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perf review writer)

deepreview.eu

40 pointshoria14143 comments

Hey Hacker News,

This is a small tool my brother and I worked over the holiday season.

It helps you write performance reviews, cover letters, and even parts of your CV. It's goal is to make it easy for you to go from the crisp thoughts inside your head to the fuzzy prose that's required in these HR interactions.

ChatGPT does the heavy lifting of course. This thing is magic!

We're both been managers at one time or another, and struggled to get the writing just right in these formal interactions. We also both wanted to try out ChatGPT in a more "production" setting. So my brother had the initial idea of taking the drudgery away from writing performance reviews. One thing led to another, and through feedback and early demos the tool is broader than we originally anticipated.

Even though it's still a toy right now, we're hoping it proves useful to folks. Comments, critiques, improvements are most welcome.

Thank you!

How are you using ChatGPT? AFAIK, there's no API for ChatGPT yet.

One possible API is https://github.com/acheong08/ChatGPT

It uses a lurky captcha solving service, as well as chromedriver, which bin patches chrome so that chrome is automatable in a hard to detect way (off the shelf selenium is detectable by websites), but it works quite well, if you can manage to get it running. We've got a ChatGPT slackbot setup, which is quite a bit of fun in a group setting.

Hey, OpenAI provides an API here https://openai.com/api/ which give you access to a host of cool features and models. It's what we use.

Just to be clear those are APIs for GPT-3 not ChatGPT specifically.

I don't think this is correct, one of my colleagues made a MVP using ChatGPT a month ago (I don't know how it works internally, but it was fully integrated with our system, a multi job posting system).

I've heard that text-davinci-003 is better than ChatGPT at most tasks. They're probably using that.

is there a competing open-source version of this model I could run locally?

I don't believe there's one just _yet_.

A quick google search reveals GPT-Neo and GPT-J as being open source. But haven't yet tried them, so can't vouch if they're as good.

My hunch is selenium.l but I haven’t taken a look at this any more than the title and Op’s comment.

I get the idea, the motivation behind it, but as an employee, the first time I get an AI-generated performance report on myself is the day I change company. Can't be bothered to offer a real, human experience when providing performance reviews ? Then I won't bother to work.

HR is one of the area where chatbots should NOT be reigning. It is literally named "Human Resources".

I don’t understand the cynicism. Are you also the type to say “can’t be bothered to properly indent your code? Forget formatters; you should be out of work.”

If you check out the actual website you’ll see that you’re still expected to fill in all the correct information. It just translated what you write (ie point form) into a different format.

I find this tool very useful because I’m expected to write half a dozen peer performance reviews for my colleagues each quarter. This takes it from “Mark gives good code reviews, but is slow to respond to my questions and shows up late to meetings” to a professional review.

> It just translated what you write (ie point form) into a different format.

Then just send the point form. You'll gain time by not having to write the word stuffing, they'll gain time by not having to read the word stuffing.

This is just adding noise to the signal, if you don't even bother to write the text why would someone bother reading it ? It's annoying for everyone and doesn't add any value

I (as an engineer) don't care if my colleagues send me point form.

However, HR and managers are the ones who made the decision that I have to write these lengthy reviews. How do you propose I proceed?

I could either:

- Tell my manager / HR that I'm not willing to do that

- Find a different job

- Or just put up with it, and use tools like this to make it more bearable.

Thank you for taking the time KMnO4. We went through a couple of iterations on how to position this thing. It's not perfect for sure, but we don't want it to be "cheating on this important feedback". Especially in the manager to report relationship. But quality writing is hard, so if this thing can help you get to 90% of the way it's a good tradeoff I think.

> the first time I get an AI-generated performance report on myself is the day I change company

What if they don't tell you?

> It is literally named "Human Resources".

The 'human' in HR refers to the resources being managed, not the people doing the managing.

Hey Uberzi, I'm one of the devs behind DeepReview.

Thanks for having a look and expressing your opinion. We're definitely in the pre-PMF phase so any honest feedback helps.

Do you reckon help with writing cover letters, referrals or parts of a CV might be a better fit in your eyes?

I wouldn’t worry about their comment. Uberzi doesn’t have a single positive comment on HN.

The emphasis there is on "Resources", not human. Department of administration of the resources of the human kind.

