Triplebyte's blog covers its engineer hiring process, data on interview performance, and which YC companies are hiring.
HN commenters mention its credentials-blind approach of assessing skills directly instead of by resume, and it shows up in hiring threads and job posts.
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…
> 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:…
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…
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
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
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