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Comment by sam2426679 | Hacker News Reader

TripleByte changed my (professional) life. Around 2019, I was in a bit of a professional lull but knew just enough coding to be dangerous.

I got roped into the TripleByte funnel through a Reddit ad, which eventually culminated in moving out to SF for a YC startup. Several years later, I had a role at FAANG and reached a level of professional $ucce$$ that was orders of magnitude better than where I had been ~4 years prior.

I wish TripleByte was still around. I remember interviewing.io doing a study on whether there was any signal from LinkedIn profiles with “skill badges.” TripleByte was the only badge that had predictive value for ability-to-receive-an-offer, but the flip side was that recruiters negatively associate these badges with profiles of people in early-stage careers, which means that you’re better served by not having any badges on your profile.

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I went through a bootcamp at the end of 2014, then spent the next three years unable to get a job in tech. I didn’t have a paycheck for those three years.

Triplebyte was my last ditch effort. I failed the online test the first time I took it, came back and then failed their interview. Came back again, got five in person interviews in the Bay Area. Didn’t get offers on the first four (one place even kicked me out halfway through the set of interviews). But I managed to get an offer from the last company, which I then spent the next four years at.

Had I not gone through Triplebyte, I probably would’ve given up on working in tech. Instead, I’m an L5 at Google.

That's still an amazing level of persistence.

What motivated you to push through so much failure?

Overconfidence. I had built some cool stuff, but I didn’t know much I didn’t know. So having interviews where I wouldn’t get any feedback left me in the dark about how far off I was.

I’ve always had sterling reviews as long as I’ve been in a job. I’ll leave it to you to wonder how much of that is competence and how much is successfully pretending to be competent.

> I’ll leave it to you to wonder how much of that is competence and how much is successfully pretending to be competent.

It still sets a baseline level of competence, even if it’s not quite as amazing as it appears.

People always think I’m competent, but it’s really me just starting on ‘what I expect people to be doing in half a year’ now, so by the time they start doing it I’ve already gone through all the pitfalls while they weren’t looking.

> one place even kicked me out halfway through the set of interviews

It might feel better if you realise they "let you go home" rather than "kicked you out". If a candidate is clearly not qualified why waste their time (or ours) going through interviews that we already know won't lead to a hire?

BTW we always consider this a failure of our process (phone screen in particular), not failure of the candidate. We should never have brought them in in the first place.

I was working construction and doing part time web design before triplebyte, afterwards I was working in SV as a senior engineer. To say it changed my life is an understatement

I wrote this post, and TB changed my life, even though I'm not an engineer. They hired me almost literally off the street, and now I'm...well, running an attempt at a successor. Not a bad six years.

If you want one reason I wanted to start this company in particular, it's that it seemed like a good idea to try to make something everyone wants to see exist.

Here's the post: https://interviewing.io/blog/why-you-shouldnt-list-certifica...

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