[roxolotl]

There’s an old Malcom Gladwell podcast episode, I think the show was Revisionist History, where he says he’s an interview nihilist. As long as the person seems reasonably capable, and can probably do a bit of what you need, hire them. Interviews are so hard to get right that what you’re saying ends up being most effective.

Edit: Didn’t link it initially because I thought it would be hard to find. Turns out it’s not. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/hamlet-w...

[sowbug]

That sounds like a corollary of the Diamond Paradox. If there's any cost at all to price-shopping, then once you're at one store that sells the thing you want, it's usually not worth continuing to shop around.

Tangent: people do a lot of stressing out lately about which LLM they should be using for a certain task. I bet this advice applies there, too.

[bitwize]

Unfortunately from an organizational perspective, a bad hire could cause so much damage through incompetence let alone malice, that making no hire the default unless they're a perfect cinnamon roll of a fit, is actually a good strategy.

[laserlight]

> a bad hire could cause so much damage through incompetence let alone malice

The fact that an organization cannot deal with such a case is a bigger problem in the first place. Eliminating incompetence and malice is among the basic skills of an organization.

[esafak]

Trying not to hire them is dealing with it. What are you suggesting?

[laserlight]

What if a bad apple is hired despite all the checks? The system should be able to detect and eliminate bad apples before they give “so much damage” regardless of when they are hired.

Of course the organization should do its best to avoid bad hires. It should do so because of the opportunity cost of not hiring the right person, not because of the damage that they might give to the organization.

[bitwize]

I was actually hired at my current job to replace a worker who was let go because pretty much from day one, she was acting suspiciously, consistently with someone who was outsourcing their work to contractors and splitting their paycheck with them. Posing a significant risk to the confidentiality of corporate IP and data, from day one, despite putting on a convincing game face throughout the interview and selection process.

In light of this kind of threat, strongly favoring no hire, and even policies like mandatory on-prem work, start making a whole lot of sense.

[laserlight]

The case supports my argument though. Trying not to hire a bad candidate is not a resilient strategy. Someone might fall through the cracks. You still have to screen the candidate after the hire. Heck, even not hiring is not a good strategy, because someone inside may turn bad.