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nabilhat
Assume for a moment I'm a bad-faith, nosy employer who reads HN on a Saturday morning. All it takes for me to match up my little stack of current employee's resumes is a person's city of residence, skills, and employment dates. If I'm that kind of employer, that's enough to raise my red flags. If prior employers are named outright, that's a 100% ID. If employment dates are paired with employment location, that's a 100% ID.
I've known employers like this. I've worked for employers like this. Employers are already monitoring social media. Third party services are paid by employers to monitor for staff that might be looking at other jobs. Recruiters make it their mission to know who's looking and what employers are likely to need their services in the near future. This is much of why trust and discretion is the most important asset on both sides of hiring related activities.
Triplebyte burning down their reputation as a recruitment avenue is one thing. Locking job searchers into reputation and livelihood risks inside Triplebyte's own reputation dumpster fire, on the friday before a holiday weekend, during historic unemployment levels, in the middle of a fucking pandemic, is unforgivable. The CEO showing up in person with hamfisted gaslighting (seriously?) in the middle of this self made disaster makes me hope those comments don't get flagged out of future HN search results.
ss3000
At the moment of writing I had to go to page 3 of the comments to find the CEO's response:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280120
Piggybacking on this comment and linking here so people can more easily see how completely tone-deaf it was.
More from his comment history here:
tyre
what most annoyed me about the response was that this criticism:
> making a profile public meant making public that people were job searching
was repeatedly met with this response:
> we're not making any profile details public.
Which avoided what people were upset about. It's talking past the issue and I'm not sure what the expected outcome was, either from this original screw-up or the response.
jiofih
That’s because people use downvotes as disagreement, when they should be upvoting to make sure it stays visible.
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TAForObvReasons
> those comments don't get flagged out of future HN search results.
Triplebyte is a YC company and HN is a YC site, so economic interests are aligned with nuking highly critical comments
dang
That's a natural assumption, but if you think a step further it's not hard to see why it's false: you shouldn't optimize for local optima, especially if doing that would ruin your global optimum. When you have a goose that lays golden eggs, don't risk the goose for an egg.
YC's economic interest in HN is having it be a happy, thriving community. That dominates all other considerations put together. A fast way to ruin that would be to destroy the community's good faith by suppressing negative posts about YC or YC startups. In addition to being wrong (we wouldn't want to belong to such a community ourselves), it would be dumb. If anyone wants more explanation there are posts about HN vis-à-vis YC's business interests going back years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... See also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., which describes the simple way we try to optimize this (simple in principle, though not in execution). And see https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements/ from 2015 about HN's editorial independence.
(Edit—because I've been wanting to write about this for some time and this may as well be the place:)
The above is the answer I always give to questions of how HN serves YC's business, because it's true and it's solid economics. It's the right answer to give to anyone who's looking at the question through a cynical economic lens (as we all have been trained to do) since it basically says "we can be even more cynically self-interested by not doing that".
However, I also always feel a little bad after giving that answer because it's not the deeper truth. The deeper truth is that we just feel this way. HN and YC grew up together. In a way they are siblings, and one doesn't exploit one's sibling. Or, to switch metaphors: because HN and YC grew together, the connections between them are complex and organic, like the connections between brain hemispheres. If you get in there and start snipping and moving things around, you'll probably lobotomize yourself.
If you want a hard-nosed business reason for how HN makes money for YC, one is: it leads to people starting startups that wouldn't otherwise exist, and it leads to YC funding startups that it wouldn't otherwise get to fund. That's how HN adds to YC's core business (edit: but see [1] below). I use that reasoning to explain to people why we don't need to sell ads on HN or do other things to monetize it or drive growth. Again, though, it doesn't capture how I (and I think most at YC) really think and feel about HN. The deeper truth is the two have always been together and we can't imagine them otherwise.
In other words, the value of HN to YC is intangible. That affects how we operate HN. If the value were tangible, then snipping things and moving them around and generally being bustling and managerial would be the way to go, or at least the most likely thing that people inside a business would do. But since it's intangible, all that kind of thing gets supplanted by a general feeling of "this is good, don't fuck it up". Since the main indicator of whether we're fucking it up or not is the community, the way HN can most add value to YC is by keeping the community happy. Happiness means interest (HN is supposed to be interesting) and trust (a community can't exist without trust).
This is not a paradise that will last forever—it's a historical accident that an internet forum ended up in a sweet spot vis-à-vis the company that owns it, where the business is better off optimizing for the forum being good and happy than by banner ads or growth hacking. But we all know that it's an honor to get to be stewards of a community in that way, and while nothing lasts forever, we want to keep it going as long as possible, and maybe longer than one could reasonably have thought possible.
[1] edit: for some reason I forgot to mention the three formal things that HN also gives to YC: job ads for YC startups, Launch HNs for YC startups, and displaying YC founder usernames in orange to other YC founders. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23293437 for more.
vtail
(Because a simple upvote wouldn't do this comment justice)
I think it's a really, really great response. YC community is indeed very special, and I am often surprised that over these years, it keep attracting high caliber people and has a high signal/noise ratio, while at the same time remains a pleasant community that favors civilized discussion.
