[ammon]

Fair comment. I certainly don't think of us as a market leader. LinkedIn is the market leader. Honestly, the last year has been pretty hard for us (COVID and the problems with our model that I talk about in the post).

That said, I think a hiring process that puts engineers in control (no ghosting, get data on when a recruiter looks at your application, search ranking by whether companies lie to candidates) is something that should exist. I want to try to build it!

[tdeck]

A small bit of feedback here. I tried TripleByte a couple of years ago and the experience was really polished. I passed the interview and got great detailed feedback which I really appreciated.

However, I dropped out completely because TripleByte wouldn't let me see companies without entering in a desired comp number. My recruiter at triplebyte said I could just put in "$1 or $1,000,000" to get past it, but that just feels like the same kind of corporate HR bullshit that people have complained about for years. Just Google "recruiter won't proceed without desired salary" and you'll understand how many folks dislike that question.

The experience made me feel that Triplebyte wasn't interested in putting me in control of the process at all if they have such a user hostile requirement and require me to work around it by putting in fake numbers. I understand that many people will have no problem providing this info, but I prefer to see what companies offer me because it tells me how they value me and the position they're hiring for.

[rachofsunshine]

You're totally right. If we'd been thinking in this mode when that particular requirement was built, it wouldn't have been. It isn't required today (and IIRC hasn't been for a while now).

[pmoriarty]

I never, ever, ever give anyone a number until the salary negotiation stage of the interview (ie. after I've been given a job offer), and even then I only give the company a number as a counter to their offer. I always do this negotiation myself, and never let anyone else negotiate for me.

Almost all recruiters have been fine with that, but a couple haven't. To such people I wish a good day and go my own way. There are plenty of other recruiters in the sea.

[slownews45]

On hiring side we screen folks out pretty quickly who can't discuss money.

I used to be much more relaxed about this, but if you get burned doing a few rounds of interviews and it was a waste you wise up pretty quickly - teams do not like time wasted.

I've also found that folks who can't / won't talk money - usually not great hires for a bunch of reasons.

We're happy to talk through the different positions, levels, progressions and comp ranges for them all. But you have to have a clue about what type of comp would work for you (early on in initial call or two) or it's just not worth continuing forward.

[pmoriarty]

Sounds like we wouldn't be compatible.

You say "I've also found that folks who can't / won't talk money - usually not great hires for a bunch of reasons."

The same goes in my experience for companies which insist on talking salary before the job offer. It's a red flag.

"you have to have a clue about what type of comp would work for you (early on in initial call or two) or it's just not worth continuing forward"

Of course I have a clue, but I'm not going to put myself at a disadvantage in the negotiation by revealing it before I've been given a firm job offer and heard a number from the company first.

Also, in my experience recruiters are the ones who push hardest to hear salary expectations up front. They know it'll give them a leg up in negotiations, and some of them are even paid specifically to get that number (as one recruiter was brazen enough to reveal to me).

[philliphaydon]

> On hiring side we screen folks out pretty quickly who can't discuss money.

That’s because it benefits you as an employer.

I’ve been on the hiring side and I know there’s a budget. If someone is too high you want to push them out right away.

My flatmate in Singapore about 6 years ago was looking for a new job. Her salary was about 2200/m and she said the recruiter kept asking about salary.

I told her not to discuss it. She doesn’t /need/ a new job. If the company really values her then they will give her an offer. They have a budget. They offered her around 4600/m.

If she told them she was on 2200 it’s guaranteed they would have given her only a small bump.

Companies should never ask for salary info. Because it’s only used to get cheap labour.

[ishiz]

Why can't you simply ask the candidate "We offer $min to $max for this position, is that acceptable?" That lets you and the candidate know whether proceeding further is a good use of time.

[cutemonster]

Maybe because there's a chance the job applicant will suggest < $min

[drunkenmagician]

I've been a hiring manager in tech for a long time now, and recently as a candidate. As has already been commented, all companies have a budget. They may be able to increase that for the right candidate, but there is always a range, why not disclose that? As a candidate I know I'm not wasting my time, and the actual during the actual negotiation, its then that the 'value' of the new candidate to the org can be assessed. Pay people what they are worth, which is of course a reflection of their experience, talent, and attitude.

[blunte]

Indeed as a candidate, I don't want to waste my time either.

Your clients know their budgets. Why not just be upfront about that to the candidates. Tell us your budget or reasonable expected range your client can pay. Then if (when) we find that it's well below what some other hungry companies are paying, we can save you and us time by passing.

If you know your client is paying low, then just be open about it. Something like, "Ok, this client is a bit below market (and tell the upper limit they will pay), but they have these good things to offer." If the client has no good things to offer, and the pay is low, then you're still likely to not seal the deal with a candidate no matter what. So just cut the game and get to the point.

[b5n]

Giving a number early on in the process only weakens my position when it comes time to negotiate, waiting for an intital offer to counter is in my best interest. I apologize if that makes me a 'not great hire'.

If you're happy to provide a range, great, if I'm still there doesn't that generally indicate that the range is in line with my expectations?

I guess your comment kind of makes sense, I can see how corporate might interpret 'this person looks out for themselves' as a potentially bad hire.

[oezi]

The problem is that companies use any salary information you provide as a candidate to adjust their offer. A lot of companies that asked me what I made at my previous job (even though it is illegal to ask in Germany) offered me just 20% on top of my number.

This makes me think that all jobs position should have rather narrow target ranges which are stated up-front. Then you can discuss if you are too high level/low level for that job and range.

[KptMarchewa]

What would happen if you refuse?

[oezi]

They just kick you out of the process.

[ummonk]

Why can’t you just talk through your comp ranges and let the candidate decide whether that works for them?

[duxup]

Why can't you just tell them a range you're offering?

