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That sounds like a feedback email from a couple years ago - am I right about that? We've definitely gotten better at this over time.


Yes, the email is from 2015.

The bigger difference that I see is your statement that "Every few months, I check that all our recommended resources are still up-to-date, available, and free."

In some unfruitful further communication with TripleByte, I asked how I was supposed to improve, given that their feedback seemed to be "we have no qualms with your ability, but we don't think you can pass an interview". They recommended that I sign up on interviewing.io. I did that, and a year later, I was still on the wait list. (I eventually got off the waitlist when complaining about this same sequence of events on HN, and an interviewing.io employee saw the complaint. I don't think that approach scales well.)


Also, this looks like a feedback email after a take home project? I guess the rejection emails after the technical interview should be much more detailed.


How so?


All the ways I discussed in the article - more nuanced, more thorough, more detailed, more focused on constructive advice you can take to your next interview. Plus, we've just improved our process in general so you aren't tested on skills you don't need. It's easier to give constructive feedback about an interview process you have a lot of confidence in, and much of the work we've put in as a company over the last few years has been designing an interview we think really works.


> It's easier to give constructive feedback about an interview process you have a lot of confidence in, and much of the work we've put in as a company over the last few years has been designing an interview we think really works.

It's hard to take this at face value, as 100% of the TripleByte messaging I've seen since before I received that email focused heavily on how confident they were that their interviews were thorough, high-quality assessments.


I think a lot of the dichotomy here is that nobody really knows what a thorough, high-quality assessment for a software engineer really is. I mean, yes, the standard "work sample über alles" line that comes from research is great, but what really constitutes a valid work sample? How do you set up expectations so the candidate knows where the bar is, much less how to get over it? Things like that.

Edit: You also need to consider that TripleByte's idea of what works is probably different from yours. Their idea is probably more along the lines of "people pass our assessment and get hired." All you really need to do to hit that (not that it's a trivial thing at all), is conduct an assessment that's similar enough to what the hiring companies are doing. And, many of us know that hiring companies frequently aren't very good at interviewing.


So, concretely, how would the process look different to someone who went through the project track 2 years ago?


We don't have the project track anymore, because most candidates weren't willing to do it and it wasn't successfully predicting hires. (There's actually a blog post about this upcoming). We have generalist, front-end and mobile tracks but none of them involve take-home work anymore.No matter which one you do, the feedback will be a lot more thorough than we were able to be two years ago.


I'd try it again, what is the process to reapply?


Shoot me an email (kelsey@triplebyte.com) and I'll reset your account.


Have you tried the large button their website?




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