Moderating is a thankless job, but please rest assured that many people here value your efforts, even if we don't verbalize this gratitude often.
erulabs
While I have a handful of YC friends and certainly admire a lot of the YC higher-ups, I will say for me and my co-founder, it was probably more HN that caused us to apply to YCS19 than anything else. Meeting PG/PB was icing on the cake, not the impetus. Thanks for all your hard work on HN - it's a really wonderful piece of the net!
inimino
It's clear to see that you (all) have kept HN as good as it is over all these years, not for cynical economic reasons, but because it's right. It's right for the HN community and, given HN's somewhat unique position, maybe we can even say it's right for the larger society.
I'm sure that over the years there have been countless opportunities to ruin the community for short term gain, and because the right decisions were made, the community will in most cases never know or appreciate the choice. The only evidence is that HN is still here, and hasn't been trampled down by the armies of mammon even when so many other internet communities have been.
Sometimes you have to protect a goose, even at cost, just because it's a happy goose and it's alive.
It's rare in a place where so many think they are being hard-nosed little economists (though actually merely joining the chorus of short-sighted armchair bean-counters) to admit that you did something without needing any economic justification.
yojo
Great explanation! I’m surprised you didn’t mention the two reasons I always thought YC pays for my news:
1) YC company friendly marketing channel. Reasonably good posts from YC companies get upvotes here, which means eyeballs and potential customers or users.
2) YC company recruiting channel. Related to above, since many posts end in “we’re hiring”, but there’s also the explicit time-decaying recruiting posts that show up on the front page.
Are these not concerns? Or just secondary to increasing startup formation generally?
xmodem
> When you have a goose that lays golden eggs, you don't risk the goose for an egg.
I would agree that you shouldn't, but all too often we see companies do.
troydavis
> economic interests are aligned with nuking highly critical comments
This is theoretically true, but the fact that it's been on the home page for 12 hours and has accumulated hundreds of critical comments, none of which any mod has touched, seems to (a) eliminate that possibility and (b) demonstrate that the risk is theoretical, not actual.
(Keep in mind that YC has thousands of investments, so whatever you think of their ethics or the incentives, a filter like this would be impractical and obvious. Also see "Not behaving in a way that damages the reputation of his/her company" on https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/ - it's hard to imagine YC supporting this.)
wolfgang42
In fact the only (public) mod action was to put it back on the homepage after it tripped the flamewar detector and fell off.
SilasX
This. I mean, I'm all for being aware of others' biases and conflicts of interest, but -- whatever else you might criticize the mod team for -- they're definitely not "running interference" for TB or anything here.
wolfgang42
Regarding HN’s policy on discussions of YC companies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280121
What 'nabilhat is talking about is the way the Triplebyte CEO’s comments in this thread (which are the opposite of “highly critical”) are being downvoted to very light grey.
thsowers
When it comes to moderation of a YC startup on HN, "The first rule of HN moderation is to moderate less, not more" says dang on previous threads concerning YC startups and he has expressed the same sentiment here in this thread
crankylinuxuser
Wouldn't be the first time HN/automoderation/mods have removed 'critical to YC business interests'. Happened to me with the Thalmic Myo, when I open source forced them to open their platform. HackADay also notes that HN autohid my article.
https://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free...
HaD wasn't hidden.. Thalmic was.
Dang has usually responded with noncommital responses like they never do that. But further requests for being transparent has fallen on deaf ears.
edit: and -1'ed. Is this because "my content sucks"? Is it because of 'offtopic'? Or is it a mod?
Considering karma here determines rights, rate limiting, mod-down, flagging, and more - these points do matter here. And of course the larger issue here is lack of transparency. In fact, with removal of mod scores, the site has gone down in transparency.
dang
I feel like if someone is still upset about a case like this 6 years later, we should probably try to figure out why and see what we can do to settle the matter. But HN has had 15M posts since then and I have zero memory of it. Actually I probably have zero memory of HN from 2 days ago. Can you link to the relevant post(s)?
I looked at that hackaday.com page. It says this: "Quick aside, but if you want to see how nearly every form of media is crooked, try submitting this to Hacker News and look at the Thalmic investors. Edit: don’t bother, we’re blacklisted or something."...but is also linkless. Usually when people make dudgeonly claims but conspicuously omit links, it's because what actually happened doesn't match what they say.
Re "dang has usually responded with noncommital responses": I try to be commital. There is little to be gained by not, since we try not to do things that aren't defensible to the community in the first place. If you have any tips to offer for increased commitalness, I'd like to hear them.
Edit: I just noticed this bit: "further requests for being transparent has fallen on deaf ears". When? That doesn't sound like us.
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aidos
Wow. Thanks for this. I ignored the email because Triplebyte just feels a bit spammy to me now so I mentally block it out.
Have logged in to stop this from happening and currently apparently I'm "Open to discussing new opportunities", which is news to me. On trying to change it to "Not interested in any new opportunities" there's a dropdown that says "I’d be open to new opportunities in:" and most you can set it to is 2 years. These are whole new dark patterns.
UPDATE You can turn off the setting they're talking about by going to [0] and then clicking the little grey "Visibility settings" under the Profile URL section.
UPDATE There's a delete your account option on this page [1], though YMMV:
>> Government identification may be required and we may ask you for more information in order to verify your identify
darekkay
>> Government identification may be required and we may ask you for more information in order to verify your identify
Same issue as I'm currently having with Airbnb. Though I have never ever provided any ID before, nor did I ever book anything, they asked me for an ID to prove my identity upon requesting account removal. How exactly does my ID _prove_ anything in my case (apart from the fact that I have an ID copy of a person who has the same name as I entered into the Airbnb profile page). Seems more like one more obstacle to prevent people from deleting their account.
