[muzani]

I used to say follow your instinct, but there are a lot of situations where this has been wrong. Some people are brought up to be abrasive or hardheaded. One person we interviewed insulted the interviewer (which was grounds for an instant rejection). For some reason we hired him anyway, and he was the best performer on the team. He held some rather racist thoughts and distrust about us but after we talked it through, he was cooperative.

Another near instant firing moment was a teammate who just didn't get it. He'd put bugs in and insist they were part of the design, or that they were someone else's responsibility. He'd be completely stubborn and it would take two people explaining the situation to get him to admit fault. But this was early in the job, where he was insecure, facing a lot of trouble at home. After we made it clear that bugs are the whole team's responsibility and not one person's, he was a good core member of the team.

So those are false red flags from my end.

But you can still spot real red flags from a distance. I think there's rarely ever a "immediate" red flag. Even things like harassment and racism might not be on purpose. Firing someone for racism might actually be counterproductive. There's a touch of racism in many companies - certain races/religions get paid less and "talked down to". And some of the more privileged races (not always white) might be distrusted. Usually this can lead to a subtle culture where someone acts like an asshole because they don't want to be pushed around. But if you show them a little love and care, they can often turn out friendly and they'll usually become far less racist.

[dennisbalon]

THANK YOU for such a great reply with examples. Let me comment each point. But first of all I`d like to say that my secret suace for succesful hires and fires is: instinct + process.

1. Racist guy. Heh. I had experience working with such people, key thing here for the hiring side is to understand if that hardheadedness is sign of being just dumb or maybe overconfident beause that person in questions has actually reasons to believe he is so good?

2. Stubborn guy creating bugs. For stubborness is a big red flag. I had guys creating lots of bugs despite having the knowledge not to create. Twice in my experience serious talk did help and they became nearly perfect core team members. It`s all about our personal judgement on how much time we want to invest into all of this.

3. Immeddiate red flags. Once again, I meant different immediate red flags. Something like a day of watching the person trying to do a pull request and the way he is working with CTO comments, the way he talks to others, the way he behaives and you are like hey... I made a mistake hiring him...