to hire enough good engineers is likely a much stronger force. That being said, we're not tied to the % model. We plan to experiment with both our selection process and pricing to figure out what works best.
- cehrnrooth 11y agoOne cool innovation I've seen is converting from a % upfront model to a % recurring model (Ex. instead of 25% upfront convert to 2% over 12 months). It benefits start-ups because they don't have a large cash outlay at once and aligns the incentives of the firm to find great candidates that will stick. It also creates a more predictable revenue stream in the form of monthly recurring revenue.
- Harj 11y agoWe think that's a great idea and something we're looking at too, especially for startups with less funding.
- bgilroy26 11y agoIf you don't have the network and you need a recruiter (as I have in the past and will again), the 25% is how much you give up for the help getting a job. If a jobseeker won't see that kind of value from a recruiter, they can always take it on themselves.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nphyte 11y agoIs the fizzbuzz diff for diff positions(frontend,backend,mobile,security) or?
- ammon 11y agoNo, it's not. We think that understanding basic code should apply to everyone. That said, we're not trusting the fizzbuzz for now. We're going to talk to the first several hundred people who apply, then look for correlations
- jzila 11y agoMy favorite part of this is that it reduces the n*m engineers-to-employers search problem to an n+m problem (to an extent). Right now, engineers search through many companies to find a job, and companies search through many engineers to fill a position. The traditional way this is done is an interview gauntlet, whose primary purpose is to verify technical ability. Since that's something that should only be done once per engineer, TripleByte seems to be providing that intermediary service. Then a much shorter set of interviews can be used to check fit, thus saving each candidate and company an incredible amount of time. hired.com is another company trying to do something like this, albeit using a slightly different methodology. edit: I accidentally a word.
- mildbow 11y agoJust doing a shotgun application to a bunch of startups seems like a hilariously bad idea. But maybe I'm biased because I'm currently recovering from burnout from working at a startup that I joined for the wrong reasons. There is only one reason to join a startup as an employee: you really really really believe in the mission and you reallyx3+ believe that the team can execute. Anything else and you aren't doing the team or yourself any favours. So, what are you really applying for? So you can have a "worked at a YC startup" on your resume: Just go work for google or facebook or amazon: you'll actually learn a tonne more about engineering/product dev at any of those places and they are a much better brandname for the rest of your career. Think you wont get into those companies? Spend a month preparing for the rigamarole that is a technical interview and you'll be fine. So you can get investor contact: Just apply to YC/techstars/500startups. Or email investors directly. Any of those options work better. You aren't getting any meaningful investor contact by being an employee. So you can learn how a startup works to start your own: Anyone who tells you this is deluded or conning you. There ain't nothing to it but to do it. The only way to learn how to do your startup is to do it. Nothing else comes close. Anything else is an excuse.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> There is only one reason to join a startup as an employee: you really really really believe in the mission and you reallyx3 believe that the team can execute. I'd say this is fairly reasonable. > So, what are you really applying for? For the opportunity to get in the funnel of startups using this system, so you can evaluate which ones have missions and teams you believe in and find one to work at. Presuming more than a few use this system, even if they don't use it exclusively, that's potentially a more efficient approach than research startups individually, finding ones you would want to work at, and then navigating their own individual hiring systems (and, to the extent you might miss some good startups that aren't using this system, there's no reason you can't also do that as well as the shotgun system.)
- mildbow 11y agoI'm going to assume your answer was "I want to have a semi-curated list of companies that are interested in me" In and of itself, that's not a bad list to have. BUT deciding on which one you want to work at for the next 3 years should be more of a "I want to work there" not "let's see which ones will have me". So if you really want to work at a YC startup then go over to http://yclist.com/ http://yclist.com/. Do some due diligence on who excites you ( not "which is the most exciting one that will have me") and apply to that one. Trust me. In the long run doing so will save you a lot more time. Joining an early stage startup isn't a job, it's a lifestyle.
- _lex 11y agoI gotta say, this is a great move for founders + companies: Commoditizing your components will lead to downward price pressure on engineering wages. Also, it's superficially great for employees too: apply to a common app and get prequalified for N companies rather than 1. But I doubt any of those companies will ACTUALLY change their hiring funnels, which means that this is just an extra, gratuitous step in the process. Perhaps there will be the benefit of being introduced to many hiring funnels at once, but that could have been achieved by an "are you hiring" email, or by checking out those companies' hiring websites.
- smil 11y agoHarj is not really interested in creating a service that "measures" a person's ability or "predicting" their future performance, because that's impossible to do. What they're really doing is creating a cargo cult tool that gives the illusion of being "objective" and using "data", so that they can sell the serivce based on this appearance, and later get bought out by LinkedIn or something. Perhaps they're doing a startup themselves because they had problems finding jobs due to hiring practices such as these.