Jommi
It's pretty common actually. They will delete all your data, but that requires strong authentication, which government ID is. That's how it works with gdpr in 90% of cases.
Zekio
Account removal should be just as easy as it was to sign up
darekkay
I've deleted a lot of accounts in the last few weeks, and Airbnb was the only one requiring an ID prove. I agree, it is indeed part of GDPR for them to ensure I have the right to delete my account. My only issue is that my ID does not prove anything in my case, because Airbnb doesn't know my identity which they could compare my ID with, because I did have to provide my ID after registering and I never booked anything on their site.
mindslight
It seems like a good idea to get a fake ID, to sign up for (free) accounts using that nym. Or I suppose if you can order fake IDs with custom nyms as needed, then you could consider that the price to delete your psuedonymous accounts.
jdxcode
that dropdown is super annoying: https://imgur.com/a/iUFg3cn
Also, I clicked that "visibility hidden" and got this email:
"Hey Jeff,
You’re no longer letting companies know that you’re open to discussing new opportunities. Your profile will be hidden from employers for the next 24 months. You can change your job search status and make your profile visible again, whenever you feel ready explore new opportunities." (https://imgur.com/a/OBWexgo)
So even that only will get rid of it for 24 months. Let's see if they'll just delete my account.
switz
Holy crap -- what an intentionally dark and transparently evil 'ux' pattern.
undefined
heliodor
Since account deletion is such a hurdle, edit your profile to replace your name and info with profanity and let's see how Google and the various content filters will like that once the profile goes public.
optimiz3
Replace the information with that of a SDN (Specially Designated National)* if you really want to cause trouble!
*Don't actually do this unless you want a visit from a 3 letter agency.
drivingmenuts
Then explain to the agent "I've been in quarantine for a while now and I was lonely. Want a beer?"
I'm pretty sure they'll leave. Might not even file any paperwork on that.
batter
Thanks, that's exactly what i did. Just obfuscated profile. Let them handle garbage.
undefined
juandazapata
Just a reminder that most of these companies never really delete your account, they simply deactivate it, while keeping all your data. You can also update your profile info and fill it with gibberish.
JoshuaDavid
> Just a reminder that most of these companies never really delete your account
Not if you request account deletion under CCPA. Or at least not if they're smart.
juandazapata
CCPA only applies is you're a CA resident.
jacquesm
The whole government ID thingy is really beyond the pale. Just imagine: you never needed it to sign up in the first place. So now after proving to be not worthy of your trust, tone deaf and ethically deficient, to delete your account you need to give them even more information.
This company deserves to die.
mchan889
Give it time, an EU citizen who applied will eventually make GDPR complaint. At which point, it's game over.
mike_d
If they have $25m in revenue, receive more than 50k signups a year, or make more than 50% of their revenue selling data on California residents they are subject to CCPA.
CCPA actually has way more teeth than GDPR, because California's Unfair Competition Law allows residents to enforce laws that do not otherwise provide a private right of actions. (though this still needs to be proved out in the courts)
anewdirection
In theory. Has any company seen the pointy end of GDPR yet?
cottonseed
Thanks for the links. I registered but never set up a profile, and if you click the link in the email or [0] above, it forced you to set up a profile before you can configure your privacy settings.
Also, after opting out of personal data sharing:
> We're processing your request and should be done within 30 days.
Same for deleting your account.
macNchz
Yikes, that two year thing is gross.
They have definitely been kind of spammy for a long time...I usually ignore their emails but I actually read the first paragraph of this one and it sounded like it was an opt-in feature, so I closed it, but the important line was further down: “You can edit your profile privacy settings to not appear in public search engines at any time.”
ravenstine
I'm glad you posted this because I otherwise might not have found that way to delete my account.
Here's what it said when I did:
> We will verify your request using the information associated with your account. Government identification may be required and we may ask you for more information in order to verify your identify.
So I can change my profile name to Seymour Butts, but deleting my account that I have credentials for may require government ID that you never asked me for? WTF
wolfgang42
I interviewed via Triplebyte last year, and thoroughly enjoyed the service. Before this I would have (and did) wholeheartedly recommended them to anyone; the process was great from the candidate’s perspective and I also have confidence in their ability to accurately evaluate candidates’ skills.
After this announcement, though, I’m afraid that faith has completely crumbled. Even if Ammon had showed up in this thread and immediately announced that this was a terrible idea and they were rolling it back immediately, the mere fact that they were considering doing this is a huge blow. It doesn’t help that I skimmed the email when I got it this afternoon and didn’t even realize it was an opt-out; it was only when I saw this thread that I took a closer look and realized that the email was lacking a CTA button at the bottom for a reason. That seems incredibly shady to me and instantly changed my impression of the company.
Take heed, other companies: it only takes an instant to destroy your company’s reputation, and it’s incredibly difficult to win back that confidence.
ganstyles
For what it's worth, this was what happened to me. They regularly send marketing emails and updates, which I skim from time to time. It wasn't until I saw this thread that I realized that one particular email out of the (actually checks notes) 62 (!!!) unsolicited emails they've sent me in the last 12 months was this important.
bootlooped
For me, it seems like the emails picked up a lot in the last 2 months. I attributed this to covid aka a lot of people instantly out of work. The most cynical take is that they increased email frequency so this would be more likely to fly under the radar. I am not even sure I believe that though.
imafish
Me three.
jdxcode
I didn't find any good jobs on my last job hunt through them, but was happy enough with the process that I put their little certification widget on my linkedin. Gonna get rid of that now.
steveoc64
"it only takes an instant to destroy your company’s reputation, and it’s incredibly difficult to win back that confidence."
