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Comment by pfarnsworth | Hacker News Reader

I still don't understand why I would want to go through the hassle of doing an onsite interview with TripleByte only to have to go through further onsite interviews at the hiring companies?

If TripleByte's onsite interview allowed me to skip the onsite at the hiring company, then I'd be all for it, but it is like it's just a layer of friction.

For the record, I've had zero problems applying to companies by either emailing them or getting contacted by them via LinkedIn, email, etc. I just don't understand what benefit they bring at this moment. Maybe if the job market tightens and they were exclusive providers for companies, then sure, but all the SV companies have teams of recruiters emailing people all day long. As a hiring candidate there's no reason why I would want to go through their onsite.

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Finding the right company to join is hard, you have to find which companies are doing interesting things that match your interests and then narrow down to the ones where you'll be both a technical and cultural fit. Failed interviews are a big time suck and we see that most people only have the stamina to interview with a few companies and they'll often accept one of the first offers they get, rather than optimizing for the companies they're most excited about. We have the data to match you with companies you'll be a strong technical fit, which saves you wasting time speaking to companies who don't value your particular engineering skills. The end result is a more efficient job search process, giving you more options by speaking with less companies.

We do also reduce the total amount of time engineers have to spend in technical interviews. Triplebyte candidates skip the technical phone screens, usually an hour per company at least. If you're speaking with at least 3 companies (which everyone working with us is), you've already saved time as our technical interview is 2.5 hours.

Happy to talk more about this, harj AT triplebyte.

Sorry, I appreciate that you're trying to add value but I still don't see it.

Until you can get the hiring companies to eliminate their onsite interviews and only rely on you to test candidates programming abilities, then there really is no advantage to going through TripleByte. There are only disadvantages.

If I have a bad day and mess up the TripleByte interview, then I'm automatically excluded from a bunch of top companies through TripleByte. But if I apply to each company individually, I get the same chance to perform and a poor performance won't affect the others.

However, if I do well, the only thing I get after doing a TripleByte onsite is to skip is a 1 hr phone screen, which, if I'm good I'll be able to pass anyway. And also I'm still relying on you to give me access to the companies which may or may not be the ones I want.

There just doesn't seem to be any practical advantage to using TripleByte over any other recruiter. I'd in fact skip TripleByte because it requires me to do a lengthy onsite which would require me to take a day off (presumably you don't do this on weekends) on top of the onsites from other companies. And the advantage of skipping phone screens doesn't seem worth it.

We never provide negative info to companies. If you fail our interview, you are free to apply to whatever companies you want on your own.

The practical advantage of going through Triplebyte is that you'll pass more interviews. We match you with companies where you will pass at a higher rate. Because you only have time to interview at a fixed number of companies, this will give you more options, a higher salary (from more competition), and a better fit. We also help candidates negotiate (A big help if you're afraid to do this), and help people with bad resumes (say self-taught programmers) get in the door at top companies. Traditional recruiters do just the opposite (they filter heavily on resumes)

"There just doesn't seem to be any practical advantage to using TripleByte over any other recruiter."

Except, of course, that the companies who work with TripleByte probably trust them a LOT to provide great/qualified candidates. Most companies don't trust recruiters very much at all-- some aren't terribly motivated by anything other than closing as many deals as possible, and the vast majority don't know anything about coding. And many/most of Triplebyte's companies probably don't work with recruiters.

Why do you think failing a tech screen with Triplebyte would exclude you from top companies? You could still apply to those top companies easily, no? When those companies get a promising applicant, they don't do pore thru Triplebyte failed-screens data. Even if they wanted to, I presume that information isn't actually available to them.

Cost/benefit-wise seems like it adds credibility and saves time going with Triplebyte unless there isn't 2+ YC companies you are excited to apply to.

I used Triplebyte when looking for a job recently. The advantage in it for me is that Triplebyte thought about what I said I was interested in and matched me up to a half dozen interesting small companies that I would never have found any other way.

That service is easily worth thousands of dollars to me (and I also used Hired.com for the same thing, where thousands of dollars would have been paid in lieu of my salary if I had been matched up.) Instead all I had to do was spend two or three hours writing some code and talking on the phone.

If there are other recruiters that competently provide this service then nobody told me about them.

We've worked with enough engineers to be confident they're finding value and advantages to using Triplebyte. The feedback has included finding interesting companies (especially earlier stage ones) they'd not known about, skipping technical phone screens (even if you know you'll pass, they still suck), getting feedback on the Triplebyte technical interview, having interview scheduling handled by us, getting a high offer rate and help thinking through offers.

Assuming you can get companies to engage with you (i.e. you already have the right resume credentials) you could invest the time in achieving these same goals yourself as you're saying. For people who don't want to make that time investment, we can save time in a way that other recruiters can't by filtering companies using data about your technical skills and skipping those phone screens. The companies we work with don't trust other recruiters to do this screening correctly.

Our interview also doesn't require taking a day off work, it takes 2.5 hours and is done remotely via Google Hangouts.

Technical phone screens don't have to suck if both parties have a good attitude toward them - they should be fun! Just like our jobs should be more or less fun. Can Triplebyte match me only with companies with this perspective?

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