Name: joe

Role: copywriter

Company: Corp

History: 10+ years

Skills: Pretty bad at writing and communicating.

> in marketingDear [Hiring Manager],I am writing to apply for the Copywriter role at Corp

With 10+ years of experience in marketing, I am confident that I have the skills and knowledge to be a valuable asset to your team

I understand the importance of effective communication and writing in this role, and I am confident that I can deliver

Although I am not the best at writing and communicating, I am eager to learn and grow in this role

I am a fast learner and I am sure I can quickly adapt to the requirements of the job

I am excited to learn more about the role and how I can contribute to the success of Corp

I am confident that I can bring my experience and enthusiasm to the team and help to make a positive impact

Thank you for your time and consideration

Sincerely,Joe

The output I just got was a combination of information I provided in the form, and fabrications. This is another example of "AI" behaving like something that should be fired, or set on fire.

I'm very curious about the fabrications part.

From my own dog fooding, I was able to come to these conclusions:

- if you provide no input, it's going to fabricate (trying as much as possible to fill in all the blanks)

- if you provide a decent amount of input, then it'll just act as a tool to fill out missing words

The second part is a bit tricky, and it's what we've tried to improve on with the UI. Even if you provide enough info, it can still be too terse to begin with. And there's a chance it'll fabricate things.

That's why we've added tools to edit any output and to expand on sections. The idea being to get you 90% of the way there, and allow you to add finishing touches and edits and still be truthful. Basically, an iterative process.

Admittedly, it is work in progress.

Do you have any examples of fabrications and stuff that was so off the mark compared to what you would've expected? Appreciate it's a big ask, but genuinely curious.

I love that you've built a creative new user interface around AI. There was a post here yesterday about how chat-based UIs are lazy/the worst option. Glad to see people starting to build AI tools with thoughtful UIs.

Thanks for the kind feedback and glad you thought the UI is thoughtful.

Was reading that post (also yesterday) and I think chat based UIs aren't good when you want to actually talk to someone (to sort out a pressing issue). If you're exploring ideas, if there's no time constraint, if you're talking to something quite good such as ChatGPT - I think they can be pleasant / impressive / exciting.

Pretty sure this uses GPT-3, not ChatGPT. It's basically the same but the main differences are that GPT-3 has an API, and that ChatGPT is made to function more like a chatbot.

I don't wanna sound like I'm nitpicking. I just think it's confusing to use the wrong term here, especially because some commenters here (understandably) think you are scraping data.

Yup. That's a fair point to bring. We use the OpenAI APIs with `gpt-3`. No particular fine-tuning done, or anything special than prompt-building and some invocation parameters that encourage more diverse answers.

What's the advantage of using this instead of opening ChatGPT and saying "Please write this resume for me with this information: ..."?

Hey, thank you for the feedback.

Indeed at the moment it's not much over what raw ChatGPT can offer. But I'm looking at ChatGPT as an infrastructure component. Not really meant for the "average person" to interact with. This tools (and others such as copy.ai, Notion, etc.) contextualise it in a way that makes sense for the job a person needs to do.

Nevertheless, it does have a number of features to structure the output in a way that's tailored for resumes, reviews, cover letters etc. And it does have a UI that we think makes it easier to iterate on each individual idea or paragraph.

We want to add some features that "justify" it more as existing as a separate product. Things like auto-improving your LinkedIn profile, or a history/log of folks you've reviewed, etc.

What sort of features you'd like to see to make this more worthwhile as a product?

If you try the tool you'll see there's some UI around building out specific sections with some small details that you offer

I did try the tool, and it was not clear to me why filling out a bunch of smaller forms is superior to pasting all your information at once

The way I've found out works best after dog fooding the tool for a while (for resumes, cover letters, etc) is to take an iterative approach to it.

- Start with the minimal amount of info needed.

- Let it generate a "first draft" that acts more as inspiration.

- Fill in a bit more details in various paragraphs. Let it expand on it.

- Delete things that aren't needed.

- Add things you might've initially forgotten about.

- Iterate for a short while and get to hopefully a decent result.

The idea being that the first draft won't ever be perfect. You need a few tries to get to something that's good and truthful for the situation at hand.

But that's a dataset of N=1.

