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by loa_in_ 1024 days ago
No, nepotism is covering someone who's _failing_ at their duties, yet retaining them due to familial connections.

Otherwise, what are you really mitigating by refusing to hire your CTO's nephew? If he's a strong candidate, it's not pathological and calling it nepotism is pointless at best. Otherwise if CTO's nephew turns out to be a weak candidate and is let go then again, it's completely normal. If CTO's nephew is a bad hire, yet he's retained, then it's nepotism.
2 comments
lapcat 1024 days ago
> If he's a strong candidate

"As the hiring manager, I turned him down because of the lack of programming experience. I was overruled by our CTO."

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timy2shoes 1024 days ago
“ The best summer intern that I ever hired” supports that the CTO was a better judge of the candidate.
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lapcat 1024 days ago
> “ The best summer intern that I ever hired”

What's the sample size?

> supports that the CTO was a better judge of the candidate.

No, it doesn't, because the hiring manager's choice never got a chance to show what they could do. Besides, the fact that the nepotistic hire worked out could have been just dumb luck. After all, hiring is a crapshoot, especially hiring interns.

Regardless, this was clearly nepotism, and the question isn't whether the CTO could judge the candidate, the question is whether favoritism was shown toward a family friend, which is indisputably the case.

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roenxi 1024 days ago
That is a factor in why nepotism is so endemic - people are much better judges of the character of people in their family. This is a clear-cut case of nepotism, although personally I don't see a problem here. Nepotism isn't a bad thing in small doses. This instance is a good example of why not.
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chownie 1024 days ago
That is not the definition of the word nepotism at all, nepotism is just giving family members unfair favouritism.

No definition I've come across requires the candidate perform poorly, where have you come to this conclusion?

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