Triplebyte Blog

>"I've been a happy engineer with a YC company for close to three years now. I have led various teams and contributed to many aspect of the overall product during my tenure. I have also interviewed more than twenty people and I can assure you, there is no one size fit all when it comes to finding candidates that succeed." That's refreshing to hear, thanks. Your observations is in stark contrast to their proclamation that: "If you’re a programmer interested in joining a YC startup, apply to Triplebyte and we’ll match you with the ones you’d be the best fit for."[1] [1]http://blog.triplebyte.com/

54 companies? That seems very inefficient. I like Triplebytes [1] focused approach to hiring engineers. I think they used to interview candidates to assess their skills rather than depend on whiteboards or resumes. If the candidate passes the interview, they would be connected to relevant companies, take up interviews with the companies and negotiate the offer(s). Now it looks like they changed the process slightly to introduce online coding tests to make it easier to screen more candidates. Edit : As pointed out below, the online coding test is the first step followed by one on one interviews. [1] https://triplebyte.com/

Have you gotten any face-to-face interviews, or even been in touch personally with any recruiters? The initial hurdle is often the highest because of the minuscule signal-to-noise ratio in job applications. If you have any friends working at companies you might like, or even friends who can refer you personally, make use of them. Due to the sheer volume of applicants for all manner of tech jobs, the harsh truth is this: submitting an online application without a personal connection, no matter the quality of your work, is essentially throwing your resume into the incinerator. If you have absolutely no personal connections in tech that you can leverage, apply to Hired (https://hired.com/) or Triplebyte (https://triplebyte.com/) and prove your worth to them however you can. Once you're on the platform as a quality developer, the rest will handle itself.

Sorry that your experience went poorly, but I'd still recommend not giving up. As someone who was trying for the better part of four years and finally made my way in a few years ago, here are a couple of my thoughts: 1) Utilize leverage and numbers. Reputable 1st party company recruiters as well as hiring marketplaces like Hired[1], and TripleByte[2] and AngelList[3] could become trusty tools for you. It'll be hard to get in front of recruiters at BigCos there, so you'll also want to make sure your LinkedIn[4] is up to date. Get a premium account and actively get in touch with BigCo recruiters. Connect with them and see how many are willing to have an unstructured conversation with you about your location in your career, your goals, and the possibility of working at BigCo. I know recruiters get a bad rap, but the competent ones are worth their weight in gold and most importantly are paid to put you into the process. You want to get in front of as many companies as possible. There is very likely an upper limit on the amount of "nos" you'll have to hear before you get at least one yes. But, it takes a lot of time and energy to go through the ringer with more companies, even if it does work to your advantage. The most recent time I went through the process, there were a good 50 companies I had initial conversations with, maybe 20 were I got to the phone screen stage, 5 that I got to on-site and 2 offers. And, this time was easier than last time, which was even worse. The…

Triplebyte (YC S15) | San Francisco | Full-time | Onsite | https://triplebyte.com/ Triplebyte has built a credentials-blind process for evaluating engineering skill and helping companies hire great software engineers from any background. Companies like Apple, Dropbox, Mixpanel, Instacart, and hundreds more let our pre-screened engineers skip resume and recruiter screens and go straight to final interviews. Yesterday we announced our Series A from Initialized Capital, Marissa Mayer, and Paul Graham: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16485672 Triplebyte is growing fast and we're hiring in a number of areas: • Engineering - We eat our own dog food and internally hire engineers in our normal job search process on https://triplebyte.com/. (Note that Triplebyte is just one of the companies we may match you with alongside a few hundred others.) • Lead Product Designer • Product Manager • Talent Manager - Give personalized support and advocate for every engineer going through our process to help them get multiple exciting offers. • Head of Candidate Operations • Scheduling Manager • Junior Account Executive • Account Manager • Enterprise Account Manager • Sales Engineer • Content Manager • Internal Recruiter - Help us fill all these non-engineering roles as we grow. For non-engineering roles, apply at https://triplebyte.com/careers

