6 ms·

To add to this, tasks risks in hiring but fire fast. Seriously as a hiring manager my best hires have been, on paper, the least qualified for the position. And

To add to this, tasks risks in hiring but fire fast. Seriously as a hiring manager my best hires have been, on paper, the least qualified for the position. And when we've hired bad people, removing them within the span of 6months have been incredibly helpful. The corollary, not firing them fast enough has really hurt.

underwater 10y ago
Do the people you're hiring know that this is your playbook?
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  Since high school I have been under the impression that was how all businesses work. It wasn't until I got into the working world that I realized some organizations are so imbued with CYA that it can take literally years to fire a shitty worker.
- dpark 10y ago
  This is my concern with the fast-fire strategy. If you do a poor job with the interview process and hire someone who cannot do the job and have to fire them, you're messing up that person's life. They probably had a job before they accepted your offer. Now they're unemployed and it's your fault. Firing people frequently is also expensive and it's demoralizing for the team. You also don't earn loyalty by showing that you have none yourself.
  - BurningFrog 10y ago
    Depends who you fire and why. There are few things more demoralizing for a team than keeping jerks around. Unfortunately, jerks are an overrepresented demographic in programming.
    - dpark 10y ago
      I'm talking specifically about the "tasks risks in hiring but fire fast" strategy above. If your strategy is to hire without due diligence because you'll just fire later, that's extremely inconsiderate and also demoralizing. Yes, sometimes you will need to fire people. But the strategy should be to hire the right people in the first place.
      - tracker1 10y ago
        The only thing that makes this hard, is when you spend a month looking for a viable candidate, and need work done, and have to pick someone... The person isn't your ideal choice, but the best of those available. It'll work out, or it won't. In general, I tend to prefer people who are able/motivated to learn, as opposed to X years of experience in keyword Y.
        dpark 10y ago
        Sure. You're going to have to hire someone and there's always some risk that it won't work out.
      - BurningFrog 10y ago
        I think of it more as a continuum that either full due diligence or hire most anyone who seems decent. I agree that the latter version is wrong, but there is room to adjust how much you work on predicting future performance. How much of a jerk people are is one of the harder things to predict in interviews. I get the feeling we're both speaking with previous unfortunate experiences in mind :)
    - tracker1 10y ago
      One of the few times I've outright quit a job without another on the table was because of conflict with a "jerk" (overt arrogance irks me) that had too much political clout in the company to overcome. Of course broken process in a larger company is almost as irritating.
  - vonmoltke 10y ago
    > If you do a poor job with the interview process and hire someone who cannot do the job and have to fire them, you're messing up that person's life. That should be an impetus to improve your hiring process, assuming it isn't a rare occurence. > They probably had a job before they accepted your offer. Now they're unemployed and it's your fault. It is not entirely your fault, unless you didn't effectively articulate what the job was. Otherwise, they took a job they knew was over their head. > Firing people frequently is also expensive and it's demoralizing for the team. See point #1. Firing people frequently is a sign your interview process is broken.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > Firing people frequently is a sign your interview process is broken. Firing people frequently after a short term of employment is a sign that the hiring process (interviewing is part of that, but perhaps not the problem part) is broken. Firing people frequently but long after they were hired may be a sign of hiring process problems, but is more likely a sign of post-hiring working environment problems. (Well, actually, in both cases those assume that the firing decisions are, themselves, justified in the individual cases; obviously, either of the above could be a sign that the firing decision process is broken, instead of some other process.)
