[DarrenDev]

>Technical people are expensive (and hard to fire if they don't work out), which really raises the bar for minimum qualifications and skills. There's no room to "take a chance" on anyone anymore.

I've never been hired for a permanent job that didn't have a 6 month probationary period, so I really don't see why "hard to fire", even in Europe where it really is hard to fire, is still an excuse companies use.

[notrly1337]

I believe he means there's a big commitment to get somebody going into a project. To create value, engineers need to be involved in many aspects of the product, which takes time for both parties, which is paid by the employer.

[_ah]

Especially at senior levels, there's ramp up time AND a larger scope of impact if the person makes bad technical decisions or negatively impacts the team. A bad hire is super expensive on both those dimensions. It's even worse when the candidate is hired into a leadership role and will be responsible for further hiring.

It's easy to see if someone is incompetent during their first 90 days: that's a basic recruiting failure. It's the other type who are sort of good, but ultimately disastrous, that cause real problems. And often, these mis-hires take ~12 months to identify and correct. The result is that caution dominates when hiring.