- lawl 11y agoHeh, the HR at my old company sent me too many bullshit candidates. We had already tried a solution where you'd solve multiple problems and then get assigned a score, but it sucked, every single one of them was an algorithm question. I hacked out a quick page (that'd inform you it'll log everything, but gave you the problem to solve only after you accepted), that litterally asked you to solve fizzbuzz in any language you like. But it logged timestamped keystrokes to the server and if the tab lost focus. Of course I wrote a small player that would replay the logs so you could watch the candidate come up with the solution and watch them writing it :) I just had too many candidates googling questions in a phone interview, so we changed our process. They'd take the online fizzbuzz test, and then we'll invite them for an onsite interview if they pass, in my opinion it worked surprisingly well. Too bad I can't try out how these guys are doing it.
- JoshTriplett 11y agoWith that approach, anyone who immediately switches to a programmer's editor to write the code and pastes it in when done (either manually or via something like It's All Text) will look identical to a candidate who searched for the answer and pasted it in. The former is a property you'd want to select for, while the latter is one you'd want to select against.
- lawl 11y agoYes. That's why i had a big fat warning telling them to not to this before they started the process :) The page before they started basically told them everything we'd do. My line of thought was that anyone being able to bypass it is worth interviewing anyways. I explicitiy told them that we'd log EVERYTHING and asked them to directly write the browser in the JS IDE (well, syntax highlight but no autocomplete) that'll come up, and that they shouldn't switch tabs or windows. I still think this is fair, for litterally fizzbuzz, nothing similar or anything, just fizzbuzz. I didn't care about (small) syntax/logic errors or anything (because you'd never run the code), but you wouldn't believe the amount of people unaware of the modulo operator.
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- philippnagel 11y agoCan one get access to ones results? (Even though I have no visa anyways)
- danielrakh 11y agoI'd love if there could be more information about what YC companies are participating in hiring through this process. Or have I missed that info somewhere?
- mavdi 11y agoHere, I spotted your problem for you: "move to the Bay Area"
- kwi 11y agoHey, founder here. No worries then, there are plenty of YC startups outside the Bay Area :)
- mavdi 11y agoI meant the fact that one should move at all. You guys are locking yourself out of a huge market of potentially great developers because you don't consider remote work.
- ammon 11y agoWe're open to remote workers. There's a little less demand (not all YC companies are hiring remote workers), but we have no problem with it.
- dasmoth 11y agoY Combinator does seem to be generally anti-remote, at least for early stage startups: http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire Agree it's a shame.
- ia 11y agoi'm in the market for a remote position. is that something that would work here? or is this only for locals or those able to move to the bay area?
- egusa 11y agoIt's great to see earlier YC Partners going back into the program again, it really speaks to how strong YC is. Best of luck Harj!
- tyke 11y agoCongrats on the launch. This feels a little bit "code monkey" to me. We don't care who you are, or what you're like, as long as you can write code. Do you plan to account for the "soft skills"? I'd expect YC companies to hire for more than raw engineering abilities.
- Harj 11y agoWe definitely recognize there's more to a person than just engineering ability :) For now that's what we're focusing on because it's more quantifiable and we think companies are better placed to assess soft skills, since those are usually more specific to them.
- izqui 11y agoSuch a bummer it is only for people having a US Visa already.
- 7Figures2Commas 11y ago> We don't care where you went to school or which companies you've worked at. We only care if you can code. Filtering candidates by pedigree is one of the biggest mistakes companies make, particularly in Silicon Valley, but filtering by coding ability (as measured primarily by online tests) is just as naive. There are tons of people who can code themselves out of a maze but struggle to ship code that solves real problems and creates real value. A lot of startups would do better with mediocre engineers who can see the big picture than superb engineers who can't see beyond their monitor. From https://triplebyte.com/manifesto https://triplebyte.com/manifesto: > Companies should not have to make recruiting a core competency. This is incredibly flawed, especially for startups. Recruiting is a two-way street. If an early-stage startup can't effectively sell itself to candidates, chances are it won't be able to sell itself to customers, partners, etc.
- nedwin 11y agoReally dig that the first pass doesn't eliminate those who studied at schools other than Stanford.
- aantix 11y agoNauseating. You're an engineer. You can create millions of dollars of worth for a company. Do yourself a favor; learn to market yourself. Learn to create opportunities for yourself. Want to work at a YC company? Write them directly. Want to actually make money today, instead of hoping for some grand exit five years down the line? Demonstrate your value (in money), show that you can code, pitch your services to prospective companies and charge a premium. Please stop joining recruiting companies where you're shoved down a "pipeline" or somewhere where you're considered a "resource" or some outfit that has the name "staffing" in their company name. You're better than that.
