Several citations in there, but it seems like a common sense thing to me. Why interview at all if you're so willing to take on the risk of a bad hire? Just take them out for lunch and ask them how they like coding.
It's also bad for recruiting purposes. If I have an easy interview I'll be reasonably assured that my future coworkers went through that same process -- what metric do I have to assume they're going to be good engineers to work with?
Ask how many people have been fired. I like to think the people I have are all very good because I fire all the bad ones. Much better to weed out because of on the job performance than select on the basis of some poor proxy for on the job performance.
really the only part that makes bad hires so bad is the impossibility to get them fired at most companies. Even if you hire someone and realize you've made a grave mistake thats obvious to everyone, some stupid moral value or company culture thing will force people to put up with it for 6 months, then have them be on probation for 6 months, then do an evaluation for 3 months, and by the time you finished the process to fire them, they quit first anyway.
That happened at multiple companies I worked at, both small and large, and it just makes me terrified to hire wrong.
If you're in an environment where you hire fast, but punt fast, you can give more people chances to prove themselves. Honestly, it would help with diversity, too. If people are as good as they claim, they don't have to worry about a thing.
> really the only part that makes bad hires so bad is the impossibility to get them fired at most companies. Even if you hire someone and realize you've made a grave mistake thats obvious to everyone, some stupid moral value or company culture thing will force people to put up with it for 6 months, then have them be on probation for 6 months, then do an evaluation for 3 months, and by the time you finished the process to fire them, they quit first anyway.
That's a completely self-imposed cost. A company with a process like that has no business whining about the cost of bad hires.
Legal issues aside (and those are real), there's the morality aspect to it.
Most companies I've worked for had people who thought firing someone was immoral unless they did something criminal. Essentially, its the company's fault for messing up in the hire process, and the employee should not have to suffer the consequences. So the employee stays in anything but the most extreme case.
But, as with most negatives in this discussion, overblown.
> Most companies I've worked for had people who thought firing someone was immoral unless they did something criminal. Essentially, its the company's fault for messing up in the hire process, and the employee should not have to suffer the consequences. So the employee stays in anything but the most extreme case.
That is a ridiculous position, IMO. While those people would probably consider me a sociopath, I don't see any moral imperative to maintain a business relationship beyond what was explicitly and honestly agreed to in assuming the relationship. The company has no paternalistic responsibility to its employees.
> That's a completely self-imposed cost. A company with a process like that has no business whining about the cost of bad hires.
That's the consequence of deep pockets, unfortunately. If you're a young startup without much in the way of assets you certain can hire quickly and fire quickly. You don't have any asserts to sue for.
However, if you're a Google or Facebook, suddenly the stakes rise. They can always find a way to make the firing seem unjustified if they're fired on short notice, from ethnicity, gender, "culture fit" (I didn't want to go out for drinks with them), or age.
And it only has to work once for the disgruntled employee, and then they don't have to work for a while. And you better believe that a lawyer will take the chance to sue a large tech company on a contingency basis.
I will never understand the absurdity that is the US obsession with covering your ass. In Canada you take reasonable steps, but in the US it's just crazy.
It has to do with our legal system. If you're a defendant, it's extremely hard to sue your plaintiff to recover legal fees, even if you win the suit.
That's why there are so many frivolous lawsuits in the US. If you can make a halfway reasonable claim that you're not being malicious in filing the suit, and your lawyer is working on a contingency basis, you really have no downside, whereas the guy you're suing has a huge downside.
Several citations in there, but it seems like a common sense thing to me. Why interview at all if you're so willing to take on the risk of a bad hire? Just take them out for lunch and ask them how they like coding.
It's also bad for recruiting purposes. If I have an easy interview I'll be reasonably assured that my future coworkers went through that same process -- what metric do I have to assume they're going to be good engineers to work with?