[hox]

So the comments are focusing on the candidate, but how exactly does this reduce the "expensive" up front cost of resume review, phone screens, and on-site interviews cited? The described process still performs reviews and screens, but instead of 1-4 or so man hours per employee of engineering time "wasted" during interviewing, you are instead slowing the entire team down for multiple days to effectively onboard temporary employees.

Sorry, this makes next to no sense from the candidate's viewpoint or the company's.

[mareofnight]

I don't think there's anything actually "leaner" going on here. If anything, it's the reverse - much higher investment of effort up-front for supposedly avoiding risk of bad hiring choices and effort replacing them later.

I think the word they're looking for here is "internship". That's a longer duration and more expensive, but probably(?) less distrustful to the regular team.

[johnny99]

The cost of a bad hire is incredibly high. If pairing for a day (I agree with general sentiment that more than a day or two is too much to ask) reduces the chance of that, this could be very worthwhile.