Well, sorry that you feel this way. I don't agree right now (clearly). But I'll certainly take this seriously and think more about it/listen to feedback. We're talking about relatively basic profiles, to give us the canvas to launch public achievement badges (that we hope allow us to better help people who don't have traditional credentials). My view, building this, is that we're not displaying anything more private than hundreds of other companies. Stack Overflow has public profiles. Hacker Rank has public profile. AngelList has public profiles. Even HN has public profiles. We are launching public profiles for a product that has not had them in the past, and I get that that's a more sensitive thing to do. What we've focused on to keep that from harming anyone is what data we include in the profiles. I wish we'd include more details about that in the email.
> Stack Overflow has public profiles. Hacker Rank has public profile. AngelList has public profiles. Even HN has public profiles
This seems so obviously disingenuous to me. You know why Triplebyte is different, right? You understand why employees would want to keep the fact that they have a Triplebyte account secret instead of public, right?
If you do know that answer, then you should recognize that you're betraying the trust you created with the user. If you do know why Triplebyte is different, then you're lying to us here.
If you do not know why Triplebyte is different why on earth are you the CEO of a recruiting company. That's absolutely unforgivable.
This one sentence gives away that you're either lying to us or willfully ignorant and careless about your users. Either way, I'll never trust you again.
First off, thanks again for taking the time to speak with us on HN.
I think you’re missing/avoiding the issue that people might want to hide the very fact that they have a Triplebyte account at all. It implies that they have job hunted in the last 5 or so years, and someone who’s been at a single company for longer than that might not want that information to be available.
I work at Google, and I can tell you as a fact that our Privacy Working Groups would never let us launch something like this without explicit user consent.
Google did something significantly worse -- and spent ages apologizing for it and never really recovered from the reputation hit, and I suspect that negative impressions Buzz gave people were a contributing factor to G+'s total failure.
> Google Buzz publicly disclosed (on the user's Google profile) a list of the names of Gmail contacts that the user has most frequently emailed or chatted with.
Google Buzz is something you definitely don't want to be similar to.
All of these companies have opt-in profiles. When you sign up for the service, you can tell already what you’re getting into and what will be displayed. As far as I’m aware, none of them started as an unrelated service that suddenly announced they were going to make a public site and seed it with information from anyone who’d ever interacted with them.
I've always wondered if people who use corporate doublespeak like this realize how transparent they are.
Why not just say "We think we'll make more money by sharing private information our users trusted us with, without their consent." Then at least I think you'd get points for candor and honesty. As is, no points for either and everyone reading knows what you mean.
By the way, is it true you require a government id to delete your account? If so, why?
> Stack Overflow has public profiles. Hacker Rank has public profile. AngelList has public profiles. Even HN has public profiles.
Come on now, these examples are not even remotely similar to what you are doing here.
Firstly, it's up to me whether or not I even create a profile on those sites.
Secondly, if I choose to create a profile, I have full control over what is shown publicly.
What you are doing here is making information public whether I like it or not. This is not OK, and you trying to defend it here is mind boggling, and demonstrates clearly what little regards you have for privacy. I for one will now never have anything to do with TripleByte.
The difference is that people expected their relationship with Triplebyte to be private, and not a public matter. A lot of people do not even want the fact that they're on the platform to be public. Like it or not there's a cultural expectation of "people have Linkedin all the time even when they're not necessarily job hunting," a level of leniency and acceptance that does not apply to Triplebyte (which is currently viewed as a "I want to get a job now" website)
I have had a really positive experience with Triplebyte so far but hope your team can understand the root of what is bothering people about this decision.
You mentioned Hacker News in passing. HN has public profiles indeed, but most of them don't have much information. Either people don't want to fill them out or they don't care to, possibly because they just want to do other things on HN (like post comments or upvote articles and comments.) The way public profiles work vary from service to service, as does people's expectations regarding those profiles. From what I've read, it sounds like public profiles haven't been Triplebytes focus, but users are now upset that they're being brought into focus or given more exposure than they ever expected before (assuming people are correct in the fears they've been expressing here.)