Not really. Given that nobody on here has identified the underlying problem, and are happy to blame everything on Triplebyte ... it just goes to show how nothing is going to change anytime soon.
Confidence in using this, and other services, will only grow.
franciscop
I have used Triplebyte before (for the tests! wasn't available in my location yet) and before I was very excited about their eventual launch in my location. I will never use them again now.
peteretep
The fundamental disconnect here is that Ammon seems to think this data belongs to him, for uses he deems appropriate, rather than belonging to his users.
This works for Facebook and LinkedIn because of network effects, but not for some random staffing agency with a tech gimmick. If Adecco or MichaelPage did this it’d attract the attention of ambitious public prosecutors worldwide.
It’s almost a shame, as the idea itself doesn’t seem terrible, but the auto-enrolment and dark patterns for removal makes this whole thing feel like a New Digg moment.
friendlybus
The only big tech company I've seen take the public stance that the user owns their own data is IBM (of all people).
Hamuko
>The fundamental disconnect here is that Ammon seems to think this data belongs to him, for uses he deems appropriate, rather than belonging to his users.
This is the reason why I ultimately like GDPR: the foundation is that the user owns their data and not the company that has it on a database server.
iandanforth
What's Digg again?
derivagral
Isn't this legally the case? There's a random place on the internet and people upload details. Not payment info, and I honestly am not clear on how much the rest is protected (USA). This is exactly what Zuckerberg called people "dumb fucks" for, and I don't think anything (legally) has changed.
I'm on your side as far as the "why the hell is this the case", but I think this is the world that (USA and others) live in.
wilde
I filed an FTC complaint. I'd encourage other concerned folks do the same, since out of court settlements with the FTC are how this is currently adjudicated in the US.
heavyset_go
As an advocate of involving the FTC in such situations, done. Thanks for the reminder.
ashtonkem
Legality doesn’t really matter here, public perception does. If Triplebyte comes to be viewed as an untrustworthy partner in the extremely high stakes world of career changes, they’re effectively dead.
jdxcode
Legal or not it's clearly the wrong thing to do and not at all what users would expect.
ganstyles
This is horrible, what a breach of trust. I used TB to stealthily interview for jobs, had a good experience. Recommended them to others. Now I see that if I hadn't seen this post, I wouldn't have known about this and those details would have been public, which had the potential to seriously undermine me at my current position. I'll opt out tomorrow, but according to others it sounds like the visibility link was somewhat hidden. At least with this they're well on the way to becoming the next LinkedIn, at least by their practices. What a dark pattern.
grizzles
It looks like emailing candidate.support@triplebyte.com is the only way to delete your account.
jdxcode
there is a link at https://triplebyte.com/privacy-center
judge2020
> if I hadn't seen this post, I wouldn't have known about this
To be fair they sent an email to everyone who had signed up; I received the same email.
akiselev
If we're going to be fair, we have to acknowledge the history of email over the last thirty years: spam, spam filters, and the "Mark as Spam" button.
Email is what I use to notify my customers of a 25% sale, not to tell them that I'm going to plaster their data all over the internet in violation of the spirit of the service I'm providing. I use regular mail for that.
esoterica
I’m not sure using snail mail as the default venue for important information is really the smart play here. I check my mailbox a lot less often then I check my inbox and I don’t even open 99% of the mail I get since I assume it’s just junk. I’m a lot more likely to miss whatever you sent me if you had sent it by post than if you had just sent an email like a normal 21st century organization.
judge2020
I'm very much only addressing the small string of text I quoted; I agree it should have been opt-in since many people don't check their email diligently.
ganstyles
My problem with this is the automatic opt in, using my profile and details for more than I intended for them to use it for (regardless of whether I technically signed something staying they _could_ do this, it is borderline unethical to use my information for this purpose), only having a week to "opt out", and not knowing what opt out even does. Sending an email to everyone doesn't cure any of these points.
wolfgang42
Not to mention that the only reference to needing to opt-out is a veiled mention buried in the second paragraph. I skimmed the email briefly, said “oh that’s neat, what a great idea” and filed it under “things for the next job hunt” thinking I’d turn on my profile then.
ammon
Your Triplebyte profile will NOT contain any data/details about you or your job search that will undermine you at your current employer. We should have included a screenshot and more details in the email. I'll talk to my team about following up with more details tomorrow. We are talking about a lightweight profile, like your Stack Overflow or HN profile, to provide us the canvas to release badges. That's it.
wolfgang42
Even so, the decision to make this opt-out instead of opt-in is extremely questionable. If it’s just a spot to put badges, why is it so critical that it be rushed through next week? And why are you so carefully avoiding talking about the opt-out when a significant chunk of the people in this thread are telling you that it’s the main thing they’re upset about? “Sorry that you feel this way” is the worst kind of corporate-speak non-apology that makes it clear that you’re apparently not interested in responding to feedback, but just making soothing sounds at everyone until the smoke clears and you get to continue doing exactly what you planned.
marcinzm
> If it’s just a spot to put badges, why is it so critical that it be rushed through next week?