      - vonmoltke 10y ago
        Absolutely right. I was sloppy in using "interview" to mean "hiring". I was implicitly only considering the short-term case, though. I agree that the long-term case implies more fundamental problems with the organization.
    - dpark 10y ago
      > It is not entirely your fault, unless you didn't effectively articulate what the job was. Otherwise, they took a job they knew was over their head. It's mostly your fault. You know what the job is and what your expectations will be far better than the candidate. You should be hiring only when you are confident that they will be able to do the job. > See point #1. Firing people frequently is a sign your interview process is broken. Yes, that's exactly my point. "Fire fast" as a strategy should not replace "hire well". Your hiring process is entirely messed up if your strategy is "tasks risks in hiring but fire fast". Sure, if you made a bad hiring decision, you may need to fire someone. But your hiring process should in general be filtering out poor candidates.
  - gedrap 10y ago
    >>> If you do a poor job with the interview process and hire someone who cannot do the job and have to fire them I think it largely depends on how do you fire people. If you just decide 'fuck it, he's out' than yeah, that's awful. But if you give a chance to correct the issues, and actually give the chance rather than imposing some impossible requirements with your mind already set, that's different. Sometimes you just need a little push. >>> Firing people frequently is also expensive and it's demoralizing for the team Not sure about the expensive bit (it's better to fire sooner than later if you're going to fire anyway), but also concerned about the morale. Unless that's a very rare occurrence for quite obvious reasons, it will no doubt demoralize the team.
    - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
      I suspect that a bad programming hire will usually be fairly obvious to co-workers. Like, "firing fast" will probably be after the point where other programmers will have thought "I don't want to work with this person any more"
- wheaties 10y ago
  I am very clear with how things progress. You have to be: 3mth evaluation, 6mnth evaluation if 3mnth wasn't going well. A clear onboarding process and written docs to get people up to speed. A pairing with another developer. Several story tickets which aren't designed to produce results fast but rather to educate. That said, you also have to have an understanding of your interview process: no brain teasers, no language lawyer questions, etc. A peer reviewed collection of interview questions and a rigid methodology to make sure time pressure/stress/etc. are not part of the interview.
johan_larson 10y ago
Yup. Or if not firing, then some other action like redesigning the job around the skills the employee actually has or transferring them to something they can actually do. I've seen this from the other side, when I accepted a job that turned out to require skills I didn't have. It was an unbelievably crappy experience. Prompt action -- within the first six months, maybe -- would have saved a lot of grief.
CM30 10y ago
But is this legal in all countries and states? Because in some places, you can definitely take risks in hiring and fire fast, because employment is basically 'at will'. In certain other areas, there are all kinds of restrictions on how/when/why you can fire someone. This might be why a lot of companies use these tests. Because in some places, you need to filter out 'bad' hires before it becomes difficult to dismiss them.
- nucleardog 10y ago
  Obviously can't speak to everywhere, but the statutes around here (right to work) specifically allow for an initial probationary period. Within the first few months of employment (or less/longer, as set out in a contract), the employee can be easily fired. They want similar reasons to a normal firing (underperforming, inappropriate behaviour, etc) but the information I can find says that the bar is set much lower and they're more just worried about you "acting in good faith". I've rarely (if ever) seen it used. Usually people want to take the time to try and develop the employee, but they end up shooting themselves in the foot. If you hire someone that's not working out you can let them go pretty quickly. Once their probation is up you're stuck with them. So fire fast, don't dick around.

