Founder here. We wrote some more here about our thinking behind what we want to do: <a href="http://blog.triplebyte.com/announcing-triplebyte" rel="nofollow">http://blog.triplebyte.com/announcing-triplebyte</a><p>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.
Just 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.<p>There is only <i></i>one<i></i> 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.<p>So, what are you really applying for?<p><i>So you can have a "worked at a YC startup" on your resume:</i><p>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.<p><i>So you can get investor contact:</i><p>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.<p><i>So you can learn how a startup works to start your own:</i><p>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.
Triplebyte founder here, we're managing the application process for this. We wrote some more here about how we're running our process: <a href="http://blog.triplebyte.com/announcing-triplebyte" rel="nofollow">http://blog.triplebyte.com/announcing-triplebyte</a><p>If you have any feedback or thoughts, we'd love to hear them.
My favorite part of this is that it reduces the n*m engineers-to-employers search problem to an n+m problem (to an extent).<p>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.<p>hired.com is another company trying to do something like this, albeit using a slightly different methodology.<p>edit: I accidentally a word.
As 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, <i>but also throughout your job at the company, and at future companies that use TripleByte</i>.<p>> "But this is a horizontal technical HR layer that spreads across many companies, instead of being contained inside one enormous corporation."<p>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).<p>[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. ]
> We don't care where you went to school or which companies you've worked at. We only care if you can code.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>From <a href="https://triplebyte.com/manifesto" rel="nofollow">https://triplebyte.com/manifesto</a>:<p>> Companies should not have to make recruiting a core competency.<p>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.
> 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.<p>Hey Harj,<p>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?
I 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.
<i>If 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.</i><p>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.<p>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.
I'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?
Heh, 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.<p>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.<p>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 :)<p>I just had too many candidates googling questions in a phone interview, so we changed our process.<p>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.<p>Too bad I can't try out how these guys are doing it.
TripleByte, 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?
Congrats 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.
In 2007, researchers published a seminal paper which shows that the more meritocratic you think your company is, the more biased you are:(<a href="http://www.socialjudgments.com/docs/Uhlmann%20and%20Cohen%202007.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.socialjudgments.com/docs/Uhlmann%20and%20Cohen%20...</a>).<p>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.<p>At <a href="http://InterviewKickstart.com" rel="nofollow">http://InterviewKickstart.com</a>, we're trying to do this indirectly in a small way. The better you are at solving problems, the less the biases affect you.
While 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.
I 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.
i'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?
Nauseating.<p>You're an engineer. You can create millions of dollars of worth for a company.<p>Do yourself a favor; learn to market yourself. Learn to create opportunities for yourself.<p>Want to work at a YC company? Write them directly.<p>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.<p>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.<p>You're better than that.
"no resumes, just show us you can code."<p>My resume has 27 years of showing other employers that I can code. I worked hard to build that resume.<p>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.
Founder of <a href="http://OfferLetter.io" rel="nofollow">http://OfferLetter.io</a> here - Harj, love what you're doing with a common YC app, and the spirit of the hiring manifesto.<p>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.<p>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?