I'm guessing it's because their corporate metrics took a dive due to covid hiring slowdowns and now they need to justify their worth to investors who have put in $50 million.
iovrthoughtthis
Hey! Welcome to your first PR disaster.
I would suggest you step away from any scripts and turn on the company ears. Simply explaining what is going on more “clear” and repeating it more often probably won’t get you anywhere good.
Why does this make your users uncomfortable? How can you work with them to achieve your product goals without undermining your relationship with them?
Good luck!
kerkeslager
I strongly object to characterizing this situation as a PR disaster. The problem isn't that TripleByte is perceived as doing something unethical. The problem is that what TripleByte is doing is unethical.
hitekker
> Simply explaining what is going on more “clear” and repeating it more often probably won’t get you anywhere good.
I've learned this lesson personally. Trying to be "clear" about my own perspective while ignoring what the other person feels.
"You don't like what you see? Impossible, you just can't see it. Let me make you see!"
travisjungroth
> How can you work with them to achieve your product goals without undermining your relationship with them?
Literally just make it opt-in.
netsharc
Hopefully his last too, as the company goes down in flames. But well, scumbag CEOs usually have parachutes (or Mary Poppinsesque umbrellas?) that take them elsewhere..
imglorp
Thank you for the calm and instructive response. I was about to hoist my pitchfork but set it aside instead.
travisjungroth
If someone goes from not having a profile to having one, you know they’re job hunting.
It’s like saying “Your Tinder profile will NOT contain any data/details about you or your dating search that will undermine you in your current relationship.”
jwilber
Exactly. This is basically like the workplace equivalent to the Ashley Madison scandal, only pre-planned.
Aeolun
How about if you just always have a profile?
pmiller2
That's a false equivalence. You're talking about a business relationship versus an intimate personal relationship context.
ALittleLight
I don't get why you'd think it's okay to suddenly make private information about your users public. The lesson is not "We should've included a screenshot" but rather "We shouldn't automatically opt our users in to sharing information they thought was private.". This is a betrayal of user trust.
I saw your email in my inbox but didn't read it. I never would've noticed with improved screenshots or not. Do you read every email you get?
ako
Did you read the fine print when signing up? Maybe this goal has been in their fine print for a long time.
inimino
The fact that this is the top comment and that folks who trusted you are seeing this email first on HN instead of in their inbox means you fucked up. The details of what trimmings you put on the email were not the fuckup.
Non24Throw
Not according to your own FAQ[0] on public profiles:
> Your public profile includes any badges you've earned, your basic info (current job title and company, current location, and years of experience), and the tech experience & resume section.
This information can very easily be used to identify a person, especially at smaller companies.
> ... to provide us the canvas to release badges. That’s it.
So before you were taking on LinkedIn, but now it’s just a place to release badges?
[0] https://triplebyte.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004382061...
itronitron
>> The new profiles will be launching publicly in 1 week.
You are literally taking private data and making it public without consent.
g_p
Regardless, this breaches GDPR by making data public and accessible to an unlimited audience by default.
I hope (for your sake) that you don't have any users that can invoke their GDPR rights against you by virtue of their citizenship.
For the sake of incentivising companies to do the right thing, however, I hope you do have some EU or UK citizen users who do litigate or have their data protection authority investigate and formally punish Triplebyte, even if only to establish clear precedent here for the future.
im3w1l
Triplebyte is only targetting Americans afaik.
inimino
Ammon's previous venture was Socialcam [1], of which Wikipedia says
> Socialcam's popularity on Facebook suddenly increased in the spring of 2012, via unusually aggressive actions to induce contacts to join. It was criticized as "invasive" and a "bully" by many reviewers, for sharing what users were viewing without them realizing that that would happen.
It was only after articles like "Why I Hate Socialcam Even If It Might Be the Next Instagram"[2] (spoiler alert: it was not) started appearing that Ammon and friends sold to Autodesk for $60 million. I'm sure that investment worked out swimmingly for Autodesk. Win some, lose some, eh? But hey, at least Ammon got some resources out of it, which he went on to use to make the world a better place, and some valuable life lessons about privacy and honesty and respect, right? Right, Ammon?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialcam#Criticism
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2012/04/30/why-i-hate...
ss3000
Who knew Triplebyte was another social media company in stealth mode all this time?
Brilliant launch strategy, coming out of stealth and dragging all of its users out of stealth along with it. /s
runawaybottle
Oh man, bait and trap? Is it so hard for a company to just have humble ambitions? Is it so bad to be a simple business that optimizes the recruitment process? Must it to be a multi billion dollar LinkedIn competitor?
wolfgang42
Ammon and Guillaume came from Socialcam, so two-thirds of the Triplebyte founders. (Though only Ammon has showed up here, so it’s possible that Guillame doesn’t share the same opinions.)
rsynnott
It was bought by _Autodesk_? Bizarre.
kylebarron
Hard to find the opt-out button. You have to sign in, go to your "profile builder" [0], and then click the very low contrast "Visibility settings" button just below the top of your profile.
sbashyal
Talking about dark patterns, the email was sent after 5:00pm on a Friday before the long week-end.
Triplebyte team knew that their users were not going to like it and did their best to slip this through.
Triplebyte went from being a respectable company helping skilled hackers by-pass white-board interviews to being a prime example of unethical tech company in one stroke.
ibejoeb
They've been sketchy since inception. I was in a very early batch, if not the first, in 2015.
