Anyone care to comment on how the whole Triplebyte process goes as a person who wants to be hired? I'm interested since I never got past the set of questions due to some kind of bug in the beta.
After the initial quiz, I had a ~2 hours interview with a human, which included a 1h "pair programming" challenge, random technical questions on my field, general CS questions and architecture (system design) type of questions.
Once I passed that step, my talent manager (the person who helps facilitating the discussion with the companies) told me IIRC that about 1 in 5 passes the human test.
Based on my skill set and preferences, the system "offered" some 30-something companies, and I chose to have an introductory call with ~10 of them. Each company has some background information, what they're good for (in TripleByte's opinion), their general size and their engineering size. Some companies (the bigger names) have additional steps before the on-site, like another pair-programming session or take-home exercises.
From those calls, 5 on-site interviews stemmed, and 4 of those resulted in an offer. TripleByte also helped arranging the on-site all in the same week, so if you're remote you don't have to fly back and forth all the time.
Top notch service, imo
I am a swe with 2-3 years of experience, maybe four depending on how you count experience maybe, speak at lots of large conferences, contribute to open source, etc. I feel (and have data to back up) like Triplebyte sold me as a 5-7 years experience person, so only got interviews with companies looking for senior people. Really got along great with all companies and I have historically been a great judge of how my interviews have gone, but I think Triplebyte overselling me essentially caused me to waste a week of my life. Feel free to handwave and say I am blaming Triplebyte for my failures (of which I have many), but I do think I would have had 1-2 offers otherwise. Although to be fair, the 130-140k comp most companies mentioned would be a significant pay cut and may not have been do-able for me even if I had received an offer.
They put me through the standard interview process along with additional discussion about the interviewer position.
Overall they're much better than most startups but have room for improvement.
The good:
They kept me well-informed throughout the process and set proper expectations. They were prompt with followups and stuck to the schedule they set. My interviewers were knowledgable, clearly software engineers.
The bad:
Too much focus on algos and CS fundamentals, not enough on higher level concepts and what makes someone a good fit for an available position.
I understand it's really hard to have a generic evaluation that covers multiple potential roles. That said, I believe that these questions do not select for good employees for most roles. They are biased to select for recent college grads and people who are willing to study before interviewing.
For example, they asked me about bloom filters. 95%+ of startup software jobs will never have to deal with bloom filters. Why would you ask about them? Ask something that will actually be encountered on the job.
To add a little background I was responsible for our hiring process in my last position, including interviewing, so I'm a bit opinionated about this.
Edit: By the way, you should email them about the bug with your profile, they'd probably want to know about it / give you another shot.
After the initial test, there is a fairly long phone/remote desktop interview that consists of:
* Writing code (on your actual machine with the tools and language of your choice!) to solve a simple problem.
* Debugging (a smallish program with 5 failed unit tests)
* General knowledge questions (databases, web (both html and http), data-structures algorithms)
The phone interview then ended with them giving you a couple of tips on answering the non-technical interview topics that a lot of engineers flub (why do you want to work here, when can you start, compensation).
The next day I got a list of over a dozen positions with the recommendation that I pick at least 5 to move on to phone screening.
The phone screenings went well (3 of them were just varients of "all the candidatese triplebyte has sent us were great, so we just want to talk about our company"). This was also my first hint that compensation would be an issue; one company was immediately ruled out because they were early stage and I can't pay a mortgage with equity.
Then triplebyte scheduled the on-sites all in the same week so that I wouldn't have to go back-and-forth to the bay area.
Ultimately Apple was the only company on my list paying enough to get me to relocate, and they passed on me.
Overall I don't think it was a good experience for me.
The interview was pleasant but long. Since they are more of a recruiting firm than anything, they are able to ask questions in a way that an organization looking to hire won't. It allows the candidate to be more candid and detailed with their knowledge and expectations. I thought it went well enough but I did not proceed to the company matching phase.
It is _very_ clear that they are looking for a specific type of developer - a type which I reckon probably doesn't need Triplybyte in the first place. I am not a web/rails/whatever developer, nor am I a senior engineer with very niche skillsets like low-level systems, etc.
The feedback I got was mostly positive, but contradicted itself in odd ways (pro: "we like your DB skills" / con: "work more with DBs") and really just translated to "you aren't marketable to startups and don't have the pedigree / experience needed to throw at our larger clients."
I suppose if you have an popular or incredibly niche skillset that is in-demand, but are having trouble getting the attention of companies for whatever reason (it happens), TripleByte is a decent shot. But if you have more general experience / a skill-set that
Ultimately they are a business and they have to operate this way, so I understand being turned down. I was, however, disappointed that I was 'let down' in a way by the vision I was pitched of what TripleByte claims to do / be.
This is the business model of “elite” universities - admit people who would be successful anyway then claim credit for their success
My only critique, is that it seems a bit too front end oriented these days for someone like me who is basically a deep backend person. They did have long form infrastructure questions, but as I get asked to take their prototype tests every so often, it seems many of the new tests are just front end oriented (i.e. language types). I'm guessing this is because that's where the market has taken them.
I think Triplebyte was really useful for me because I didn't have a CS degree and didn't have any work history directly in tech, so I couldn't get through resume screens via direct applications and didn't really know many people who could refer me. So Triplebyte had high value in getting me actual the actual technical interviews. I'm not sure how valuable it would be for others who don't have trouble with this, but given the minimal time investment (a few hours for phone interview), it's probably worth a shot regardless.