[cmrdporcupine]

Or there's potentially this: that the skills we think are universal and transferable ... are not.

That our industry is so bespoke and different and non-standard around tech stack organization and work culture between shops that in fact someone could have been performing top tier at their previous jobs and just completely not function in your workplace.

And because we have a recency and confirmation bias around your own positions, we treat their failure to thrive in our environment as evidence of incompetence.

When it's just really a bad fit -- one you can't really shake out in a verbal conversation or a whiteboard coding exercise.

Or there could even be something wrong with the way our own workplace is organized. One that we're used to working around, but the new hire is not.

There's so much broken everywhere I've worked. When I see a misfit I generally assume it's a combination of factors, not a person lying or being incompetent (though yes, I've seen that, too)

[roryirvine]

We see this occasionally in consulting: a strong performer will sometimes land in a gig that turns out to just not be a good fit for them. We know it happens, we make a point of watching out for it, and we can correct for it when it occurs - but we can't reliably predict who it'll happen to, and in what circumstances.

Mostly, they simply move off to another gig where they return to their previous strong performance. Occasionally they take a hit to their self-confidence and take a while to get back up to speed (we try hard to mitigate this, but it does happen). But sometimes they'll take a break, work out what was causing the poor fit, and come back much stronger than before.

It's not unreasonable to expect a similar pattern outside of consulting - it's just that, for perm staff, the psychological barrier to cutting your losses and moving on are much higher.

[sanderjd]

Yeah. This is why I really wish the job market were optimized to lower switching costs, rather than seemingly the exact opposite.