[dboreham]

Because then the candidate will be upset when you lowball them because they're not as strong or experienced as your range max merits.

[duxup]

And you won't feel the same when someone picks a number?

[BurningFrog]

Might be a way to filter out the Perpetually Angry Engineers...

[BurningFrog]

I think that question applies equally to both parties.

[tomp]

No it doesn’t. The company is fundamentally in a much better negotiating position (they have much more data on salaries) and carry way less risk than the employee (a company has many employees, each employee has just one job).

[swat535]

This is great actually because you avoid wasting candidate's time, they can move on quickly to better companies that have a more fitting interview approach.

[vips7L]

Have you been up front with the type of comp you’re willing to give?

[usaar333]

A particular problem with doing that is discussed in the post; you risk everyone's time being wasted if the company will never be able to meet your target.

[bigiain]

Why should it always be the candidate's problem to reduced that risk and not the companies?

That time would not be "wasted" if the company had done due diligence on what the position and candidate were "worth" and revealed their target (or target range) to the candidate.

The real reason, I'm sure, is that companies think they hold the upper hand in the negotiation. And a lot of time with a lot of candidates that's true. It's clearly _not_ true for the class of candidate who's realistically got a $300k+ target. You are totally not going to successfully headhunt anyone in the top 1% or 5% of FAANG engineers if you try to dick them around with recruiting power imbalance power plays. _They_ don't need your bullshit. They will totally walk away from whatever time you've "wasted" so far trying to recruit them. You need them _way_ more than they need you.

(And I'm pretty sure that generalises a lot further down the experience/renumeration food chain than most devs realise. Fresh grads or devs with only a few years of experience might need to play the stupid recruiter games, but most companies trying to fill a mid level or senior role need the right candidates way more than those candidates need any one specific job. You can and should be able and willing to walk away from any potential job offer over stupid games like this...)

[pmoriarty]

I don't consider the time wasted because:

1 - I get real-world interview practice, and that always helps me in future interviews. Many companies ask the same or similar questions, and the more I'll be ready for them being asked again. In addition, when I'm surprised by a question I'll research it thoroughly when I get home and won't be surprised by that question again.

2 - I get a bit of an inside peek in to how the companies I interview at work. That's a privilege not afforded to many outsiders, and how some of these companies (some of which are world class) can and has helped me at other companies.

3 - A company might bring me in to interview for one position, but after the interview might determine I'm better suited for another. If I didn't interview with them they'd never know.

4 - As I interview with people I get a chance to make a good impression on them, so even if they don't wind up hiring me for that position they might want me when a different position opens up (whether at that company or another company the people I interviewed with moved to).

5 - By letting companies make the first offer I myself get a good salary survey of the minimum what all the companies I interview with are willing to pay for someone with my qualifications in that position. Of course I try to do my own research ahead of time, but getting salary numbers without getting a job offer is not always possible or reliable.

6 - If I blurt out a number first I'll it may put me at a disadvantage in the negotiation, as they'll just start the negotiation from what I say even if they would have been happy to have paid way more.

[RussianCow]

> I get real-world interview practice, and that always helps me in future interviews.

I hear this a lot, but how much interview practice do you really need? After the third or fourth set of interviews, they start to really blur together for me.

None of your points are false, but if you're casting a wide net and taking every interview without any idea if the company can even afford you, that's a lot of hours spent. The last time I looked for a job, I interviewed at only four companies and spent an average of probably 5-6 hours on each, and it was exhausting. I can't imagine making a habit out of it while also working full-time.

[pdimitar]

I agree it's exhausting. And it can feel very bad and demotivating for the whole thing to end up without an offer or some half-assed "culture fit" "explanation" that is likely copy-pasted from an online script collection.

But, in my case, doing many interviews helped me understand what negative signals I am emitting during interviews [according to the interviewers]. There's nothing like an outsider's perspective, even if you disagree with it.

---

Example: in one of my last interviews I was told that I am too "cocky" and "over-confident" because when I was given real-time modifications to a homework assignment (that I completed before) I was smiling and saying "oh, that's easy!" and proceeded to make the changes live in my editor -- while sharing screen.

This feedback left a very WTF feeling in me. Dude, I am (a) enthusiastic about the task and (b) have enough experience to show you, in real time, that I can modify the code right there and then to suit the new requirements, and (c) chatting with the interviewing team while doing it... and all you can gleam from that is that I am overconfident and cocky? Seriously, get a grip.

For the record, I strongly disagree with their take. But it gave me a very interesting perspective -- namely to scan for the more introverted / likely-insecure people in the interviewing dev team and try and act a little more modestly to not rub them the wrong way.

It's a fact of life that most people suck at interviewing -- as I hope that I demonstrated here. One of the guys in that team simply dislikes certain kinds of people and he lets this go against his better professional judgement about my abilities. Not cool, right? Especially when you also take into account that the CTO who also attended all interviews agreed that my tech acumen is top-notch and they seriously couldn't catch me with my pants down no matter what they did.

So again, this helps me gather experience and culture and makes me more adaptive in the future.

Does it hurt your ego? Absolutely. Does it shake your preconceived notions? Much more than one would think beforehand. Is it exhausting? Hell yes, sometimes after an interview I didn't want to do another one for a week.

But, is it also very valuable to help you improve your interviewing and negotiation skills? Yes!

That's why I did lot of interviews the last time around. And I'd do it again.

[nucleardog]

Yep. I won't get to the offer stage without us having discussed money. I don't want to waste either of our time only to find out someone's only willing to pay 70% of my bottom line.

[RussianCow]

For a big enough company, you can collect a few data points via Glassdoor[0], levels.fyi, etc to make sure that they pay in the range you're looking for before you even begin the interview process. For smaller companies, you're absolutely right, although I personally tend to give a very broad range[0] at the beginning of the process, and only narrow that down at the offer stage. That's worked well for me in the past.