In my experience anyone using something other than VSCode, or Major IDE is a noteworthy signal that the developer cares about their tools and is probably better than the median. There's an interesting blog post from a recruiting company breaking down the data they have on editors and developer success in their interview process. https://triplebyte.com/blog/technical-interview-performance-by-editor-…

I can make something up, but would love to see a guide to how to donate broadly to open source. Apache, GNU, Ubuntu, libinput? I've been doing this myself with a combo of one-off donations (Ubuntu, Pop OS, libinput) plus experimenting with Github Sponsors on one project. Here's an example from TripleByte of their employee-directed donations: https://triplebyte.com/open-source-donations

More like: "Getting noticed if being doxed and then shuffled into a mediocre job are your thing" The article is clearly marketing. Advice #1 is effectively just saying "don't suck". Obviously you should be producing good, useful, readable, and maintained code. That's not the path to getting noticed, but more like a prerequisite for not getting fired. Which the author apparently did not follow. Why does this need 3rd party JavaScript just to display the background behind the source code example? With uBlock Origin, it's white text on white background... And in line with my impression of that article, here's the "amazing" jobs that wait for you when you succeed with TripleByte's advice: https://triplebyte.com/jobs It's all about becoming a tiny cog in a big machine.

I don't know Ammon, but I don't think he's chasing "big money". The best founders I know, when they make mistakes like this, aren't doing it for the money. They're doing it because they are trying to create the world they want to see exist, and that blinds them a bit. In this case, I genuinely believe Triplebyte just wanted to have a bigger impact on the hiring world, and try to fix it for engineers. Did they fuck up badly? Oh yeah. But I don't think it was for "money". Triplebyte has 33 employees. They don't have VPs getting "fat bonuses". They don't have "golden parachutes". Look at their about page (https://triplebyte.com/about), it's all engineers and designers and CSMs. They're just a group of people doing their best to try to fix something we all hate (technical interviewing/hiring).

Hiring manager here and I completely agree with this. In my experience there is almost zero difference between a junior engineer with a CS degree and a junior engineer who is self-taught or had a non-traditional CS education. In actuality the things you learn in a 4 year CS program that you wouldn't get elsewhere (algorithm performance, theory, etc.) don't apply to all professional engineering jobs (especially at the junior level). Triplebyte has some great data on how bootcamp grads fair against CS grads (https://triplebyte.com/blog/bootcamps-vs-college) and my takeaway from this (and from personal experience) is that at the junior level it almost makes no practical difference.

There is a YC company that is trying to do this: https://triplebyte.com/ Search for stories about it on HN to see how it's going.

Just curious, have you tried platforms such as https://www.vettery.com, https://triplebyte.com/ or https://hired.com/?

Great question - these roles correspond to our notion of engineering archetypes (https://triplebyte.com/archetypes), which define what concentration of skills a company is looking for for a particular role. In this case, full-stack indicates a web focus, while a generalist engineer is a more, well, general programming role - often one that requires less specific web knowledge.

Location: USA/Remote/Anywhere Remote: Sure Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: pytorch, fastai, python, deep learning Resume: geoffgolder.com/resume.html Email: [email protected] Full stack / generalist (certified by triplebyte! https://triplebyte.com/certificate/QH5fL2E) moving into the ai space. i love it. i'm learning.

We have a blog post with some recommendations based on what we've seen at Triplebyte: https://triplebyte.com/blog/how-to-pass-a-programming-interview I think it's a pretty good starting point. I also like Cracking the Coding Interview and I think there's definitely a place for timed coding challenge sites like leetcode - especially if you've been in a role where you're mostly working on larger-scale problems rather than on producing smart, working code quickly on the fly.

