07/05/2022
We've pivoting.
Here's why:
1. The current market is terrible for tech hiring. Several of our enterprise clients went from double digit open head counts for eng roles to 0 overnight. Many of the big tech companies are either laying off employees or freezing hiring, which we expect to last for at least a year.
2. Nobody actually wants to automate onsite interviews. To make truly informed hiring decisions on engineers, hiring managers/eng leads always want to spend time pair programming, problem solving, or conversing with the candidate. Automating this process removes a key mandatory human element necessary in the process.
3. The ROI on automating onsite interviews is negative. LeetCode questions are notoriously bad at predicting real-world engineering capabilities, but they are easy to create and automate. Litebulb-style interview questions are simulations of real work (DB, backend, frontend, Figma mockups + specs), but take months to automate just one question. You wouldn't believe the weird edge cases candidates have come up with.
As a result, we no longer believe right now is the best time to build Litebulb.
I'd like to thank all of our early believers: clients, advisors, investors, and of course teammates for their continued support and dedication to Litebulb.
What's next? We spent June brainstorming and validating, and already decided on the next business to build. Look forward to a BIG rebrand and announcement!