Remember that the premise was that they were non-adversarial, anti-gotcha interviews, whiteboards, nit-picky algo implementations from memory, etc. They purported to do some qualitative analysis instead.
We schedule a session and I get the confirmation: "This is a chance for you to go into more depth, and show us something that you've built. This will not be a high-pressure interview." I get at email the day before our scheduled session that says, "Remember that we're going to talk to you about a project that you've worked on," as agreed.
The following day, just a few hours before our appointment, a founder emails me saying, "Just wanted to give you a quick heads up that rather than walking through a project today, you'll be doing some programming together with an engineer."
They duped me into an adversarial interview. That kinda thing grinds my gears, but I went along with it anyway. I get the response: "We really enjoyed it and thought you did great. We'd love to talk more with you and invite you to a second technical interview."
I opted out as this continued. They acknowledged that they were changing things around without telling people, but it was just so antithetical to the mission that it became disingenuous.
When you pair that attitude of disregard with fact that they're playing sociologists, it's a bad look.
kemonocode
Wow, it's like it's following every dark pattern in the book. Wouldn't have found it out myself.
freyr
It's a master class in dark patterns. I guess they figure this will be good in the long run, but I'll never trust anything from Triplebyte or Ammon Bartram after this.
ALittleLight
Easier to find the "delete account" link...
u08ywo
It takes 30 days for any of these, actions to take place, but the window in which it was announced is a week. Something seems off.
deepaksurti
And you need to have logged in already for the delete to work, after which you get an email to approve the request which ends up with this notice of requiring government id as well. Govt Id, really, what are they thinking here?
```
We're processing your request and should be done within 30 days.
We will verify your request using the information associated with your account. Government identification may be required and we may ask you for more information in order to verify your identify.
```
Triplebyte has definitely been the worst experience I have ever had, in fact they are so bad, i would rate them below the other unprofessional recruiters we all come across!
idmontie
Thanks, I could not find this link when I logged into the app. I would have assumed this option would be under the profile page.
jdxcode
Note that I clicked that and got an email saying that it would be automatically reactivated in 24 months. I would just delete your account at https://triplebyte.com/privacy-center
bgorman
Thanks for this, there is no way I would have ever found this without your post. It definitely seems like this link is intentionally hidden.
ibejoeb
Anyone else just get another unsolicited email from them?
Subject: Triplebyte explained, from coding quiz to job offers
"Hey there, I'm Tyler, one of the engineers here at Triplebyte!"
This hours after opting out, setting privacy options, and deleting account.
Crushing it guys...
Dolores12
And to delete account you have to email them.
arcturus17
Wow, what a dumpster fire.
The CEO coming in here and trying to defend that this is actually a great idea is only making things worse.
I'm guessing they don't operate in Europe, because this would be a massive violation of many European and national privacy regulations.
Maybe they should take a hint from this - the fact that they can pull it off in the US doesn't mean it's morally acceptable.
DethNinja
If they ever interviewed an engineer from EU then what they are doing is very much illegal, it doesn’t matter even if company is based on USA.
MandieD
Engineer in the EU, even if they are US citizens - there are over 100,000 US citizens in Germany, not counting current military or their dependents.
MandieD
I have the beginnings of a profile there, despite being conspicuously in Germany, because I took the test and applied to be an interviewer.
Too many people think US citizen != EU resident (and therefore not a data subject covered by GDPR)
undefined
Moru
As owner I would not plan any European trips anytime soon.
dmak
I can't find even the place to delete my account. It seems like it's not even GDPR compliant which is the standard these days for data compliance.
Nezteb
I have a few guesses about this:
1. Triplebyte knew this would cause some outrage, especially on HN and Reddit. 2. Triplebyte did some calculations and predicted that doing this on a Friday and only giving people a week to opt-out would result in the fewest number of opt-outs. 3. Triplebyte assumed that many of those outraged online would delete their accounts. 4. Despite all of the above, Triplebyte calculated that this move would make them more money in the long run.
I’m also guessing that these profiles will serve ads. I bet Triplebyte will offer “premium” plans for both job seekers and employers so that they can directly contact you more easily.
I hope this change incorporates necessary privacy measures for job seekers. I hope that this doesn’t become a 1-to-1 LinkedIn competitor that only seeks to get clicks and ad revenue. Only time will tell. I’m very skeptical but I won’t rage yet. I’ll opt out for now and see how it goes...
mrnobody_67
WOW!
Amazing that company founded by a former YC Partner could be so tone deaf. Just because their business is failing and they want to pivot into a LinkedIn competitor does't make it my problem.
Dark opt-out patterns send on a FRIDAY before a 3 day long weekend to hide facts from us, with crazy convoluted methodology for deleting accounts, and buried opt-out...
This is shady as hell, and thinking that you can "explain" it to us here and that we are wrong and you are right, and if we had just a little more "Facts" we'd change our mind, tells me everything I need to know about the leadership and future of this company
asidiali
Triplebyte was already a joke, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Their whole “Fast Track” program claiming to allow you to skip technical interviews is a total fraud of a marketing ploy.
They make you take a 2 hour live coding interview with a Triplebyte engineer, with the promise that if you pass, you won’t need to do any more technical interviews with companies through Triplebyte, only “final-round personality-style on-sites”.
