[gregpilling]

It is a common practice to hire anyone promising and see how it works out. It is a fools errand to think that you understand what a person will deliver from a job interview process. I recently put an ad on craigslist for a personal assistant for me. I was looking for a college student, times were flexible, and my office is within one mile of University of Arizona and Pima College - 60,000 students.

The ad asked for a cover letter, resume, and to come in person to the office for a typing test. I have a chronic condition that prevents me from typing much more than an hour a day. Simple, right? I received over a hundred responses of mostly low quality, people blindly firing in poorly written resumes or worse (one simply stated "I need a job and will work for money") and 5 people that actually followed instructions. I hired all five of them. One didn't like the job and left on good terms, another was great but ended up needing to work on school more, two were fired for being incompetent and the remainder is left but I promoted her and made her full time.

I know that this is not a typical hacker job, merely a personal assistant job. The point is that even in a small 10 person non-tech company like mine you can take a risk of over-hiring to try and find the good ones, the people that fit and like your business culture. Microsoft, Google, Apple et al can certainly afford to hire every reasonably competent programmer they can find that seems to fit their hiring profile. Time will tell if their potential gets realized at BigCorp. Just remember that this is a learning experience for both sides of the table.