- danudey 11y agoWell first, that's an extremely elitist point of view. Your argument seems to be 'If you're not a rock-em sock-em networking people-person, you don't deserve a job'. Secondly, this is about helping YC companies hire. Doing the hard, complex work of filtering out for quality candidates, rather than spending weeks of your time interviewing instead of actually improving their product. Thirdly, not all engineers are battle-hardened 10x SV rockstar ninjas. Some people have programming experience but haven't gotten into the SV echo chamber yet, some people are new to the industry, some people are from other countries, etc. Sure, you ideally want to build yourself up and make a name for yourself, contribute to projects, create some value, but when you're starting out that's basically a load of bullshit as far as useful advice goes, unless you're suggesting people just don't take a job until they've spent a few years self-promoting.
- aantix 11y ago>'If you're not a rock-em sock-em networking people-person, you don't deserve a job' Writing a direct email to a YC Founder vs relying on someone else is far from a "rock-em sock-em neworking people-person". That's basic self-advocacy. This company takes 25% of your first years salary. Regardless of whether the engineer or the company pays for it, it's less money on the table for you. YC Combinator companies are well known. If you want to work for one, write them directly. Ask for what you want. Advocate for yourself. You've probably worked very hard to get where you're at, whether it's your schooling or a long, hard fought career. Don't let someone else represent your accomplishments or your compensation needs.
- MichaelCrawford 11y ago"no resumes, just show us you can code." My resume has 27 years of showing other employers that I can code. I worked hard to build that resume. The problem I have these days, being 51 years old and quite public about the fact that I am mentally ill, is that no one believes that I can code.
- ammon 11y agoI see the problem. Experience is certainly valuable. But a resume also shows age and status. We're working to eliminate age discrimination (and other biases). That's part of why we do blind phone interviews.
- seiji 11y ago> But a resume also shows age and status. ...and accomplishments, leadership, responsibility (assuming no grossly fabricated lies). > That's part of why we do blind phone interviews. Phone calls still reveal a lot. Gender, age, native language, .... Only 100% text based communication is (reasonably) age+genderless.
- mrkurt 11y agoActually, a resume just shows you can craft a resume. It's not a good way to show leadership skills, or demonstrate experience, etc. We've been much more respectful of people (which is good for us) since we stopped looking at resumes.
- seiji 11y ago> Actually, a resume just shows you can craft a resume. It also conveys communication skills. What good is a programmer who can write code but can't write a document describing their own work history? The world isn't programmers. What if you want a non-programmer role? Leads, organizers, directors? Do CEO candidates sit down and write a binary search tree? (of course not, being installed as a CEO means you are one of a privileged class who are given roles, not one who "tries out" for things.)
- mallyvai 11y agoFounder of http://OfferLetter.io http://OfferLetter.io here - Harj, love what you're doing with a common YC app, and the spirit of the hiring manifesto. I'm curious about your approach to making sure the candidate experience is really top-notch since it's still your platform, and how deep you plan on going - even good startups may put forth exploding offers, lowball candidates, forget candidates due to high-pressure sales tactics, etc. This doesn't leave a great taste in engineers' mouths. Pure top-of-funnel filtering is important, but seems oversaturated. The candidate experience and matchmaking process seem like the real differentiators. What do you feel is the best way to address these?
- parennoob 11y agoAs a engineer who is not a startup founder, my initial reaction is that of "Don't use these guys if you are a jobseeker!" Detailed data on how you did in a specific set of tests (which may have nothing to do with what you do on the job) will be benchmarked not only during your initial application, but also throughout your job at the company, and at future companies that use TripleByte. > "But this is a horizontal technical HR layer that spreads across many companies, instead of being contained inside one enormous corporation." Perhaps being pessimistic, but I have no wish for a the future where I go from a company that is using TripleByte to another one that is also doing the same, and being told "We know your TripleByte score on your last job was 315, we won't give you $X unless you raise that to 400 in your first year". I also don't understand how this won't create a collusion of sorts amongst companies who all use TripleByte (since TripleByte knows exactly how much they pay you). [Please feel free to correct me if I have missed out on some fundamental different in the way the company works. I have enormous respect for the founder (Harj) personally, but this seems like a bad idea for the majority of the workforce. ]
- Harj 11y agoThanks for the thoughts! We have no desire to create something akin to a credit score that could be used against people. What we're trying to do is build a process that makes it easy for applicants to show their strengths, that's the kind of information we want to share with employers vs a numerical score. Our focus is entirely on helping discover talented people who might be overlooked by current processes.
- lovelearner 11y agoI liked the site, but I disliked being forced to answer questions about languages you don't know the internals of. Even very basic questions about (what is x) and (what will the program return) are more complicated than they seem under the hood.
- m3talridl3y 11y ago> Triple byte. > Not word aligned. > My hardcore c programmer in me is freaking out.
- ipince 11y agoWhile it seems time-saving, I don't think putting all your eggs in one basket is a good idea when it comes to interviewing. If you bomb the interview (it can happen to great engineers), then you've effectively shut yourself out of every YC company? I'd much rather interview 5 times and be 99% sure I'll get one, than go all or nothing and potentially get screwed.
- tsmtsm 11y agoHow are you planning on not having companies using the referred candidates from your platform and hiring them outside of TripleByte?