The nice thing about the explosion of remote work due to COVID is that engineering salaries are beginning to normalize across the US, and there is now a lot more salary data available online, so it's easier than ever to see what you're "worth" on the market on average. This at least gives you an anchor when having these conversations, so you're not going in blind, and gives you a lot more leverage if they low-ball you.

[0]: Yes, I'm aware of the drawbacks of self-reported data, but it's still broadly useful in aggregate.

[1]: I'm making up numbers, but something like $120k - $200k, with the lower number being the minimum you'd realistically take. Usually recruiters are honest up front if they can't even afford your absolute minimum, but it still leaves you with a lot of negotiation room once the offer comes in.

[pmoriarty]

"I'm making up numbers, but something like $120k - $200k, with the lower number being the minimum you'd realistically take. Usually recruiters are honest up front if they can't even afford your absolute minimum, but it still leaves you with a lot of negotiation room once the offer comes in."

Why even give an upper limit? It's not like you'd refuse $400k if it was offered to you, would you?

Most companies will naturally start negotiation near the lower end of your range, even if they would have started way higher had you let them make the offer first. I really don't see an upside to this strategy.

[RussianCow]

> Why even give an upper limit?

Because if you just give one number, even if that's your absolute minimum, the entire salary conversation is going to be anchored around that one number, and you're going to have a harder time asking for 50+% more than that. If you give a broad range, it's easier to justify countering with something closer to the top of that range.

> It's not like you'd refuse $400k if it was offered to you, would you?

Of course not, but nobody has ever offered me that. :) In all seriousness, yes, you run the risk of your range coming in below what the company would be willing to pay, but in my experience (and those of friends and acquaintances), outside of FAANG, I have found that to be extremely rare if your range is wide enough. The companies that pay super well are generally big, and thus well-known to pay that much, and I wouldn't give them any salary numbers at all because I'll have a pretty good idea of what they'll pay me with a bit of research prior to interviewing.

Of course, anecdote != data, so YMMV and all that. This is just my experience interviewing at mostly smaller companies.

[tdeck]

In my experience Glassdoor numbers are low. They've been low compared to the reality at places I've worked, at least.

[swiftcoder]

They uniformly underestimate big tech compensation by 50%+, because they've never clearly delineated salary from total compensation (and stock grants are a majority of comp for a lot of senior FAANG employees).

Luckily levels.fyi has fairly accurate data for those same companies.

[usaar333]

> For a big enough company, you can collect a few data points via Glassdoor[0], levels.fyi, etc to make sure that they pay in the range you're looking for before you even begin the interview process.

Agreed though in practice that just moves the pre-interview conversation from a comp discussion to a leveling discussion.

[ivalm]

That’s why the company should say their range and the candidate can say if that’s satisfactory.

[jabits]

Seems to me that you would waste a lot of your personal time this way. They know enough about me before I even step in the door and I want some idea of whether the money can work. I ask for more than might be typical and I haven’t time to waste on companies that just want to show me what a great place they are to be at.

[andrew_]

conversely, I discuss compensation immediately. In the segment of the market I'm in, I've wasted too much time going through interview processes only to get to the end and find out they're incapable of even matching my current comp. I've found being candid more successful.

[sgerenser]

Yeah I think it’s worth giving at least a range if you suspect the company can’t even meet the minimum. Like “at this point in my career I’m targeting positions that pay from $150-$200k.” If they balk and basically say the aren’t authorized to offer over $100k, you don’t have to waste your time. This probably makes more sense with smaller companies where they tend to have more limited budgets.

[KptMarchewa]

In my country it's common for companies to have public salary range, at least for IT positions - see https://justjoin.it/ for example board, Linkedin recruiters do the same thing.

It seems to be terrible waste of time going through interview process to learn that they won't even come close to what you want. I would not do that to myself.

[jiveturkey]

that used to be true universally. now only true for entry level at big companies.

at senior levels especially, you should know what you want. comp bands are informed by huge data troves now and any edge you may have gotten before is gone due to the fixed and tight bands. just state your requirements and insist on “turnabout is fair play” ie they need to tell you the band. do this during the prescreen and save everyone’s time. if you kill it in the interview you still easily can negotiate to top of band.

[nostrademons]

Semi-serious question, asking for an indeterminate person:

If your desired comp number actually is $1M/year, will that just flag you as a joke to Triplebyte companies? With post-pandemic stock price increases a lot of engineers at FAANGs are making more than that now.

[baumy]

> If your desired comp number actually is $1M/year, will that just flag you as a joke to Triplebyte companies? With post-pandemic stock price increases a lot of engineers at FAANGs are making more than that now.

For any reasonable definition of "a lot", no they absolutely are not. A lot of people with 2+ years of experience who've either been promoted once and received a strong annual review, or switched jobs as a mid-level industry hire are making in the 200s and 300s, a few pushing into the 400s. Much more than that and you're looking at the top 1% (or less) of engineers at the top companies. Not a lot.

Source: was a mid level engineer at a FAANG until I left late last year, knew seniors and principals and their comp. Nobody was making $1M/year.

[sneak]

> Nobody was making $1M/year.

Nobody that makes 2x what their coworkers do at the same job/level casually discloses their comp at the water cooler.

[haliskerbas]

I can guarantee people at my company and level make 3-4x more than me. Push into the next level and you have quite a few $1M+ TC

[erosenbe0]

If "quite a few" non-directors make more than average American cardiologists either:

A) your company is engaged in disturbing monopolism; B) your company is engaged in disturbing labor exploitation and arbitrage; or C) your company is engaged in disturbing environmental destruction.

Would love to be proven wrong. Am I?

Edit: option D) is that American cardiologists are not as exclusive and skilled a labor force as I would prefer to believe ;)

[lumost]

But people do brag about it on Blind such that the compensation bands are well known. People also complain about cliffs when it turns out the company didn't want to pay them at a certain level.

