The job search process for engineers is broken, and companies aren’t incentivized to fix it. Recruiters don’t give helpful feedback. They ghost candidates they don’t like. They don’t give honest information about culture and compensation that would help engineers choose the best job. They exaggerate and sell themselves in an attempt to ‘close’ candidates. This isn’t just unpleasant: it harms engineers by harming their ability to make critical employment decisions.

The solution to this problem is transparency. If engineers know what a company’s hiring practices are, they can make informed choices. If they know about culture upfront, they can target their applications better. And when engineers can make informed choices, companies have an incentive to adopt engineer-friendly practices.

Enforcing transparency is a coordination problem. Individual engineers can request transparency, but they can’t enforce it. By the time any particular engineer can tell if a company was honest with them, they’ve already invested their time interviewing. Useful transparency requires trust, and engineers can’t trust what companies tell them until they have a way to reward honesty or punish dishonesty.

Hiring platforms could enforce transparency, but existing platforms are built for companies. Most job sites put company interests first. They view job seekers as the product to be sold, not the principal user.

It’s time for this to change. Demand for software engineers is at an all-time high. If engineers coordinate, they’re more powerful than companies. Applicants should get feedback. Companies should provide accurate compensation and process data upfront. Recruiters should be penalized if they lie to engineers. It’s time for a hiring platform that puts engineers in control, that uses company demand to level the playing field. That’s what we're building at Triplebyte.