Why Triplebyte Failed

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Privacy, trust, and the “public profiles” incident

  • Many see the opt‑out public candidate profiles as a major “footgun” that destroyed trust, especially with engineers.
  • Others argue it was a symptom of a desperate pivot, not the primary cause of failure, but agree it was ethically and tactically bad.
  • Some feel the postmortem underplays this event by calling it merely “anti‑privacy,” saying that framing minimizes its seriousness.

Value proposition to candidates

  • Split experience: senior engineers with strong networks saw Triplebyte as extra friction vs just applying directly and doing one phone screen.
  • Juniors, non‑traditional candidates, and people moving geographies often found it game‑changing: one technical screen, many interviews, paid travel, and access to companies that would have ignored their resumes.
  • Several got strong offers and career step‑changes through Triplebyte and remain very positive, though they “graduated” from needing it later.
  • Others were accepted but saw little employer interest, or felt the risk of “failing once and being blacklisted” made it psychologically unappealing.

Value proposition to employers

  • Triplebyte’s Screen / FastTrack products were good at cheaply filtering out very weak coders and surfacing solid juniors.
  • Hiring managers liked having a single, reasonably calibrated coding assessment and skipping initial tech screens.
  • But many companies mainly wanted help attracting already‑desirable senior US engineers (top schools / FAANG‑like). For those, they resisted any extra tests and didn’t see much incremental value.
  • Two‑sided marketplace dynamics were hard: when the market was hot, strong candidates didn’t need Triplebyte; when the market cooled, companies had abundant résumés.

Standardized testing, interviews, and gaming

  • Large subthread debates standardized cross‑company tests:
    • Pros: avoid repeated FizzBuzz‑style screens, centralize filtering, potentially fairer for non‑elite backgrounds.
    • Cons: get gamed (LeetCode culture), drift toward IQ‑proxy tests, and don’t match actual job work.
  • Many hiring managers report that very simple coding tasks already filter out most applicants; the baseline is lower than people think.
  • Others stress that debugging, system design, communication, and “shipping features” matter more than puzzle skills; good interviews should test those.

Business model, VC pressure, and alternatives

  • Several commenters argue Triplebyte had the makings of a solid, mid‑scale services business, but VC expectations for aggressive growth forced risky pivots and heavy ad spend.
  • Recruiting is characterized as a “market for lemons” and a deeply relationship‑driven people business; trying to replace that with software alone is seen as fundamentally hard.
  • Some hope newer efforts (like Otherbranch or LLM‑assisted assessment tools) can keep the useful parts—centralized, thoughtful evaluation—while avoiding privacy violations and VC‑driven overreach.