[Hrundi]

You'd be surprised

[polyomino]

Someone has not worked on wall street

[nostrademons]

Stock price for most of the FAANGs has gone up by about 2.5x in the last year. If you had $200K base, $50K bonus, and $300K stock compensation in 2019, you're now making $1M today. That's roughly L6/E6/ICT6 (staff) level.

[kortilla]

Google has not even hit 2x. https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=GOOGL

Also, staff level is a tiny slice of the engineers at FAANG. So still not “a lot” even if your stock appreciation numbers were correct.

[agrajag]

Which FAANG has had their stock go up 150%?

They’re all doing well, but even Amazon hasn’t doubled their stock since prepandemic.

There are definitely more people making 1m/yr at FAANGs than their were last year, but I agree with others that it’s not “a lot.”

[nostrademons]

FB in May 2019 = $177.47, today = $332.04, 87% appreciation.

AMZN in May 2019 = $1775, today = $3496, 96% appreciation.

AAPL in May 2019 = $43.77, today = $130.87, 198% appreciation.

GOOG in May 2019 = $1103, today = $2508, 127% appreciation.

That's all over the last 2 years. Market low was apparently Dec 2018, before the Fed started cutting interest rates, so the numbers are a bit bigger since then. They were pretty steady through 2017-2019, so anyone who got grants or refreshers during those time periods has benefitted from that appreciation.

[slownews45]

They are making that on their 3-4 years vesting and refreshers etc that they can't sell. So yes, in past few years some folks have been making great to really great money especially if they have a bunch of equity in various vesting stages + get a big refresh / bump on a position switch to drive retention. I wouldn't say a lot but many maybe?

[jiveturkey]

if your desired comp is $1M, i doubt triplebyte is the route to it. you would need to use your network.

[ThePadawan]

> Just Google "recruiter won't proceed without desired salary" and you'll understand how many folks dislike that question.

It's incredible how mileages vary. I recently had to strike companies off my list which demanded to know my last salary.

I offered them my salary expectations, but they would absolutely not accept that, and preferred to take the fact that I would not tell them the exact salary at my last position as a reason to decline to immediately stop the interview (with half an hour left in the call).

This wasn't a one-off either, I would say about 5% of companies (biased sample) try and get away with shit like this.

(This was German-speaking Europe)

[CRConrad]

> (This was German-speaking Europe)

In which case the correct answer is "Das geht Sie überhaupt nichts an."

[desireco42]

I get what you are saying, but on the contrary, I don't want to go through interview process as a candidate just to be lowballed in the end. If the range is not there, and often it is not, I am fairly good and not everyone understand how much this costs, I just don't want to waste anyone time.

I don't think this part is off. Why I never went to Triplebyte and will not go, I think doing tests is dumb and don't wanna do it. Like original commenter said, you can't change model that quickly.

[btilly]

Fair warning.

There is a large pool of people who think that they are programmers, but are not. This is exactly what the infamous fizzbuzz test was intended to weed out. I personally know a top notch recruiter who credits her success due to learning early in her career how to filter most of the junk out. For example a "Perl programmer" who listed Microsoft Word as a skill was probably not worth looking at. (Note, this is an example from 20 years ago. But the principle remains.)

If you create an engineer focused site and DON'T find a way to segment engineers by ability, you'll find that your negotiating power is based on the average of your candidate pool. Which means that you'll discover why traditional recruiters kowtow to companies and not the other way around.

[indymike]

This is very true. We weed out hundreds of applicants ler opening on very simple questions... Think what is the difference between const, var, and let declarations in JavaScript?

The problem is we're all spending weeks and weeks on weeding out fakers. We've moved to a quick pop quiz right after we get an apply. This takes out 85% of the candidates (it makes me sad when I look at how simple the stuff is that weeds them out...). Two interviews are more than enough to land on a hire after that.

Our company is a conversational recruiting software company (you apply, we say hi, and screen candidates in real time and then hook the candidates up with an interview). We started doing the screening in our chat flow and it works really well for us.

[mardifoufs]

Very good advice. The "gatekeeping" they alluded to is just very necessary if they want to have any differentiation from any other generic job matching service. I'm sure the triple byte team is aware of this but I think it's important to keep in mind just how much people work in tech/IT jobs, how wide the skill/qualifications range is and how spammy applications can get very, very quickly. Even positions that are "easy" to get as a competent engineer can get hundreds of applications, and since it's also pretty common for people to just outright lie on their CVs it becomes very time consuming to filter for someone who genuinely meets even just most of the job requirements.

& maybe I'm wrong but I thought the entire value proposition of TB was that their pre screening and testing process made the whole process much less noisy for your hiring managers. If you still end up needing technical interviews and aren't guaranteed that all the candidates you get have gone through some technical screening, what's the point?

[twic]

AIUI, employers will be told whether the candidate took the tests, and if so what their score was:

> Going forward, our assessments are a purely optional means by which engineers can show their skills to employers (who overwhelmingly tell us that they trust our scoring), rather than a requirement for entry.

I think the idea is that an employer can still filter out the unfizzbuzzables, but has the option to ignore that for candidates whose stellar track record is a stronger signal.

I'm a little bit skeptical, because i think there are lots of people with apparently strong CVs who are still weak when you actually put them to the test. But maybe not at the very top end; i am really thinking about people with experience in various investment banks, which is perhaps less of a signal than Apple then Netflix or something.

[mike_d]

If you want to put candidates in control, build a CRM tool. When a recruiter pings me on LinkedIn or emails me, I have a URL I can send them to with an intake form. No more calls wasting my time, I can see the company/role/salary/etc. up front.

