yangez

Let's say at your software company a sales rep brings in $2M in 2022 and demands a $1.8M commission. What do you say?

> We want to be the job search platform that puts engineers in control.

I love this, but I'm curious about the incentives here. Triplebyte only makes money from companies, not engineers. In the long run, can engineer-centric intentions override a business model based around companies and recruiters staying happy? I hope so!

> We’re arbitrarily defining “great” candidates as those scoring between 95th and 98th percentile on our technical interview, and “the best” candidates as those scoring at 98th percentile or above.

This is an important qualifier. I'd argue that the most technical candidates are not necessarily the ones who offer the most value to companies. In fact, I would argue that "notably de-emphasizing ambition" will cancel out your technical superiority in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Here's a choice for your company's next hire:

1. A technically superior but comfortable candidate whose top priority is maintaining work-life balance and flexible work arrangements

2. A technically adequate but hungry candidate whose top priority is moving fast and learning tons

Who would you choose?

> The bottom line is that the difficulty of the decision is the most important factor in determining whether a player makes a mistake. In other words, examining the complexity of the board position is a much better predictor of whether a player is likely to blunder than his or her skill level or the amount of time left in the game.

I wonder if this also works the other way around with good moves instead of just avoiding blunders.

A parallel in business: we spend so much time thinking about hiring "A players" and "10x-ers". But could refocusing on better processes, environment, and goal-setting (reducing the complexity of the position) be just as effective for increasing performance?

How is this "strong-arming"? If we keep devaluing the meaning of words, we won't have any left when something serious actually happens.

The rep ran through a couple of retention scripts, and then got mixed up because OP called on the last billing day. Then he promptly canceled the service without any charges, which is exactly what OP was looking for. (And no, it's probably not because of the threat to contact his supervisor; customers overestimate how scary that is.)

There is literally nothing to complain about here, except maybe OP felt a little bit annoyed. I'm all for calling companies on their BS, but this feels just a bit too trigger-happy to me.

> Programming, like writing, painting, and music, is chiefly a creative endeavor not a technical one. Practice... will not make you a substantially better programmer. It will just make you more efficient with your tools.

Show me a world-class writer who doesn't obsess about his writing with every waking moment.

Show me a master painter who doesn't paint every single chance she gets.

And show me a music prodigy who hasn't slogged through 15 years of mind-numbing practice every single day.

Only then will I believe that these artists are just getting more "efficient with their tools".

In creative fields, it's even more important that you put in a huge volume of work. That's the only way to connect the dots and create something truly unique.

> Rails isn’t just a brick wall, it’s a brick mountain... By the end of the first month, I had literally no idea what was going on.

This is not a brick wall. It's giving up as soon as something gets hard.

Rails is a great example. It has so much behind-the-scenes "magic" that it's really hard to wrap your mind around at first. Back when I was first learning it, my brain felt like it had been filled with cement at the end of every day. I didn't understand it for weeks; I felt like I was just pounding my head on a brick wall over and over. Then, all of a sudden, the fog suddenly parted and it was like being set free. After that, I never had another Rails problem that I couldn't handle.

Everyone that I've ever talked to that has learned Rails - or any other language - has struggled through this initial pain period. The difference is that the successful ones push through it after it stops being fun.

It doesn't only apply to programming either. Everything you ever learn starts with a "brick wall" that you think you'll never get past. Once you suck it up and break through it, you may find that the road is clear from there.

Here's an important piece of demographic information for the survey:

> 45% of those surveyed don’t own a device that can read ebooks – this includes both e-readers and smartphones.

So almost half of those polled don't actually have steady access to ebooks. I wonder how the statistics change for a sample who have ready access to both.

> When the Internet bubble burst, the company underwent rocky times. By 2000, [the founder] was gone from the company, as were four other members of his founding team.

> For the next decade, Bloodhound recovered and slowly grew, raising seven more rounds of financing. In April 2011, the company was sold for $82.5 million.

11 years is a long time. How much do they think they deserved?

Employee compensation is absolutely not associated with the value of the work the employee does.

Instead, it's associated with the best replacement that the company could find.

If Joe makes $2M a year for a company and gets paid $150k but Steve can do the same work at the same level for $100k, Joe's out and Steve's in. The initial $2M of value doesn't matter, except to lower the chance that a replacement could outperform you.

Cynical and unfair? Sure. That's how it works, though. Start your own company if you don't like it.