FYI: TripleByte is emailing old referrals

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25533487

by wilde • 6 years ago

189 47 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I referred a friend to TripleByte in 2017 back when I was actually using the service. He received an email a couple of days ago claiming I referred him again. I've submitted an account deletion request so my friends stop getting spammed but figured I'd let you all know.

ma2rten2• 6 years ago

Yeah, a friend referred me in July 2018. They have emailed me every two month since then. The subject line of their current email template says "[My friend] thinks you’ll pass Triplebyte’s coding quiz" and the email starts with "[My friend] is using Triplebyte and suggested we contact you".

ammon3• 6 years ago

I'm looking into what's happening with this email. We definitely did not decide to re-email people invited a long time ago as a growth tactic. That would be shitty. I think the email is a reminder that's supposed to be sent a few times after someone is invited. I'll update when I know what's happening.

ma2rten2• 6 years ago

See my comment below. You have been emailing me every two month for more than two years.

throwaway34241• 6 years ago

Similar thing here, every couple months for a year, original invitation over two years ago. I haven’t personally been all that bothered by it honestly - it seemed pretty likely that my friend is not sending a new invitation every couple months like clockwork, and presumably I can stop it by clicking once on unsubscribe. But probably it would be better to be explicit that it is not a new invitation.

edmundsauto3• 6 years ago

Same, I think I either set up a filter or routed to spam after being unable to stop the emails using their unsubscribe system.

shalmanese• 6 years ago

It seems pretty amazing to me that apparently some X000ish people have apparently been getting spammed by a company for multiple years and not a single one of them decided to contact the company and ask them to stop it. It's like a real world example of the bystander effect, writ large.

jonny_eh2• 6 years ago

The effect of noreply@

silentsea90• 6 years ago

Playing devil's advocate in response to commenters here. I found the Triplebyte interview process a breath of fresh air. Rarely have I found an interview more aligned with day to day work, and not the same old algorithm puzzle bs peddled in most tech interviews.

kjgkjhfkjf• 6 years ago

Perhaps it was a bug in their software. Bugs happen from time to time.

nbgl2• 6 years ago

I worked at Triplebyte until I was laid off in April due to COVID. I’ve disagreed with many company decisions (including opt-out public profiles) but I’ve never questioned Ammon’s integrity. I remember him as an honest person (at times perhaps to his detriment) and if he claims this this is unintentional, then I believe him.

Independently, from what I remember of those parts of the company codebase, my prior would be that this is a bug, not malice.

gingerlime2• 6 years ago

can you elaborate about the opt-out public profiles?

I never ever used Triplebyte, yet they seem to have some kind of a shadow profile of me? the only way I know is since I saw that they shared my details with Facebook[0]

Definitely feels like —- whatever their intentions are —- they do seem to use some scummy “growth hacking” techniques with little respect to privacy.

[0] https://blog.gingerlime.com/2020/whos-sharing-my-data-and-wh...

csande17• 6 years ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23303037

nbgl2• 6 years ago

Some months ago Triplebyte was planning to make every candidate’s profile public unless the candidate took action to opt out. After outcry on HN, they reversed the decision (made it opt-in) and Ammon emailed out an apology.

I really don’t know the details of Triplebyte’s growth strategy—I never worked with that team.

ammon3• 6 years ago

We don’t have shadow profiles or anything like that

runnerup• 6 years ago

Independently, from what I remember of those parts of the company codebase, my prior would be that this is a bug, not malice.

Indeed. I'm not associated with the company at all but this seems like a pretty typical bug for mailing lists. Anecdotes elsewhere in this thread about people who were referred and/or interviewed but who've not received any spam seem to back that up(?).

TripleByte did legitimately screw up by planning to make profiles public by default. I was upset with that but also very, very impressed when (after a day of reflection and sleeping on it) they reversed course with a heartfelt apology. To me that's the kind of earnestness that I want in companies that I do business with. Some people continue to criticize them for ever imagining the plan in the first place or not immediately reversing course the same day as the initial backlash - but to me, I think the vast majority of humans generally come around the next day after sleeping on it rather than in the moment.

TripleByte doesn't give me the "sociopathic company vibe" at all.

If anything, I've been happy that I can recommend companies like this to colleagues/friends/old classmates who didn't go to top CS schools. A lot of students from the lesser schools have quite a bit of difficulty getting an interview at FAANG companies even after doing the leetcode grind because their resume simply cannot stand out in the online application system -- and without a strong alumni network to help with referrals, they're on their own.

TripleByte (and similar services) do a pretty good job of at least getting you an interview if you've studied hard enough, regardless of your previous academic/professional background. That's a really powerful leg up for a lot of passionate and driven people who didn't go to the best schools.

icelancer• 6 years ago

> I'm not associated with the company at all but this seems like a pretty typical bug for mailing lists

Same, and I've done this on a 100k subscriber mailing list before on accident.

Daho0n• 6 years ago

Having shadow profiles and emailing people every month for years(see other posts) and being trustworthy doesn't seem to go together.

choppaface• 6 years ago

Have met Ammon and used the service. I agree it’s likely not malice but absolutely negligence. Ammon is in way over his head and has failed at recognizing that. Should have learned from the layoffs (COVID was an excuse but appears either Ammon personally had early knowledge of the impending lockdowns or the layoffs had been planned for weeks prior). Way way way too much leverage, and the lever rightfully bit back.

liquid153• 6 years ago

Dont buy it they spammed the shit outta me even after I unsubscribed

ArchOversight• 6 years ago

TripeByte emails have been going straight to /dev/null for years now. I kept getting stupid referral notices, even from friends that claim they never invited me.

noncoml• 6 years ago

Just another data point.