The reality is that any company who contacts you is STILL going to run you thru their entire interviewing process. The extra 2 hour interview with Triplebyte is literally pointless - and any company you try to discuss this “policy” with will be caught confused and off guard.
It’s no surprise to me that a company that blatantly lies about their offering would do some crap like this.
Shame on Triplebyte for their fraudulent and dishonest nature.
bootlooped
"They make you take a 2 hour live coding interview with a Triplebyte engineer, with the promise that if you pass, you won’t need to do any more technical interviews with companies through Triplebyte, only “final-round personality-style on-sites”."
I was never given the impression that there would be no more technical interviews after the Triplebyte one. They were always crystal clear with me that there would be 2 steps for each company: a 30 minute non-technical "pitch call", and a final all-day onsite. They never implied the onsite was non-technical, and I never took it to be.
I think the value proposition is that you skip almost all of the back and forth footsie before the onsite. In my experience it was worth it. There were some companies I interviewed with, not through Triplebyte, where I had 7 or 8 calls before they would bring me onsite. I get it, they want to make sure they're sure before they pay for a hotel and a flight, but it is a big hassle.
asidiali
Thanks for sharing! They told me there would be a 30m pitch call followed by an all day of on-sites that were explicitly not whiteboarding sessions or technical assessments. Also, I still did have several back and forth calls with companies I was connected with - it wasn’t just the one half-hour call and then on-sites.
Here’s the exact email from TripleByte upon passing the quiz:
“ Here's how it works: 1. We'll show your profile to companies that are likely a good fit. 2. The companies will request interviews with you. 3. You'll be able to review the requests, and accept the ones you're interested in. After you accept an interview request, the next step is an introductory phone call where you and the company get to know one another. The companies that work with us all agree to skip technical screening, and take you right to the final interview (saving you time). To get started, complete your profile so that we can find the right companies and roles for you. After you complete your profile, you'll also gain access to our exclusive Triplebyte Alum Slack community, which can help support you throughout your career.”
> The companies that work with us all agree to skip technical screening, and take you right to the final interview (saving you time).
Define technical screening? To me this means that I’m already technically screened. They also have changed their copy. The copy on their landing site around FastTrack used to be much more explicit around skipping all technical assessments.
kyleashipley
Most companies define their process as something like Phone Screen (recruiter) -> Technical Screen (engineer via phone or take-home project) -> On-Site (mix of culture + tech). Triplebyte helps you skip those first two steps.
I agree that the terminology could be more clear, but it seems like they borrowed existing lingo from recruiters here.
nilkn
This email is sufficiently ambiguous that it would definitely mislead at least some of their users. Given how shady and scummy the rest of the company's practices seem to be, it's hard to believe this ambiguity isn't by design.
bootlooped
Now that I read what you quoted it does sound ambiguous. It doesn't explicitly say that the final interview is non-technical, but "skip technical screening" could be interpreted as implying that.
cnst
I think they went out of their way to make the whole thing as vague as possible, and hide the value proposition, possibly because they didn't really know it themselves, and tried to be "flexible" to pivot and cater to everyone.
The whole proposition was to:
* charge $500/onsite to the employers (that's often way below what it costs to bring an out-of-state candidate to Cali for an onsite — Triplebyte intentionally low-balled the cost for the travel arrangements of an onsite to waste everyone's time on pointless onsites), and,
* bring candidates for a whole week of onsites to a given physical location (you were limited and encouraged to have up to 5 onsites in SF Bay and up to 5 in NYC, e.g., you'd spend a whole week (5 nights) at each location if you were to get and accept enough offers for the onsites, where both you and the employer have to make a decision after a single 30 minute phone call).
They did this by booking really bad flights out of far-away airports (unless you push back); really bad hotels in the most shady areas (unless you push back); not covering the hotel on the final day at the location (decent SF Bay always cover both nights) and requiring red-eye flights; and not covering per-diem, even though it's the industry's standard practice to cover per-diem; and also not covering airport parking or mileage to the airport — all of these items are always covered by all other companies hiring directly.
Because no employed candidate could simply spend two weeks interviewing all over the place, they've obviously prayed on the unemployed people, by misrepresenting the opportunity, and doing a bait-and-switch at the final minute in regards to the travel arrangements, once everything else is already in place.
---
I think the biggest proposition and the selling point was for the startups to cheaply access out-of-state candidates for $500/onsite, and then offer a lower salary because it's been scientifically proven that salary expectations are lower for people moving to SF Bay Area from out-of-state (e.g., look at the study that Hired did a few years ago).
I was determined by Triplebyte to be in the top-3% of folk — I was accepted by Triplebyte after passing the 2h technical interview with one of their engineers; but my onsites weren't particularly aligned; and Triplebyte did several misrepresentations and dragged their feet throughout the whole process as well.
I would not recommend Triplebyte to anyone until they raise the price of an onsite to maybe 750 to 1k per onsite for the employers and cover travel in full for the candidates (including parking, mileage and per-diem). Low-balling the cost of the onsite results in employers giving these left and right without much thought; the candidates aren't even informed that standard travel costs won't be covered, in fact, Triplebyte does the opposite, and claims that it covers all travel expenses, which is a big lie.
---
However, do I think it's a good idea for Triplebyte to pivot to tackle LinkedIn? Yes, most definitely. Triplebyte introduced candidate certificates a while ago, but I don't think these were particularly marketable the way they've been implemented in the past; it's also not particularly clear how it'll work from the financial perspective, because it costs real money to do all those 2h interviews.