The trick here is you need to figure out a business model where you don't take money from employers, because once you do its just the long slide to becoming a shittier LinkedIn.

[llbeansandrice]

> salary

Colorado now requires job postings to include something more or less like a "reasonable salary range". It hasn't been perfect, for example there are some companies who now just restrict their online job postings to say "except Colorado" instead of adding a salary.

But as someone living in Colorado it's been nice to know the salary range up-front more often and to have confidence that I can ask them for a salary range without getting the question turned back on me: "Well, what are you looking for?"

[dmlittle]

In California recruiters are legally obligated to disclose the salary range upon request.

[p1esk]

Source?

[dmlittle]

AB No.168[1], specifically 432.3(c)

(c) An employer, upon reasonable request, shall provide the pay scale for a position to an applicant applying for employment.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

[p1esk]

Thank you. It says there: “The bill would specify that a violation of its provisions would not be subject to the misdemeanor provision”.

So it seems it’s not enforced.

[slownews45]

I think as they start enforcing things more employers will avoid colorado until kinks worked out.

If you have a janitor in CO, every job is an improvement and potential promotion. Having to first go to that janitor for every position is going to wear out FAST. Posting for the CTO position? Go to janitor first. Posting for CEO position - same thing - that's what is going to drive folks away.

[sgerenser]

In my experience this is worse than nothing, because the posted pay is so much lower than the companies are actually willing to offer. Positions posted for FAANG that I know are offering $250k+ total comp are posted with statements like “pay starting at $110,000 but varies based on your unique qualifications and experience”.

[llbeansandrice]

I'm unsure of exact enforcement and such but you could report them if you wanted. I also don't mind FAANG so much since there's so much info available for those positions on like levels.fyi.

The biggest strength for me is that I can ask them and they have to tell me. When I was job searching before I'd ask the recruiter and then they'd always ask me what my target is. Not showing your cards is like negotiation 101. Plus it's made fielding messages and emails easier. If they provide a range, I can just easily say "This position sounds interesting but unfortunately the salary range isn't what I'm looking for currently."

You're right that a lot of positions aren't great about this, I've literally seen "Pay starting at $0.01" or ranges literally $30k to +$200k. But I've seen it as a benefit in the negotiation process and it's just been easier to field recruiters.

> total comp

This law only covers salary as far as I know, so equity and such aren't included. Total comp is different.

[sgerenser]

True but if equity is ~50% of compensation at many tech companies, but also varies hugely, being forced to reveal base pay doesn’t mean much.

[llbeansandrice]

I guess not, but this is also a law that applies to _all_ job postings for CO. I feel like a lot of people are criticizing this law when I see it as an absolute step in the right direction.

It's not perfect, but I feel like it's wildly helpful for a ton of people. It helps transparency for a lot of positions and I feel like it rewards honest companies. If equity and bonuses are a big part I think it reduces the overhead for talking about salary to clear the way to talk more about equity and bonuses.

It's also in the early stages and CO is the only state with a law that requires disclosure up-front to my knowledge (someone mentioned CA has a law, but they only have to answer if asked). It feels like a fantastic first-step to me.

[throwawaysea]

There's an HN discussion about this Colorado requirement now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27546384

Unfortunately it looks like companies can just state wide ranges (which don't help applicants understand the market any better) and they can also omit other compensation elements beyond the base salary component (stocks, cash bonuses). That makes the disclosed information not very useful.

[rachofsunshine]

We've talked about things in this area, but this particular framing is pretty interesting. We're talking about it now.

I personally like this proposal and am probably going to at least draft a hypothetical spec of it and see how it fleshes out. Thanks for the suggestion!

[mike_d]

Awesome! I've started a POC, but as with most things I'd rather not have to build it myself.

[mattheww]

It's unbelievable that nobody has done this well - I and most people I know are tracking their own job searches on a spreadsheet.

Pretty obvious value-add for job searchers. Not to mention that having access to this data would enable tons of other product features. Shows that most services/sites don't care that much about the applicant experience.

[toomuchtodo]

https://www.kiter.app/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27256776

[rachofsunshine]

If you're interested in comparing notes, I'd love to hop on a call with you. (We've got some bookable slots linked at the bottom of the blog post, but I can make time elsewhere if you'd like.)

[choppaface]

You want to build it, or you want to make money off it?

As CEO, you:

* Grossly expanded profiles without user permission.

* Laid off tons of staff right before the COVID lockdowns. (What has been your personal returns since April 1, 2020 by the way?)

* You have been privy to discrimination happening in client company on-sites yet did nothing to the client companies.

You’re a CFO, an investor. You’re not a CEO, and you certainly do not have my trust as a developer.

[xtracto]

Interesting I was only aware of their constant polluting of Hackernews with bad article-vertisements

[jakearmitage]

Oof, burn.

[choppaface]

Well, I witnessed one of the reports of discrimination, and his response made me puke. So I’m a bit biased.

[ctvo]

I can't remember the last time I was ghosted. The problems you listed aren't problems that I experience. I don't care what part of my resume recruiters look at. I don't care what they do with it.

Sure, having metrics on how often a company ships code, etc. would be helpful, but frankly I have about 10 companies on my list that I'd work for, and I doubt any of them would give you this data.

What I'd really like is not having to practice leet code problems for 3 months before I interview. The older I get, the less motivated I am to do this. I've worked in senior engineering roles at big tech (FANG) with 3+ years tenure. I don't think I managed to not be able to do my job and fooled people for that long.

I've interviewed people I KNOW could do the job, but they didn't get the optimal solution, or were nervous, or N things in the loop, and we ended up not hiring them. There must be some incentive to create a system that lowers these false negatives.

[localcrisis]

I have had this exact experience with Triplebyte both as an engineer and as a hiring manager.

I simply do not care about things like, “what does malloc return”. I do not care what people know about bloom filters in Postgres. The 99.99% of web developers don’t have to know these things. I do not care if you can implement Tic-Tac-Toe.