A public stackoverflow/github/angellist profile does not leak information to my employer that I'm seeking new opportunities.
Tripebyte is fundamentally different and dangerous there.
It make no difference whether you're sorry that people feel that way. It's the wrong thing to do - you're going to hurt people doing this.
It make no difference that it's a fantastic opportunity for you and Tripebyte. It's not what you told people when they signed up and entrusted you their names and jobseeking. It's the wrong thing to do - and only lawyers are going to end up benefiting.
You're exposing job searches publicly that were supposed to be private. You advertise this privacy when users create new accounts, so you can't play dumb and pretend that somehow over years of running a company like Triplebyte it never occurred to you that folks don't want their search made public.
I'm less concerned than everyone else about this, but I do think it's ridiculous that we have one week to opt out and we can't even preview what you're going to make public right now.
I’m having a similar gut reaction. I just got the email and had I missed it (which is entirely possible since Triplebyte has been bombarding me with erroneous newsletters), I’d have a by default publicly visible profile. Just went in and turned the visibility off.
The roll out of this needs to be handled better, with extra care given to privacy settings, and verbiage on the profiles.
For example, Triplebyte has the following language - ‘I am currently open to new opportunities’, heh, yeah, please, show that on my public profile while I have an existing job.
A robust technical assessment site focused on tech is good, especially if it is nuanced in assessing people (not hard cut offs, finding strengths and weaknesses on a spectrum, etc), but please, take good care of privacy and clear communication.
Right! How can you share anything about your desire to find a new job without recruiters seeing it? And then, how do you make sure that the platform somehow excludes your current employer's recruiters? As with Ashley Madison, where you might find your spouse looking for you. So the privacy concern is a bit overdone, but nonetheless, the company's behavior is a bit shocking. If the CEO thought the users' profiles were as good as public, why not communicate that well to the users to begin with and later float the idea of making profiles truly public?
> Even honorable employers can have HR staff who are not.
I disagree. HR reports to the CEO, just like everyone else. If the CEO tolerates HR (or any department of the company) being dishonorable, the entire company is dishonorable.
The difference between what you are doing here and the other public profiles you mention is consent.
When a user creates a profile on Stack Overflow or Hacker News, they are consenting to share whatever data they give on that particular platform.
When a user created a profile on Triplebyte, up until now, they were consenting to that data being used in a private profile for the purpose of connecting them with job opportunities, privately. Now, you've emailed all of your users on a Friday evening to say "by the way, if you don't opt-out in the next week, we will take this data that you gave to us under the assumption that it would be private, and make it public (and potentially searchable)."
By saying "we'll do it unless you say no", you are not getting consent.
If you're familiar with the tea analogy of consent, a la https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbei5JGiT8, this would be like you saying "well, other users (not necessarily every user, or you, the user in question right now) have had tea (not necessarily the same type of tea) from other platforms. This is just like that. So, if you don't say no to our tea in the next week, we're going to drop the tea on you. We hope you enjoy!"
You are not just "launching public profiles for a product that has not had them in the past", you are launching public profiles and on them you are _sharing data that was given to you under the agreement that it was private_. You are using data that folks gave you in a very, very different way than for the purpose they gave it.
Finally, just to really drive this home, you say "What we've focused on to keep that from harming anyone is what data we include in the profiles."
And, what data is that? What personal data, given under the agreement that it would stay private, won't harm someone if made public?
Full (presumably legal, or at least professional) name, coupled with profile picture (presumably a clear photo of their face) and, I'm guessing, also the locations they said they were looking for a job in? Although, fine, in most cases sharing that data is mainly annoying and trust-breaching, that combination of information can be devastating if leaked. Consider a person who has escaped an abusive ex-partner, and has managed to keep private about what new city they've moved to, now popping up in a Google search for their name that has their picture and the fact that they're looking for a job in Los Angeles. This person probably isn't your core user-base, but stories like this are real, they happen, and if you get enough users, they will be among your real life user stories. You have to consider user stories like this when you are trusted with personal information.