It pads OPs resume

Assume everything here is constructive criticism. First, I don't think it's even possible to automate this process to the point where it mostly produces something better than the human could, most of the time. But let's forge ahead anyway...

Neat idea, and congratulations on getting this far! But, execution leaves a lot to be desired.

The UI could use some work. It's not clear what you're supposed to click on, in what order, to go through the whole process. Yes, it's not really that hard, and I figured it out by trial an error (as hackers/developers do), but the average person will probably get lost two minutes in. But that's just a UI problem, which should be relatively easy to improve.

Some of the prompts/labels are confusing. One of the input fields has a placeholder "Write your question here..." Not sure what that is supposed to mean, when it seems to be asking for what I did at a company. It started out saying something else, but I can't get that original message to show now.

As to the results: Sentences that include pronouns are problematic. Can you reliably match a name to a pronoun? Sure, most of the time you'll get it right, and when you fail the user can change "he" to "she" or vice-versa. These problems might seem small, but when you have several of them, you end up with a result that needs lots of editing. And what happens when the user forgets to change "he" to "she" in one place before submitting their resume? I'm assuming people using this product will not be very detail oriented, and if you are generating problems, they might not catch all those problems.

I gave it "Worked with the owners of the ocmpany [typo intentional] to develop their website and make it easier for clients to contact us" and it generated "and book services. Developed a custom website using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Optimized the website for mobile devices and improved the overall user experience."

The first "sentence" it produced isn't even a sentence. The second sentence assumed JavasScript which, while in the skillset I provided earlier, doesn't necessarily mean I used it in that project. The third sentence assumed I optimized the website for mobile devices, which I never wrote anywhere.

I saw how it fixed some of my (intentional) typos and poor spelling (html instead of HTML, etc.), which is good. I see how it synthesizes statements of what I did based on the skills I provided. But I just don't see the whole thing coming together well enough, except for people who have absolutely no ability to put together a resume. And do I really want somebody like that working for me?

Hey,

Thanks for the detailed feedback. Some of the issues you highlighted we've known about since we've dog-fooded the app ourselves. It's interesting to see others mention them as things that don't help the whole thing come together. Some of those are new - especially related to the UI.

But each of them is now a ticket we'll work on to improve in the coming days and weeks.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful review.

Great idea! But how are you guys planning to pay for the APIs? I was playing around with it and one day just used up all my credits. I will share it with a friend of mine who provdies resume writing service

This is a side-project of ours for now. Actual costs have been minimal, save for our time - which we decided to cap just so we don't go into our usual perfectionism. So we haven't thought deeply about monetisation TBH.

If this ever gets _big_ - and hence useful to enough people - I would like to have a very simple and easy-to-appreciate monetisation. So not ads, nor subscriptions. Pay X and get 10*X value back in your life or somesuch thing.

Thanks for checking it out. Right now we're trying to see if the product, in its very early stages, appeals to anyone. If they'll use it, come back to it, etc.

Then we'll most likely pay for the APIs. And think of monetisation and where we'd want to go with this.

That being said, are there any features you're keen on? anything you'd like to see that'll help you in your day to day?

This is pretty good. I can see a lot of people using the CV maker. I personally am not looking to create a resume/cover letter. But definite can see a job seeker use it. Have you guys considered an email correction addon powered by ChatGPT? These days I put rough drafts of the email I type into ChatGPT and ask it to rewrite it professionally.

I want to hear more about the privacy policy before I use it.

Hey, That's a very valid question. Especially since there's the potential to input sensitive information. We're just at the start, so we've totally missed on creating a privacy policy. It'll be on our todo list asap.

That being said, the app is a React front-end that talks to ChatGPT apis. We don't store any info about what you're inputting or log anything more than analytics (and your email, if you chose to subscribe for more info, via MailChimp).

Instead of a privacy policy, the app is currently open source

https://github.com/horia141/auto-perf-review

so you can view the code and see for yourself.

I would also appreciate if you give the ability to upload a PDF directly for resume.

Hey, that's a great idea.

Basically:

- upload a version of an existing PDF resume

- let the tool help you expand on it

- download a - hopefully - more satisfying version of your resume

did I get the gist of it right?

I will definitely add it to our roadmap.

Yes

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