It’s poor interviewing, which is the entire product they’ve been offering.

[bradleyjg]

> There must be some incentive to create a system that lowers these false negatives.

I’m generally quite pro immigration but when BigTech goes to DC and bellyaches about how they need higher quotas because they can’t find enough workers it really sticks in my craw.

Reminds me a bit of the classic example of chutzpah—-the boy who killed his parents, then threw himself on the mercy of the courts, asking for leniency because he was an orphan.

[heavyset_go]

> I think a hiring process that puts engineers in control (no ghosting, get data on when a recruiter looks at your application, search ranking by whether companies lie to candidates) is something that should exist. I want to try to build it!

This is a space that unions fill well compared to for-profit recruiting agencies. The organizations give engineers control and leverage in hiring, and can help them up-negotiate. They also allow employers to hire from pools of skilled talent.

Whereas with recruiting agencies, the customers are employers, not the candidates. Incentives are not aligned to give candidates control.

[filoleg]

While I still slightly prefer the direct experience for other reasons, the recruiting agency experience was pretty good for me in its own way. More specifically, when it comes to salary negotiation. Let me elaborate.

People at the recruiting agency usually get paid a commission as a percentage of the first year of the hiree’s salary (not taken from your paycheck, but just in general). Which means, it is in their interest to get you as high of a comp as possible. Which also means that I dont have to bs around with the recruiter about my salary expectations or anything like that. I give them the upper range of what i want, they tell me either “sounds good” or “they are easily willing to pay more, so why not try $X instead” or “they cannot pay that much, but there is this other company that we work with that can offer you as much.”

And if you work with one recruiter consistently, it gets even easier, because now that the recruiter knows my total comp expectations, she pre-filters opportunities for me and only contacts me if there is a position she is aware of that pays at least as much as I want or more.

Of course there are downsides too, for example, the limited choice of companies that the recruiting agency is working with at any given time, so i still have to find some opportunities and interview with those companies on my own. But as a supplementary option, working with a good recruiting agency has been quite nice for me.

P.S. The type of a recruiting agency i am talking about is the one that is focused on a specific sector (in my case, fintech/quant), so it might be a completely different story for a “generic software dev” recruiting agency.

[hectormalot]

> Which means, it is in their interest to get you as high of a comp as possible.

Beware: this is not universally true. What you typically see is that it leads to closing as many candidates as possible. A recruiter can make more by closing 2 candidates at 80% of max comp than 1 candidate at 100% in the same time.

This is a well known behavior in real estate sales, which have a similar commission structure.

[filoleg]

Agreed, but as you said, it all depends. I am not sure if it was specific to that individual recruiter that I have been working with or if it is just a general practice with fintech recruiters, but if my recruiter was going for the high volume, she had made a really poor choice deciding to continue working with me.

I am saying that because I’ve been working with her for at least 3 years now, and I am yet to take a single offer from the companies she set me up with (either due to them getting cold feet last second or simply due to me not passing some of those interviews or me declining due to some red flags with the companies). If it was all just about high volume for her, it would have been in her interest to drop involvement with me after the 3rd unsuccessful attempt to set me up with a fintech company.

[MertsA]

>This is a well known behavior in real estate sales, which have a similar commission structure.

Even worse, real estate pays both sides so realtors are heavily incentivized to get their buyers to purchase from their own sellers so they can get both sides of the commission. Instead of paying them 3% to act on your behalf and do a bunch of leg work they get double and now they can do less work and aren't strictly working for your benefit.

Working on commission just leads to wanting to make a deal happen. Even ignoring the time aspect of it, if a recruiter has much better odds of making a placement at 80% max comp compared to 100% max comp, the 80% is still objectively better. Why risk not closing the deal when the expected return is negative?

[cwp]

Oh HELL no.

Collective bargaining is inherently about eliminating competition between workers. That is, it creates a labour monopoly to balance out a labour monopsony. That might (might!) be a good thing for autoworkers. It would be an unmitigated disaster for software engineers, and the tech sector in general.

People who write code are unbelievably productive compared to just about any other job function, and software engineers (who we'll define as people who write code for tech companies) are even more so. Part of eliminating competition between workers is making sure that nobody works harder than anyone else. That would be devastating to the productivity of software engineers, which would make them less valuable to tech companies. That would lead to a decline in salaries, and general stagnation of tech.

Another aspect of preventing competition is seniority. One of the archetypes of the tech world is the wunderkind—the brilliant kid fresh out of school that rockets to the top. A union would tell that kid, "sorry, you'll have to pay your dues as a junior engineer for 5 more years, then you'll be eligible for promotion. In the meantime, we'll give that job to cwp, he's got the required seniority."

Just think how this would affect tech companies. Sorry, you can't pay more to attract the best. If you're really careful about interviewing, you might be able to find some people with both skill and seniority, but it'll be tough because smart, ambitious people have all gone to Wall St or whatever industry has the best opportunities.

[heavyset_go]

> Collective bargaining is inherently about eliminating competition between workers

A yet every movie star in the US is in the same union as B-movie and infomercial actors.

> Another aspect of preventing competition is seniority.

Weird, considering pro-athlete unions regularly help kids out of college quickly become multi-millionaires.

> One of the archetypes of the tech world is the wunderkind—the brilliant kid fresh out of school that rockets to the top.

Weird, considering unions have been at the forefront of education, apprenticeships and training that helps kids out of school rocket to the top, the same apprenticeships and training that companies refuse to fund themselves.

> Sorry, you can't pay more to attract the best

Weird, considering SAG-AFTRA regularly helps movie stars up-negotiate multi-million dollar contracts.

[mikecoles]

Agree with most, but your valuation of coders is humorous. Save a few, they're not that special. Most are more similar to the factory line worker than other job functions.

