I had a common point about hashmaps -- the interviewer seemed to be at loss, and was asking weird questions that had little connection or relevance to the implementation path I'd chosen -- I politely explained the confusion and we swiftly moved on. They then marked that as a weak/"fuzzy" spot in their evaluation. I made sure to give my feedback about this to the person who shared the evaluation, but did not receive a response.
In the end, after making it to the company-matching phase, they found a whopping 1 company with <5 people, in an area I had clearly said I didn't plan on moving to. I don't know which part of the data-centric recruiting process got this so badly wrong.
Hoping that this process improves, but so far it hasn't lived up to expectations and I ended up finding multiple great matches on my own afterwards.
I ran the TripleByte course once, and it was 100% not worth my time as a professional.
The "coding test" was criminally simple, but got me in the door quickly for an interview. I spent a number of hours building out projects with a paired interviewer, as well as answering questions. This part I enjoyed, it felt like a nice back and forth while building an interesting bit of software. It was like an open discussion, and getting to tap away on my laptop was such an enjoyable time.
Then came the technical questions. The interviewer asked if I knew anything about a specific Technology X. I'd list the tech here by name, but it's so specific I'm afraid of it being linked back to me. It's not something most engineers would run into.
I responded with "I have not worked with that, I've heard of it" as well as it never being listed on my resume or professional work. The interviewer went ahead and simplified it down for us to discuss, much like "Ok well it works like this, so let's chat abstractly". I went along with the discussion since I figured it would be fine to chat abstractly about a technology I never worked with.
The interview concluded, we parted ways and I thought things went very well.
The following days later I received an e-mail from Triplebyte. They praised my clean code and thought process, but specifically said my weakness in said Technology X, which I would like to call out again I never worked with professional nor had it listed as a skill or on my resume, was too much to consider me for the next round.
TripleByte literally evaluated, and discounted me, on not knowing an uncommon bit of technology. Just what the hell.
I was shocked at the levels of failures that occurred to reach this point. It was unfair to use that as any benchmark, and unfair to waste a day of my time doing that. It was a smack in the face to an industry vet like myself.
I tell all job seekers to stay far, far away from TripleByte for this reason. They're not really changing the game at all, but like to pretend they are the magic answer.
One footnote: I'm an engineer at one of the giants (Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc) who was and is way more qualified than anything TripleByte was or is pushing out.
If it's something commonly used by lots of developers and needed by lots of companies, I think it'd be fair to think of it as a bad signal at least.
The giants (Google, etc) have great engineers, but they also often use technologies that's very different from the general public.
Being an engineer from those companies are great, but it doesn't automatically qualify you for any job on the market.
> If it's something commonly used by lots of developers and needed by lots of companies, I think it'd be fair to think of it as a bad signal at least.
From GP:
> I'd list the tech here by name, but it's so specific I'm afraid of it being linked back to me. It's not something most engineers would run into.
GP specifically said it it isn't something "something commonly used by lots of developers and needed by lots of companies".
I'm not sure if the fault lies with Triplebyte or Mixpanel but it was an overall shitty experience. To be asked to take out your time to complete a quiz (which can be automatically scored with an algorithm since its multiple choice) and then get radio silence is terrible. Even if it was Mixpanel's fault, they should ensure their partners actually follow up with interviewers. For example, I know that Hired (another platform) actually will ding an employer that doesn't respond to applicants.
Anyways, Mixpanel & Triplebyte are probably on my "never apply to again ever" list.
Edit: fixed the formatting
Who else has noticed that most of those graphs don't start at zero and instead only show a very filtered view of the statistics collected?
That reminded me of this classic HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701625
The containing discussion is also relevant.
There were certain areas where the interviewer messed up in their evaluation, e.g. they felt I "was a little weak at hashmaps and API design", which is probably because they did not know what I was talking about when I described the details of advanced hashmap implementations. There seems to be a bias to discredit the interviewee if the interviewer lacks knowledge in an area.
Either way, despite getting great evaluations, I was matched with a total of 5 companies most of which were highly underwhelming early stage companies with minimal traction. Furthermore, I was matched with full stack companies despite begin evaluated as "weak in API design", which is perplexing. I was able to get higher quality offers in my own search and it seems like the TripleByte pipeline consists of many mediocre companies.
If I had known, I wouldn't have wasted my time with this service and invested more time in my job search.