I've interviewed with TripleByte twice. Once very early on, and one a year or two back.

I haven't received a single spam email from them all this time.

presidentender• 6 years ago

I got my current job through TripleByte three and a half years ago. The candidate experience is (was?) top-notch.

The opt-out public profile thing was a bad idea, but I think they handled it as well as they could have after the fact.

My company did stop using TripleByte after a period of success, not because they're expensive, but because we found that the candidates we were seeing straight-up couldn't program. I can't see how that happened, given the rigor involved in the process, but it's what we experienced. That was a disappointment to me because I'm a huge fan of the concept and I had such a positive experience as a candidate.

cinquemb5• 6 years ago

but because we found that the candidates we were seeing straight-up couldn't program

Not surprised, devs with experience and/or recs have no incentive to go through triplebyte and its ilk, with overtime leaving more of those who optimize for this kind thing.

edmundsauto3• 6 years ago

I don’t think this is true. There are many devs with no network who are fine programmers. I bet that’s actually the majority of developers - those just aren’t the people that anyone knows, by definition.

throwaway815235• 6 years ago

They must have really slipped their process then. I went through it some years ago. I don't claim to be the world's greatest programmer, but I've been around for a while and am good by most standards. The interview was fairly tough and the interviewer himself was technically strong and knowledgeable. I don't think anyone who didn't know what they were doing could have gotten through it. I passed, but friends of mine who weren't slouches didn't make it through the online screening.

slumpt_• 6 years ago

They reached out to me about an interview that didn’t go hot for me at a startup out here. It was rather unprofessional, whether or not it was orchestrated by the startup.

If I want to talk to a recruiter I’ll talk to one, and I definitely didn’t consent to having my information shared with any third parties or “partners.”

They are sketchy.

account_chocula• 6 years ago

I’ve known Ammon for about 7 years now, and through hundreds of interactions with him know him to be one of the most humble and earnest people I know. He really cares about helping engineers from non-traditional paths (like he is himself), and works long hours year after year even though he was already a successful founder before he started TripleByte. I believe him when he says that he did not decide to re-email people invited long ago as a growth tactic.

threwawaysoff2• 6 years ago

TB raised a huge red flag when they said "[I] received one of the highest scores on the quiz they ever saw."

I immediately thought: they tell this to everyone, this is some sort of deceptive tactic, and I cannot trust them.

I never followed-up because I wanted nothing else to do with people who were patronizing and lying to me.

lrossi• 6 years ago

I found their quiz very easy except for a couple of questions, which I think I answered correctly anyways. I got the same message. You have probably hit the max score as well.

threwawaysoff2• 6 years ago

Yes, it was basic. And self-esteem head-pats don't do much for me except arouse a feeling of being patronized and raise suspicions.

All-in-all, this doesn't seem to do the clients justice if they don't throughly test to see what prospective candidates are made of by pushing their real-world problem-solving abilities, intuition, knowledge, and expertise.

My conclusion is to dissuade the use of TB as a candidate or as a hiring manager.

vinniejames• 6 years ago

This service is sketchy to the max. The public profile issue was the last straw.

The low quality candidates passing through is due to poor quality controls and the ease of gaming the system by cheating

throwaway815235• 6 years ago

When I did their process a few years ago, there was a fairly challenging online quiz that could obviously be gamed by (say) having a more knowledgeable friend looking over your shoulder and giving you answers. If your score was above X, you were invited for a live (in person or video) interview. That one would have been harder to game. If you didn't score high in enough areas, they told you what areas to brush up on and I think there was a 1 month wait before you could try again. So you had to be pretty strong to get through this phase (I got through).

It sounds to me like they must have since lowered the bar for getting through the process, so weaker candidates now get through; and at the same time, it sounds from other comments that they must have stopped having the interviews done by real engineers (which was expensive). So it sounds like they have become just another recruiting agency. That is disappointing. My initial experience with them was great. I do feel slimed by something that happened later but will see if I can talk to Ammon about that.

I agree that the public profile thing was outrageous. I put it off to the intoxicating effect that money has on business people, that makes them do idiotic things if they think that might get them more of it. We programmers get similarly intoxicated by (say) access to fast enough computers, so I didn't stay angry after the error was fixed.

ammon3• 6 years ago

Ok, we’ve looked into this. The problem was a bug in our reminder email. We only intended to send the reminder 3 times, but it was going out every 6 weeks forever. We’ve turned off all reminder emails for now (and will audit them after the holidays). Had I realized this was happening sooner, we would have fixed it sooner. I’m absolutely NOT trying to spam / growth hack our way to anything. I don’t think that would even work. Our goal is to help people who are strong programmers but don’t have credentialed resumes get jobs. We only succeed by helping engineers. It’s clear from some of the replies here that I’ve lost the trust of a part of this community. I feel pretty bad about this. I’m going to do an Ask HN post next year and get everyone input on what Triplebyte should do to help engineers and not be spammy. If anyone has any thoughts now and would like to talk, please email me at ammon@triplebyte.com. I promise to listen to anyone (I’d especially like to talk to people critical of us). Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone!

FYI: TripleByte is emailing old referrals

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