underwater 10y ago

Do the people you're hiring know that this is your playbook?

vonmoltke 10y ago
Since high school I have been under the impression that was how all businesses work. It wasn't until I got into the working world that I realized some organizations are so imbued with CYA that it can take literally years to fire a shitty worker.
dpark 10y ago
This is my concern with the fast-fire strategy. If you do a poor job with the interview process and hire someone who cannot do the job and have to fire them, you're messing up that person's life. They probably had a job before they accepted your offer. Now they're unemployed and it's your fault. Firing people frequently is also expensive and it's demoralizing for the team. You also don't earn loyalty by showing that you have none yourself.
- BurningFrog 10y ago
  Depends who you fire and why. There are few things more demoralizing for a team than keeping jerks around. Unfortunately, jerks are an overrepresented demographic in programming.
  - dpark 10y ago
    I'm talking specifically about the "tasks risks in hiring but fire fast" strategy above. If your strategy is to hire without due diligence because you'll just fire later, that's extremely inconsiderate and also demoralizing. Yes, sometimes you will need to fire people. But the strategy should be to hire the right people in the first place.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      The only thing that makes this hard, is when you spend a month looking for a viable candidate, and need work done, and have to pick someone... The person isn't your ideal choice, but the best of those available. It'll work out, or it won't. In general, I tend to prefer people who are able/motivated to learn, as opposed to X years of experience in keyword Y.
      - dpark 10y ago
        Sure. You're going to have to hire someone and there's always some risk that it won't work out.
    - BurningFrog 10y ago
      I think of it more as a continuum that either full due diligence or hire most anyone who seems decent. I agree that the latter version is wrong, but there is room to adjust how much you work on predicting future performance. How much of a jerk people are is one of the harder things to predict in interviews. I get the feeling we're both speaking with previous unfortunate experiences in mind :)
  - tracker1 10y ago
    One of the few times I've outright quit a job without another on the table was because of conflict with a "jerk" (overt arrogance irks me) that had too much political clout in the company to overcome. Of course broken process in a larger company is almost as irritating.
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  > If you do a poor job with the interview process and hire someone who cannot do the job and have to fire them, you're messing up that person's life. That should be an impetus to improve your hiring process, assuming it isn't a rare occurence. > They probably had a job before they accepted your offer. Now they're unemployed and it's your fault. It is not entirely your fault, unless you didn't effectively articulate what the job was. Otherwise, they took a job they knew was over their head. > Firing people frequently is also expensive and it's demoralizing for the team. See point #1. Firing people frequently is a sign your interview process is broken.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Firing people frequently is a sign your interview process is broken. Firing people frequently after a short term of employment is a sign that the hiring process (interviewing is part of that, but perhaps not the problem part) is broken. Firing people frequently but long after they were hired may be a sign of hiring process problems, but is more likely a sign of post-hiring working environment problems. (Well, actually, in both cases those assume that the firing decisions are, themselves, justified in the individual cases; obviously, either of the above could be a sign that the firing decision process is broken, instead of some other process.)
    - vonmoltke 10y ago
      Absolutely right. I was sloppy in using "interview" to mean "hiring". I was implicitly only considering the short-term case, though. I agree that the long-term case implies more fundamental problems with the organization.
  - dpark 10y ago
    > It is not entirely your fault, unless you didn't effectively articulate what the job was. Otherwise, they took a job they knew was over their head. It's mostly your fault. You know what the job is and what your expectations will be far better than the candidate. You should be hiring only when you are confident that they will be able to do the job. > See point #1. Firing people frequently is a sign your interview process is broken. Yes, that's exactly my point. "Fire fast" as a strategy should not replace "hire well". Your hiring process is entirely messed up if your strategy is "tasks risks in hiring but fire fast". Sure, if you made a bad hiring decision, you may need to fire someone. But your hiring process should in general be filtering out poor candidates.
- gedrap 10y ago
  >>> If you do a poor job with the interview process and hire someone who cannot do the job and have to fire them I think it largely depends on how do you fire people. If you just decide 'fuck it, he's out' than yeah, that's awful. But if you give a chance to correct the issues, and actually give the chance rather than imposing some impossible requirements with your mind already set, that's different. Sometimes you just need a little push. >>> Firing people frequently is also expensive and it's demoralizing for the team Not sure about the expensive bit (it's better to fire sooner than later if you're going to fire anyway), but also concerned about the morale. Unless that's a very rare occurrence for quite obvious reasons, it will no doubt demoralize the team.
  - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    I suspect that a bad programming hire will usually be fairly obvious to co-workers. Like, "firing fast" will probably be after the point where other programmers will have thought "I don't want to work with this person any more"
wheaties 10y ago
I am very clear with how things progress. You have to be: 3mth evaluation, 6mnth evaluation if 3mnth wasn't going well. A clear onboarding process and written docs to get people up to speed. A pairing with another developer. Several story tickets which aren't designed to produce results fast but rather to educate. That said, you also have to have an understanding of your interview process: no brain teasers, no language lawyer questions, etc. A peer reviewed collection of interview questions and a rigid methodology to make sure time pressure/stress/etc. are not part of the interview.

johan_larson 10y ago

Yup. Or if not firing, then some other action like redesigning the job around the skills the employee actually has or transferring them to something they can actually do. I've seen this from the other side, when I accepted a job that turned out to require skills I didn't have. It was an unbelievably crappy experience. Prompt action -- within the first six months, maybe -- would have saved a lot of grief.

CM30 10y ago

But is this legal in all countries and states? Because in some places, you can definitely take risks in hiring and fire fast, because employment is basically 'at will'. In certain other areas, there are all kinds of restrictions on how/when/why you can fire someone. This might be why a lot of companies use these tests. Because in some places, you need to filter out 'bad' hires before it becomes difficult to dismiss them.

nucleardog 10y ago
Obviously can't speak to everywhere, but the statutes around here (right to work) specifically allow for an initial probationary period. Within the first few months of employment (or less/longer, as set out in a contract), the employee can be easily fired. They want similar reasons to a normal firing (underperforming, inappropriate behaviour, etc) but the information I can find says that the bar is set much lower and they're more just worried about you "acting in good faith". I've rarely (if ever) seen it used. Usually people want to take the time to try and develop the employee, but they end up shooting themselves in the foot. If you hire someone that's not working out you can let them go pretty quickly. Once their probation is up you're stuck with them. So fire fast, don't dick around.