[aturley]

I've half joked about doing this for technical positions. I think to make it work you'd need:

1. A strong management system in place that's committed to helping folks succeed. 2. A willingness to honestly evaluate people and let them go if they aren't working out.

I've seen enough bad hires even in places that have well planned hiring processes that I'm having trouble believing this would be any worse.

[macintux]

I don't know how this would scale for any non-entry-level position. Even desktop support requires more knowledge than a random person on the street has, so unless you're willing to spend a lot of money on training every new hire who may or may not pan out, you'd need to think about some qualification screen at a minimum.

[pasquinelli]

just because you hire anyone who applies doesn't mean just anyone will apply. people don't actually want to get a job they have no idea how to do. applicants will filter themselves. the question is how much better is a company's filtering process, really, than the applicants' self-filtering? would be embarrassing if it were no better, or even worse.

[jerf]

"just because you hire anyone who applies doesn't mean just anyone will apply"

I can only infer from this statement that you have never been in a hiring position in which you are receiving the raw resume submissions from the field. You either have never been in a hiring position, or you've only had the post-filter resume stream sent to you.

[s0rce]

Exactly, the majority of the applicants probably don't have relevant or adequate qualifications.

[macintux]

People are very good at not knowing how unqualified they are. Former brother-in-law of mine was convinced he was a computer expert because he built a computer once.

IT pay is well-known for being better than average, so I'd bet you'd have people who can move a mouse trying to get entry-level IT work at a company known for hiring anyone.

[sandworm101]

Penetration testers who own a kali usb. Security experts who went to RSA one year and chatted with the NSA booth guys. Html "coders".

[kbart]

Oh, that's far from worse.. the ones you've mentioned could at least qualify for entry level positions.

[bena]

Also, reading the article, it's not that they'll hire you right away, just that they will hire you. Basically, you put your name down on a job list and when a job opens up, the next person on the list gets it.

[dqpb]

I think this pipeline already exists via open source software. Unskilled people are by default allowed to try contributing. As soon as they are actually capable of doing so, they can move up the ranks by getting hired somewhere.

[pc86]

"Work for free until we decide you're worth being paid."

[dqpb]

In most cases, I'm firmly opposed to this. For example, I've known several people in psychology and social services careers where they essentially worked unpaid for years before qualifying for their licence. I think that's absurd because it forces you into creating value for others without receiving any of that value back.

However, I'd argue that unpaid contribution to open source software as a way to build reputation is not absurd, because the value you are creating is still available for you to use and benefit from. Additionally, you are free to work on anything you like - something you can't do at an organization which is compelling you to work for free.

[eggpy]

i.e. an internship

[tonyedgecombe]

I think you would need to filter out all the people that apply without knowing what the job entails but it would be interesting to hire based on one of the online assessments.

[teilo]

You forgot #3: A company with a lot of cash, and a lot of time to waste.

I really don't think this can work. Whenever we post for a position, I get flooded with a bunch of garbage resumes from people who barely have an idea what programming is. We have work to do, and deadlines. We literally can't afford to turn ourselves into a technical training school.

[andrewla]

The idea here seems like it would be best suited to a working environment that has a deep pipeline, from unskilled to semi-skilled to skilled or specialized workers. People can be hired unconditionally to the unskilled pool, from which they can move up to the higher tiers either through training (either internally or externally) or through natural ability.

A bakery, like in this example, seems like it could pull this off, since janitorial work at a bakery is straightforward but unlikely something you'd want to subcontract, and presents a natural place to interact with other workers in more specialized positions, through management or through learning more.

In software this is more difficult, because there's no longer a pipeline for things like data entry, assembly, or basic IT support (traditional inroads), especially at a smaller company, much less janitorial or food prep work that presents an opportunity to advance.

I think the hidden cost here, though, is that progression from one stage to another starts to resemble interviewing at a new company, with all the same biases and problems that result from hiring processes in general, with the possible exception that there's more direct information on personality and work ethic that can feed into the pipeline (for better or worse).

[le-mark]

A lot of companies used to actually do this. Let the mail room or call center people apply for the cobol training program and become developers. It's unheard of today for obvious reasons (a lot more demand for high skilled jobs makes it easy to get training and leave).

[jacquesm]

> Let the mail room or call center people apply for the cobol training program and become developers.

That is exactly my story ('85 or thereabouts), with the added caveat that I didn't learn anything from the Cobol training program. The bank where I worked did not even have a way for mailroom people to get into IT, it was mostly because they got sick of my continued applications to IT jobs for which they though I wasn't qualified that I got the chance to do the course (with the qualifier that if I didn't succeed they never wanted to see me again).

So, I passed (and was the quickest person to complete the course) and ended up making a very rapid career in the IT department and after that started my own company.

Some observations:

- the entry level IT job paid four times as much as what the mail room job did

- work went from 5:30 am to 2 pm to 9'ish to 4'ish (ish because nobody ever checked who appeared when and when they left again whereas in the mailroom attendance was very strictly policed)

- in the mailroom you felt part of critical infrastructure, in IT there was zero pressure to perform

- bringing the mailroom attitude ('let's get some work done') to the IT department was not appreciated by the rest of the department

- the mailroom had zero office politics, if you stepped out of line you would get chewed out and that would be that, by comparison the IT department was a huge web of intrigue, and quite a few of the people there were downright mean and backstabbing each other all the time

- the mailroom was all guys, the IT department had exactly two women programmers on a total crew of about 120, the only other woman was a secretary to the head of IT

- There were a few talented people there but on the whole the talent level was rather low, but they were big on process and that really helped to get stuff out the door

[4lejandrito]

My former employer did exactly this (dev incubator it was called) with people from the call center.

During the time I was there one guy turned out to be a genius and after a few years left to work for a big bank and another guy got enough experience to start his career as a dev somewhere else. The rest of us learnt a lot mentoring these guys and feel quite proud of them.

This was no more than 5 years ago.

[teilo]

I think it's a great idea for the kind of jobs the OA is talking about, but a terrible idea for tech jobs.

[aturley]

So, I actually thought about including "enough of a cash buffer to survive a few bad hires", but the more I thought about it the more I remembered how much time was wasted on folks who made it through the interview process but didn't work out. Lots of companies are wasting money hiring folks with no plan for how to retain them or get them to work effectively. If you've solved this problem then good for you.

[Unbeliever69]

I hire for a tech company and never background or drug check my employees.

[pc86]

Honestly not sure what that has to do with the discussion here.

[kjeetgill]

Hi. I think you meant to reply to this comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17800066