Independently, from what I remember of those parts of the company codebase, my prior would be that this is a bug, not malice.
I never ever used Triplebyte, yet they seem to have some kind of a shadow profile of me? the only way I know is since I saw that they shared my details with Facebook[0]
Definitely feels like —- whatever their intentions are —- they do seem to use some scummy “growth hacking” techniques with little respect to privacy.
[0] https://blog.gingerlime.com/2020/whos-sharing-my-data-and-wh...
I really don’t know the details of Triplebyte’s growth strategy—I never worked with that team.
Indeed. I'm not associated with the company at all but this seems like a pretty typical bug for mailing lists. Anecdotes elsewhere in this thread about people who were referred and/or interviewed but who've not received any spam seem to back that up(?).
TripleByte did legitimately screw up by planning to make profiles public by default. I was upset with that but also very, very impressed when (after a day of reflection and sleeping on it) they reversed course with a heartfelt apology. To me that's the kind of earnestness that I want in companies that I do business with. Some people continue to criticize them for ever imagining the plan in the first place or not immediately reversing course the same day as the initial backlash - but to me, I think the vast majority of humans generally come around the next day after sleeping on it rather than in the moment.
TripleByte doesn't give me the "sociopathic company vibe" at all.
If anything, I've been happy that I can recommend companies like this to colleagues/friends/old classmates who didn't go to top CS schools. A lot of students from the lesser schools have quite a bit of difficulty getting an interview at FAANG companies even after doing the leetcode grind because their resume simply cannot stand out in the online application system -- and without a strong alumni network to help with referrals, they're on their own.
TripleByte (and similar services) do a pretty good job of at least getting you an interview if you've studied hard enough, regardless of your previous academic/professional background. That's a really powerful leg up for a lot of passionate and driven people who didn't go to the best schools.
Same, and I've done this on a 100k subscriber mailing list before on accident.
The opt-out public profile thing was a bad idea, but I think they handled it as well as they could have after the fact.
My company did stop using TripleByte after a period of success, not because they're expensive, but because we found that the candidates we were seeing straight-up couldn't program. I can't see how that happened, given the rigor involved in the process, but it's what we experienced. That was a disappointment to me because I'm a huge fan of the concept and I had such a positive experience as a candidate.
Not surprised, devs with experience and/or recs have no incentive to go through triplebyte and its ilk, with overtime leaving more of those who optimize for this kind thing.
With no work experience? They don't have anyone at all from the last place they worked who could vouch for their ability to write code/design systems/fix bugs?
I find that very hard to believe. Though I'm saying this from my experience, I have no "network" of people to rely on (and I'm not also on social media) unless you consider contact info of people I worked with in the past as a network.
Sure, if you have no experience, one would be tempted to go through the whole hiring filtration as a service, but as soon as you get a job, you can just let future employers ask anyone who worked with you in the past (while ignoring those that wont accept that) and provide contact info rather than jumping through the next hiring filtration as a service again. At the very least, you wouldn't rely on the hiring filtration hiring filtration as a service funnel as much.
If you're a fresh graduate or self-taught like myself, getting your foot in the door is tough.
And TripleByte's model is also to let you skip stages of the interview process IIRC, which is appealing no matter how much experience you have.
Covered by "Sure, if you have no experience, one would be tempted to go through the whole hiring filtration as a service"
> self-taught like myself
I'm self taught as well, and a dropout. I just assume that's going to be a PITA everytime I want to find something because I have to filter out all the companies/people I don't want to work for and mostly because of the time it takes.
> And TripleByte's model is also to let you skip stages of the interview process IIRC, which is appealing no matter how much experience you have.
With companies who are interested in using their service (after you have already scanned, uploaded oneself and jumped through all the services hoops and agreed to be at the whim of whatever they decide to do with said data now and forever more into the future) and who have not yet run into the problems (i.e. incentivizing people gaming the system) that the person I originally responded to has run into and that many corps have run into with similar services in the past.
The part I want to skip is the part where a corp ignores the content of what I sent and sends a TripleByte link mixed with some boiler plate…
It's like some are surprised that there are many ways to skin a cat, and different corps have different preferences…
I have been quite successful despite this lack of permanent connection. I literally can’t think of anyone I could contact who would give me a leg up for a job.
> I literally can’t think of anyone I could contact who would give me a leg up for a job.
You can, you still have
> colleagues who have seen my technical work number less than 15. Most of those are in the military.
that you just choose not to leverage such "connection" explicitly, but its probably implied to some degree on your resume.
If I want to talk to a recruiter I’ll talk to one, and I definitely didn’t consent to having my information shared with any third parties or “partners.”
They are sketchy.
I've interviewed with TripleByte twice. Once very early on, and one a year or two back.
I haven't received a single spam email from them all this time.
The low quality candidates passing through is due to poor quality controls and the ease of gaming the system by cheating
It sounds to me like they must have since lowered the bar for getting through the process, so weaker candidates now get through; and at the same time, it sounds from other comments that they must have stopped having the interviews done by real engineers (which was expensive). So it sounds like they have become just another recruiting agency. That is disappointing. My initial experience with them was great. I do feel slimed by something that happened later but will see if I can talk to Ammon about that.
I agree that the public profile thing was outrageous. I put it off to the intoxicating effect that money has on business people, that makes them do idiotic things if they think that might get them more of it. We programmers get similarly intoxicated by (say) access to fast enough computers, so I didn't stay angry after the error was fixed.
I immediately thought: they tell this to everyone, this is some sort of deceptive tactic, and I cannot trust them.
I never followed-up because I wanted nothing else to do with people who were patronizing and lying to me.
All-in-all, this doesn't seem to do the clients justice if they don't throughly test to see what prospective candidates are made of by pushing their real-world problem-solving abilities, intuition, knowledge, and expertise.
My conclusion is to dissuade the use of TB as a candidate or as a hiring manager.
The online quiz itself wasn't difficult if you knew what you were doing, but it seemed well designed to discern clueful candidates from those who needed to brush up. I know people who took it and didn't pass.