Thanks for sharing! And, BTW, I took your initial online test just for fun+research. I really liked the mix of question types. And it was clear a lot of thought went into picking the answers for the multiple choice questions: apart from the best answer, there were answers that were way off base, but also 1-2 that sounded plausible to someone who had some knowledge of the topic. EDIT: One more thing: On the page that describes the process (https://triplebyte.com/company_faq_learn_more) it says there are two steps: - Quiz (10% pass rate) - Technical Interview (30% pass rate for those who passed the quiz) But when I tried the process, I saw 3 steps: - Programming Questions (i.e. the quiz I mentioned I tried) - Programming Problems (it says it will take 30 mins, and I haven't tried yet) - Technical Interview

You apply to the lowest position, that has the least amount of risk to hiring you as you're unknown to them, and then work internally your way into your role of choice. Or try a recruiting service like this: https://triplebyte.com/

I admire triplebyte's effort and the content they produce. Their narrative is really data-driven common sense: some engineers fit to some companies but not to others. Especially enjoyed: http://blog.triplebyte.com/who-y-combinator-companies-want I am a programmer and I run http://www.coderfit.com, a tiny recruiting agency in Zurich / Switzerland (reach out to me via e-mail address in my HN-handle if you look for a tech job in Zurich). Recruiting is really, really hard and I am happy to see platforms like http://interviewing.io and http://triplebyte popping up that give programmers without classic CS background a chance.

A year or so ago you guys published the post Who Y Combinator Companies Want (http://blog.triplebyte.com/who-y-combinator-companies-want) and A Taxonomy of Programmers (http://blog.triplebyte.com/a-taxonomy-of-programmers), both of which were quite interesting and insightful in terms of data. How do the types of engineers Apple or Facebook want compare to that?

He got 14 interviews from 54 companies. As a candidate, that's better than what you can expect from Triplebyte, which apparently only interviews 1/6th of applicants (2000 interviewed out of the 12000 who have applied). http://blog.triplebyte.com/12-000-engineers-evaluated If you don't make it to the interview phase with Triplebyte, then the process might as well be as opaque to you as any company. You aren't given much information about how well you tested and the reason you weren't selected to interview. It would be great if there were a Triplebyte-like service for those of us in the lower 10,000, but until then it's back to applying to dozens of companies.

(disclaimer: I haven't done the interview dance for quite some time.) I find suggestions in part 4 of this article: http://blog.triplebyte.com/how-to-pass-a-programming-interview quite reasonable. The rest of the article is also excellent. And it is short! The key here seems to be breadth - even if you have designed a few successful systems yourself, your breadth may be inadequate to talk smoothly about a system design problem which is unfamiliar to you in an hour-long interview. So learn your building blocks, get some ideas from architecture talks and blog posts by tech companies and sharpen your talking and hand-waving skills.

You make a great point. I probably wouldn't work for a startup that doesn't extend the exercise period. Fortunately, people are pushing for this and I think it is great for employees. [1, 2] Strong signal that the company thinks about you. 1. http://blog.triplebyte.com/extending-stock-option-exercise-window-guid… 2. http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity

Yeah I can relate to that. Even I thought of doing some freelance stuff while I was in college, but you can't compete against people with $5-$10 per hour rates. Also there are a couple of companies which are trying to simplify the hiring(interview, visa etc.) process. 1. https://underdog.io/ 2. https://triplebyte.com/ I haven't used their service before. But sometimes ago I read their blog and it sounded interesting.

I've found these; https://triplebyte.com/ (and HN who's hiring also) https://nomadlist.com/ for remote https://remoteok.io/remote-jobs also for remote Not a lot is for London specifically. Triplebyte only lists a few startups in London, some of which I'm already in the process of applying for.

Triplebyte founder here, we're managing the application process for this. We wrote some more here about how we're running our process: http://blog.triplebyte.com/announcing-triplebyte If you have any feedback or thoughts, we'd love to hear them.

If I am not mistaken, Amplitude was the very first SV startup coming up with the idea of the 10-year post-termination exercise window, talked to lawyers who said it cannot be done, persisted and did it anyway late 2015, then open-sourced the approach for others to follow [1]. Triplebyte made a splash by adopting a very similar policy months later in early 2016 (also discussed heavily on HN [2]) and all YC companies were recommended to adopt this approach off the back of Triplebyte starting from the W16 batch [3]. The rest, as they say, is history. Many companies on this extensive list of ones with 10-year post-terminiation exercie windows [4] might not have this policy if it was not for this know-how benefitting employees put out in the open - between Amplitude, Triplebyte and it spreading to YC, making this approach table stakes a few years later. Sir, I salute your for doing this not just for doing this for Amplitude employees (who no longer had a "golden handcuff pressure" after vesting their original grant - which is most companies actually see as a benefit, and a way to "leak" less equity thanks to leavers often not being able to exercise), but for a part in moving the tech industry forward. Legend! [1] https://amplitude.com/blog/employee-equity-is-broken-heres-our-fix [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11198991 [3] https://triplebyte.com/blog/fixing-the-inequity-of-startup-equity [4] https://github.com/holman/extended-exercise-windows