[bigbillheck]

I don't want to compete with my colleagues, I want to co-operate with them.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

As a candidate, I'm willing to put up with sometimes shoddy interview outcomes (e.g., ghosting) if my funnel is far greater and consequently leads to a more competitive offer, which is the end goal. A narrower funnel, that pre-selects for higher expectations of how companies engage in the process, may end up falling short of what I'm optimizing for.

[flavius29663]

Exactly, I don't understand all this moaning. You're only doing this every some years, you might as well try to optimize it rather than be picky, because it can make a big difference both career and compensation wise. Idiotic HR does not correlate in any way with a worse or better company, at least in my experience.

[DylanDmitri]

I referred my friend to triplebyte and never received the promised $5000 referral bonus. My emails to support were ignored.

[rachofsunshine]

That shouldn't have happened. Could you go ahead and email our support at [e-mail] again (just so that you don't have to expose your data here) and let them know who you are? I let one of our support folks know to keep an eye out; we'll get you sorted out (and I'll check back here later this evening, so let me know if you don't hear something back quickly).

[f6v]

This is an admirable aspiration. Although, if I think about, the companies spend much more time with a recruiting/sourcing product. And the candidates change jobs like once every 1.5-2 years? So optimising for a candidate experience doesn't seem right considering they're not the customer.

[caffeine]

Your point in the article about gaining bargaining power for engineers by making the hiring process an iterated game instead of one-shot is a good insight.

But the transparency you need to extract is mainly financial, that’s the big asymmetry. I think people care more about money than they say they do, and less about release cadence or test coverage or whatever than they say they do.

So triplebyte should be called “get me a raise.com”. I tell you what I’m making, smash all your tests, and you find me somebody who wants to offer me e.g $50k more or $100k more, and that WILL be the offer I get. And if the company reneges on that offer then it’s flagged to warn others, and if they do well by their employees they are rewarded as well.

[rachofsunshine]

This was our original theory when we started doing user research, and we were surprised at the degree to which it didn't pan out. We assumed (in line with how these things usually go) that engineer interest in filters would follow some sort of very lopsided power law, where a few filters dominated among almost all engineers. But in practice, everyone wanted something different: some people were excited by salary, some by tech stack, some by pair programming, etc. One guy went on for like fifteen minutes about how much he hated open office plans.

That said, the idea of "we will offer X to anyone with Y quiz scores" as a showing a company can make is pretty cool, and is definitely in a "company makes public conditional guarantees" space that we're interested in exploring.

[clavigne]

> One guy went on for like fifteen minutes about how much he hated open office plans.

Does this guy have a patreon?

[anonymoushn]

I emailed customer support in April because your site would not allow me to change my current role to any value other than <Specific title at specific company>. Like, my profile literally has a dropdown menu where that's the only option. Nick O'Brien asked me for a screenshot of the problem then ghosted me. Today it is still impossible to change my current role on your site.

I am looking forward to progress toward a hiring process that puts engineers in control, such as by allowing them to accurately record their current role in their profile.

[sturadnidge]

Do you think more of a peer based approach to recruiting would have any legs? I built something a little while back that was a kind of "keep track of the people you'd hire", and anyone on your list had the power to grant you visibility to various parts of their profile (current employer, whether they are looking or not, what kind of role they are looking for, etc). Never targeted recruiters as a potential user, but I guess that probably isn't a bad use case. I'd much rather get contacted by a recruiter (albeit a recriuter who was known to me) with "hey I see you're looking for X, let's catch up to discuss opportunities Y and Z" as opposed to the cold calls / linkedin messages that are the current status quo.

[an_opabinia]

I used TripleByte to recruit people for a startup without paying, by asking people to sign up for the test and screenshot the answers and collecting the scores at the end. I already had an inbound funnel, I just liked your test when I saw it the first time.

In 2015, candidates with the same schooling scored about 20 percentage points lower than 2020, the last candidates I used the test for. The number of questions doubled, and then the test got much easier, by eliminating more challenging programming questions and replacing them with questions with giveaway context. By comparison, according to my data, about N=43, until about 2018 being a senior versus a junior in college CS programs is worth about 10 percentage points on the test; going to Harvard instead of Berkeley is also worth about 10 percentage points. In 2020, the last tests had no predictive features.

I stopped using the test, because it became too easy and too noisy to be informative.

I recognize some of the coded language in the blog post. There are definitely more lucrative opportunities in recruiting for DEI. I don't know if it will last. If you're still jittery about the public-profile-by-default thing, which by the way, was totally irrelevant and overblown IMO, this may not be a pivot for you.

One thing I see in the data is that at MIT, women and men performed the same, controlling for seniority. This wasn't true at the 3 other universities that produced enough data to measure.

That said, what really is the best way to hire candidates? I'm not convinced having binders full of engineers is special, there are almost always more candidates than jobs, at least 5:1, in every non-credentialed industry vertical. Anyone who has worked at a jobs (or indeed any matching platform, like the Common App or Tinder) knows that.

Then there's this long thing about asymmetries or whatever, warble garble about missing information... It has never, not once been my experience that someone seeking a subordinate role at a typical private company with preferences like "pair programming" or whatever have ever been better than someone with no preferences at all.

Maybe it helps to engage in the vanity of whatever trendy workplace trend is hot for whatever vertical. But like, if you're being intellectually honest, if you thought pair programming was important, you'd pair program at TripleByte, but you don't, you know in your heart of hearts none of that shit matters, so why are you putting stuff like that into your search system?

Indeed and ZipRecruiter are ad arb companies. They don't care. Private universities lead, not lag, DEI at giant companies, so it's hard to see how to compete against them in that core business. It will still come down to a real defensible opinion.