Is it a good idea to require an opt-out instead of an opt-in? Yeah, if you could not follow such a sleazy business practice and make yourself available to potential FTC oversight for 20 years, that'd be great. I won't be logging in to toggle any settings, because I'd rather not disqualify myself from the extra fun of being a part of the class!
heavyset_go
> The extra 2 hour interview with Triplebyte is literally pointless - and any company you try to discuss this “policy” with will be caught confused and off guard.
Their contract with Triplebyte stipulates that companies that use their service aren't to incur additional technical interviews, and according to the Triplebyte representative I talked to, apparently the company has legs to enforce the contract if a candidate informed TB of a breach.
When companies try this, and pretend to be confused when there is push back, it's because they got caught with their pants down trying to breach an expensive contract.
It was my experience that every company, big and small, that I interviewed with through TB did on-site technical interviews anyway. In the end, the value-add of TB was that you could filter out many of the companies on the platform because of how cavalier they were to dance around their contractual agreements with their recruiting agency.
Raed667
I tried deleting my account and apparently it takes 30 days for some reason! That looks so shady!
We're processing your request and should be done within 30 days.
We will verify your request using the information associated with your account. Government identification may be required and we may ask you for more information in order to verify your identify.
Any questions? Email us at privacy@triplebyte.comdmitrygr
If you are in California, CCPA might be of some help.
Article 4(b) actually states that to verify you you (for a data delete request), they must do their best to use info they already have on you, and "Avoid collecting the types of personal information identified in Civil Code section 1798.81.5, subdivision (d)"
and in 1798.81.5,(d)(1)(A)(ii) we see: "Driver’s license number"
4(c) also helps: "A business shall generally avoid requesting additional information from the consumer for purposes of verification."
So if they can verify you another way, they must, and cannot ask for the DL (likely the only ID many people have)!, if i read that correctly
So instead of jumping through their hoops, file a CCPA request and have them chew on that.
odensc
> Government identification may be required
Ah yes, the classic "send us more of your PII to delete your information." I've ran into that too many times.
m11a
It's a horrible way companies try to discourage data subjects from exercising their rights.
This is not lawful under both the GDPR and the CCPA. If Triplebyte follow through with their request against an EU or California resident, they'd be breaking data protection laws.
If comments here are any indication, too many people, being unaware of their rights, may fall for it though.
microtonal
This is not lawful under both the GDPR and the CCPA. If Triplebyte follow through with their request against an EU or California resident, they'd be breaking data protection laws.
IANAL, but they may already be in violation of the GDPR with the 30 days processing time. While the GDPR states 30 days as the upper bound, the article about erasure also states:
The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay and the controller shall have the obligation to erase personal data without undue delay where one of the following grounds applies [...]
Notice the phrase undue delay. It seems that the legal interpretation of undue delay is as soon as possible [2]. Since the sign-up for Triplebyte seems to be immediate (you just create an account), they could also remove an account with a simple delete account button (remove some rows from a SQL database). So in the case of most web services as soon as possible seems to be with the click of a button to delete an account itself. Allowing a few more days for changes to propagate through storage systems and backups.
For anything longer, they should probably come up with damn good reasons when this is brought to court.
At any rate, they will have more serious problems if they make citizens public for people in the EU. They'll open up themselves to a huge liability. You are simply not allowed to use data for other purposes than what the data subject gave explicit well-informed consent for. And no, burying somethings in the terms and conditions is not explicit consent.
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
[2] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/term-without-undue-delay-cont...
darekkay
> This is not lawful under both the GDPR and the CCPA.
INAL, but from my understanding that's exactly what GDPR itself suggests to do:
> The controller should use all reasonable measures to verify the identity of a data subject who requests access, in particular in the context of online services and online identifiers.
Thats mainly because [2]:
> There is a very real concern of fraudulent requests from bad actors, who might use a customer’s data for nefarious purposes.
While it's great to know that noone else is able to delete my account, it still feels shady af.
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj#d1e1374-1-1
[2] https://konfirmi.com/blog/gdpr-personal-data-id-verification...
Raed667
Well I live in France and will certainly not send them my ID. Lets see how they respond.
Raed667
Update for fairness: 11 hours later, I got the email confirming my account deletion. (Without having to provide any ID)
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Fortunately this email made it through my spam filter. Looks like they want to take on LinkedIn and are planning to seed it by making existing accounts public unless you opt OUT within the next week:
Hey [redacted],
I’m excited to announce that we are expanding the reach of your Triplebyte profile. Now, you can use your Triplebyte credentials on and off the platform. Just like LinkedIn, your profile will be publicly accessible with a dedicated URL that you can share anywhere (job applications, LinkedIn, GitHub, etc). When you do well on a Triplebyte assessment, your profile will showcase that achievement (we won’t show your scores publicly). Unlike LinkedIn, we aim to become your digital engineering skills resume — a credential based on actual skills, not pedigree.
The new profiles will be launching publicly in 1 week. This is a great opportunity to update your profile with your latest experience and preferences. You can edit your profile privacy settings to not appear in public search engines at any time.
Our mission is to build an open, valuable, and skills-based credential for all engineers. We believe that allowing Triplebyte engineers to publicly share their profiles and skills-based credentials will accelerate this mission.
Thanks,
Ammon Co-founder & CEO, Triplebyte