> Everybody involved is taking some fraction of that risk. I think that by "that risk" you're talking about "the overall increased risk of investing in a new company". I deliberately use the word investing because that's how employees should think about their participation in a startup: They're usually giving up something now... salary, extra work hours... in exchange for some possible upside in the future, often in the form of stock options. To state what you're saying another way: A lot of employees do not correctly assess the risks of the investment they're getting into, for example, of not having direct control over the date when a salary increase will occur, or whether that salary would be in the form or cash or shares. In short, employees often invest themselves into investments (i.e. startups) that bring far more risk than they can personally tolerate. Avoiding startups completely is one solution. Another is to really start thinking like an investor: Personally, I like to consider whether I would be a passive investor in the company (i.e. just write a check)... If not, it's a sign that perhaps the company is not a good addition to my portfolio overall, and I'd be better off taking the cash from another employer and investing in something I do believe in. (Aside: I've seen some pretty good "rent or buy your home" calculators out there, but never a good "work for a startup or an established company" calculator. If anyone can recommend one please reply.) Edit:…

I'm going through the Triplebyte process right now (I passed their interview last month and have just started the bit where I talk with companies this week) and that is not at all what they seemed to be testing. Their famous quiz seemed to mostly be checking if you have any idea what you're doing[1], and their two-hour interview[2] spent less than ten minutes on data structures. I muddled through that bit by saying things that sounded plausible (with lots of disclaimers that that was what I was doing and that I had no experience with low-level code) and still passed it with flying colors. Having gone through this process I would say that having some experience and being able to write practical code is probably the best way to prepare, and studying interview questions would probably be fairly ineffective. [1] One of the incorrect answers was to use a factory function that passed the data to an assembly line interface which put it in a package class and shipped it to the user interface. [2] https://triplebyte.com/interview_guide

I'd argue that working at crappy companies is the problem and stock comp pain is just one symptom -- I find various forms of crappiness tend to correlate. At places with solid cultural values (Pinterest, Dropbox, Asana, Coinbase to name drop a few), employees are treating reasonably fairly on all dimensions. There's just a few ground rules: 1. Is the company giving options? They better have a 7 year exercise window (https://triplebyte.com/blog/fixing-the-inequity-of-startup-equity ); if not, don't work there. 2. Is the company giving RSUs? Great; just realize you'll be paying nearly 50% taxes when they convert to shares. (and make sure that the company will actually pay your taxes by buying back shares when they do convert!) 3. Is the company super early stage? Your options are probably worth nothing and probably will amount to nothing. But if it costs almost nothing to exercise (strike + taxes), you might as exercise them now.

I'm a huge fan of AngelList Jobs [0], and made extensive use of it during my last job search, for one very important reason: they require all job listings to disclose salary/equity ranges up front. Some of the listings there have ranges that are more useful/realistic than others, but I find having at least some indication of potential compensation for a position is infinitely better than not having any idea at all, and avoids so much potentially wasted time on both sides of the job search due to unrealistic expectations around compensation. This is especially important for startup jobs, which can vary wildly in compensation from one company to the next. Their search and filtering tools are top notch too, as you can break down listings by just about any criteria you might think of, such as industry, tech stack, location, size/funding, role, and of course, compensation, for which they even have a dedicated tool [1]. Of course, money isn't everything, and if you're even considering working for a startup like I was, it's probably not your number 1 priority, but nevertheless it's still an important consideration that can pose as a potential deal-breaker for many candidates, especially when looking for jobs in big tech hubs that have higher than average cost of living. Candidate matching services like TripleByte [2], Hired [3], underdog.io [4] and AngelList's recently introduced A-List [5] can also work well for the right candidates, though I've personally had mixed results…