Do you have more valuable inventory than ZipRecruiter for DEI candidates? Who knows. What an uninteresting question. Apple also hires people who just make shit up on their resumes, I know two - though they weren't engineers.

[musicale]

> there are almost always more candidates than jobs, at least 5:1, in every non-credentialed industry vertical

If this were true for "qualified" candidates, there wouldn't be a labor shortage, right? ;-)

[ryandrake]

Companies just adjust their definition of "qualified" upwards until it looks like there are too few qualified candidates, then call it a shortage.

[jlokier]

A recruiter once told me, if you see 30 applicants for a high level tech job on LinkedIn, not to worry about competition, because ~27 of them were likely to be unqualified trying-their-luck applicants, mostly from other countries where the company was not going to hire, and mostly with no relevant skills or experience.

They told me the actual number of qualified candidates was usually just a handful or less.

I doubt this is true in SV, but I don't live in SV.

[jedberg]

> going to Harvard instead of Berkeley is also worth about 10 percentage points.

That's interesting to me. Most reputable rankings put Berkeley at #2 or #3, and Harvard is usually around #7 or #8 (and US News puts them at #16!). I wonder what the cause of that discrepancy is.

[WoodenChair]

CS program rankings are largely based on their graduate programs. The parent comment is almost certainly talking about candidates with bachelors degrees. For undergraduate Berkeley has a 16% acceptance rate and Harvard has a 4% acceptance rate. This will likely act as a filter in combination with the quality of the undergraduate CS program, which could be better at either institution but is hard to get a metric for.

[jedberg]

I was specifically looking at undergrad rankings. The acceptance rate is not a good filter because that's the acceptance rate for the entire school, not the CS program.

From what I can tell, anyone who is a Harvard student can declare the CS major if they pass the pre-reqs. At Berkeley, passing the pre-reqs doesn't get you into the major -- you still have to apply for a limited number of spots, which generally means having a 3.8 GPA or better in your pre-reqs. So effectively both programs have the same acceptance rate.

[usaar333]

> For undergraduate Berkeley has a 16% acceptance rate and Harvard has a 4% acceptance rate.

Berkeley EECS is sub-7%.

[failwhaleshark]

Pedigree filtering is most often myopic elitism, especially in a business context. Anecdotally, I avoided MIT and Harvard because of Boston's snow and traffic. CalTech is Pasadena: too frick'n hot. I didn't study at all for the SAT-I and aced the math section. (The SAT should be more like the JEE.) I went to an expensive, "top 50" public university where I liked the area. Also, it was more practical and rigorous academically than most Pac10s (Pac12s now) and Ivys because they had something to prove (no grade inflation at all, they don't care if you turn in homework or not, not much market for homework and tests, and proctored exams). I also didn't do a PhD because of the economic disincentive: if I put in the work and the cost, I could do an MD, JD, or PhD CS but there is no added benefit.

Most clinical doctors have social skills and crystalized intelligence from domain expertise, but aren't typically mistakable for particle physicists.

People don't necessarily require the proper sheepskins to possess fluid, crystallized, and/or other domains of intelligence AND the skills, personality, and experience relevant to excelling at a particular STEM role.

Pedigree is mostly used for social filtering and business leadership board packing, but if someone wanted to create an elite monoculture of staff, lacking in cognitive and personality diversity, by all means, go right ahead.

PS. I. Don't even get me started about a car full of CS IITians talking about the JEE and high-placers who seem normal on the way to snow country for snowboarding and gambling.

PS. II. I bombed an Apple interview for a mid-career role by being too intelligent and too maverick compared to the group of compliant, I hate to say, yuppies. It was an interview panel of about 9 people and they were just speechless. The other time I bombed an interview for being too smart was about 10 years before that when I was 20 at the old Borders bookstore in Palo Alto. Moral of the story: it's important to play dumb where appropriate because most people are relative-intelligence insecure.

PS. III. Sorry, reader, for the rambling and discontinuous thoughts. Absurd endocrine values of unknown etiology currently... doctor appointments pending. ):

[opeongod]

I have a sneaking suspicion that being "too smart" isn't why you bombed those interviews. I know I’d never want you on my team after reading just this one post, can’t imagine having to suffer through a multi-hour interview too.

[IncRnd]

> I bombed an Apple interview for a mid-career role by being too intelligent and too maverick compared to the group of compliant, I hate to say, yuppies. It was an interview panel of about 9 people and they were just speechless.

Are you sure they were speechless due to your high intelligence and maverick qualities?

[taude]

You sound like a crazy person, though maybe this post is a joke.

[blueblisters]

> PS. I. Don't even get me started about a car full of CS IITians talking about the JEE and high-placers who seem normal on the way to snow country for snowboarding and gambling.

That sounds awfully specific.

[kragen]

LinkedIn doesn't provide the vetting service Triplebyte does; they don't tell employers anything about job candidates' quality. It sounds like you want to pivot from the small market where you were the market leader into the larger market where LinkedIn is.

[zerr]

Would it be still "US-only"? As a suggestion - try to serve more broad audience and also put accent on REMOTE.

[duderoso]

ammon,

how do I reply to recruiter contacts? applied to a job, received a request for interview from company. Nowhere to reply on the platform? How do I get in contact with them?

Should there not be a reply button right there with recruiter's message?

p.s. I already emailed support but, my past experience tells me they won't reply.

[failwhaleshark]

What made me instantly distrust TB was the Publisher's Clearing House-style "you had the best score on our online assessment we've ever seen." C'mon, don't blow smoke up my ass right off-the-bat. If it's that easy, then it needs to be more difficult, broader, and deeper to pre-test candidates with proficiencies in particular areas with questions that are AI-generated: algorithms, data structures, particular languages, operating systems, networking, front-/back-end technologies and tools, software engineering, customer service, team communication common-sense, professional workplace behavior, and engineering ethics.