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Show HN: Use rejection letters from Big Tech to get shortlisted to YC startups

skipbigtech.com

19 pointsalexcarsewell27 comments

Pretty suspicious; certainly dubious, potentially just a scam. Collecting sensitive information, no actual information on the site about who is behind it (bonus: it's a one page site whose backend is a third party), submitted to HN by a new account, hosted on a domain created yesterday, (ab) use of the Y Combinator name without any actual evidence of affiliation, and with logos of companies that aren't even links.

We just moved fast. Was frustrated by progressing to final rounds at Big Tech and getting rejected, felt like hard work was wasted. Was then inspired by PG's take on building, a: "I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly"

Are those rejected from Big Tech better candidates than those who never applied (and thus never got rejected) from Big Tech?

Or is it specifically using Big Tech's first round interview approval for startups to skip doing doing first round due diligence in the first place?

What if there's something "off" in the way Big Tech accepts first round interviews but then rejects second round interviews?

My 2nd interview w/ Facebook (years ago) was so full of red flags I decided to never even consider big tech after that

It's just a sort of survivor bias. e.g. This happened to me or it's how I think so only people who have the same experience/mentality as I do should be the people I want on my team. You actually end up with a less diverse candidate pool because of it.

None is better or worse candidates. But the fact is that a great amount of exceptional talent get attracted towards applying to Big Tech, and often they may get rejected for trivial reasons and lose self-belief.

Our aim is to change that and provide them an opportunity to do work that's more meaningful and exciting. The hypothesis is that getting to the 2nd and above rounds at is a metric that may indicate your skilfulness.

There are few things wrong with the concept though. 1. Even poor candidates can get past first round at pretty much all big tech companies. 2. Most candidates who apply to big tech are looking for big tech salaries, benefits, and clout.

What a weird setup. Talk about adverse selection. Not to mention just the positioning of it all: "So you got rejected in your 2nd round and now you're here..." Esp. since the interviewer most probably has a Big Tech background.

Is this a service meant to arbitrage the fact that interviewing at big tech is free?

Seems objectively worse than triplebyte in every posible respect. At-least with triplebyte there is some actual data about your interview rather than "passed 1st round, rejected at 2nd round"

I don't think this will actually work, but even if it did this would just move us to a world where you would have to pay to interview at big tech.

Triplebyte doesn't actually interview anymore, though... they pivoted to being another online interview question quiz platform.

I think this is a smart way to scale up an applicant pool with minimal resources. My opinion is based on being in recruiting and doing analytics from startups to big tech.

It might be worse than former TripleByte interviews in figuring out signals, but it is much less people and cost intensive to scale. I think it's a smart trade off for a start up.

Most first interviews cover the same set of questions. For engineers, it's usually can this person actually code / leet code knowledge.

On-site interviews have a lot of variables, ranging from types of questions, interviewers, and hiring committee for an offer to be extended. I can see why being rejected at 2nd/on-site stage doesn't matter much.

Thanks, anonymous entity collecting resumes and rejection letters on typeform.

Was just inspired by PG's take on building, so went really mvp, although typeform is not the most ideal but it works, and we can focus more on actually helping out those that sumbit. PG excerpt from "Six principles for making new things": "I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly"

Is this a joke / parody project? Really can't tell.

This is not a joke nor a parody. We launched something quickly to solve a problem we deemed important to solve. I agree that our setup is crude, but we are rapidly iterating and have the best intentions in mind.

Interesting, so the idea is sort of acting like an automated HR sourcing agency by using "invited by 'big tech', rejected on 2nd interview" as a heuristic to find suitable candidates?

EDIT: The execution is certainly suspicious though. At first I thought this was a new official YC project, until I saw it apparently has no affiliation at all? Also, no imprint, no "Show HN:" type of launch post and from a new (<1h) account..

No it's not!

Yes! Using that as a heuristic. Althought its not ideal, it will probably give far better "signal to noise" ratio of "qualified" candidates vs. normal applications. The intention was originally not this, it just grew from the frustration from applying to Big Tech, getting far, then getting rejected, and feeling of having wasted my time and starting from zero again. Now maybe people in my situation can use past semi-successful interview processes to get new opportunities. That's the original intention.

More interesting idea if you can set it up:

Got an offer from big tech? If your background checks out, immediately get offers from other startups for the same role.

This is as interesting as the first idea. We just went ahead with the "rejected" instead of the "offer" route because I had experienced getting far with interviews at Big Tech and then getting rejected. Felt it would be nice to use this "token" of having advanded to get other opportunities. Might tinker with the offer idea as well, but betting on this for now, esp. now that many Big Tech Cos have hiring freezes.

This would only work for so long. As a company scales up there are going to be legal complexities in justifying and analyzing why a person was hired.

I can definitely see a tiered service where if a person got an offer they would be more sought after by companies.

> You will not automatically get an offer, but get directly in touch with the recruiting team and thereby increase your chances.

Surely this is the easy part?

We fight for promising candidates we get in touch with, with friends at YC that need great people. Some of them like our high "signal to noise" ratio. We think using this "got to 2nd round at Big Tech" is surely not the perfect heuristic, but YC founders have said candidates here are on average way more attractive than their usual applicant pool.

Isn't the problem for startups the lack of developers rather than the problem for developers a lack of startups? This seems to be aimed at the developers but in order to solve the startups' problems?

It's a time trade off. Candidates can also get interview fatigue so skipping the initial interview save around 45-60min per company interviewing at.

Candidates that have obvious signals (example, worked at a fang) won't really need this service. But there are likely plenty of good candidates that get rejected at the resume review stage because their experience doesn't look that they can do the job even if the candidate is perfectly able.

Not necessarily. We think the problem is two-sided:

1) Applying to high-growth startups might be a numbers game or heavily network-based. Only some applications will have the opportunity to be looked at.

2) Not all developers have the "credentials" to pass the (flawed) CV screening process, until they land a particular role. However, much exceptional talent may have been rejected in the final stages of Big Tech firms, indicating their skillfulness, but they don't have the opportunity to highlight this.

I always thought about this sort of space. If you get a letter of offer from a big tech co, why isn’t there a way to signal that you’re “at least Google good” without working for them.

Any negative traits not filtered out in the first round, but routinely filtered out in the second will be disproportionately represented in this pool of people.

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