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>The cost of failing to hire a good engineer is small - they can just take the next guy. The cost of hiring a bad engineer is large. This is absolutely and com

>The cost of failing to hire a good engineer is small - they can just take the next guy. The cost of hiring a bad engineer is large. This is absolutely and completely backwards. The cost of hiring a bad engineer is small. You can always fire them. The cost of failing to hire a good engineer is enormous. You will never get a chance to hire them again, and probably all of their friends.

jetru 9y ago
It's not easy to fire employees. Firing employees can scare and stress other employees, create bad blood and criticism on job boards which will make it even harder to hire good employees. Firing might mean you have to still pay the employee for a few months. It might be hard to determine if an employee is a complete failure, which means you might have to give the employee a few months to maybe even a year if you want to accurately determine if they're not performing. It's not cheap at all.
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  California is an at-will state. Surely tech companies can learn to innovate their HR processes to create a transparent, professional, and optimal solution to remove a poor hire. And maybe not all poor hires are created equal. In which maybe the cost of training up bad hire would be less expensive than firing them, and the opportunity cost of taking longer time in hiring a better candidate?
nolemurs 9y ago
Firing is never fast or easy. It usually takes months to realize your mistake since it takes that long to get up to speed on a new job, And then you have to hire someone else, and get them up to speed. As a result, you're delayed by months, and out months of salary. Also, firing is terrible for morale. You really can't do it that often. Failing to hire a good engineer is only a big cost if you can't find a decent alternative hire. If you're paying a 6 figure salary with massive benefits like Facebook or Google, you usually have a long queue of qualified candidates to choose from. Maybe the next guy will turn out to be better than the guy you passed on. > You will never get a chance to hire them again, and probably all of their friends. I happen to know that Google gets lots of repeat applicants. They have an explicit "wait a year before reapplying" policy. I really doubt many people who want to work for these companies decide not to because a friend didn't get the job. That's just sort of crazy.
- bryanrasmussen 9y ago
  maybe, but if you trust your friend and he says the recruitment process sucked are you really going to want to go through it?
  - remline 9y ago
    It's really about blasting advertising and hiring good enough cheap. The engineers with a network will know not to go through your process and would expect a salary appropriate to the job, the ones that developed a lot of skills on their own with no network (or afraid of honest discussions with peers where they might not be the best) will settle for what they are offered. When I look at who from my network (or really missing from my network) is at the places with these tactics.. Losing time and failing to get the job is not the worst outcome.
- Clubber 9y ago
  >Also, firing is terrible for morale. You really can't do it that often. If you hired a bad engineer, not firing them is bad for morale, assuming you have a quality team. They will be pissed at picking up the bad hire's slack and spending so much time helping them. >If you're paying a 6 figure salary with massive benefits like Facebook or Google, you usually have a long queue of qualified candidates to choose from. But that's the exception, they have what most companies don't: prestige (rightfully or not). You listed the two companies that actually can get away with this without hurting themselves. Few others can. See, this article wasn't written for Google and Facebook, it was written for everyday company CIOs, and this is very harmful for them for the reasons I stated. Who wants to spend hours writing calculators during an interview for Initech? Almost nobody. Also, a six figure salary is pretty much the norm for good developers all over the country. The main benefit for working at Facebook and Google is stock options and it looks good on a resume.

jetru 9y ago

It's not easy to fire employees. Firing employees can scare and stress other employees, create bad blood and criticism on job boards which will make it even harder to hire good employees. Firing might mean you have to still pay the employee for a few months. It might be hard to determine if an employee is a complete failure, which means you might have to give the employee a few months to maybe even a year if you want to accurately determine if they're not performing. It's not cheap at all.

Apocryphon 9y ago
California is an at-will state. Surely tech companies can learn to innovate their HR processes to create a transparent, professional, and optimal solution to remove a poor hire. And maybe not all poor hires are created equal. In which maybe the cost of training up bad hire would be less expensive than firing them, and the opportunity cost of taking longer time in hiring a better candidate?

nolemurs 9y ago

Firing is never fast or easy. It usually takes months to realize your mistake since it takes that long to get up to speed on a new job, And then you have to hire someone else, and get them up to speed. As a result, you're delayed by months, and out months of salary. Also, firing is terrible for morale. You really can't do it that often. Failing to hire a good engineer is only a big cost if you can't find a decent alternative hire. If you're paying a 6 figure salary with massive benefits like Facebook or Google, you usually have a long queue of qualified candidates to choose from. Maybe the next guy will turn out to be better than the guy you passed on. > You will never get a chance to hire them again, and probably all of their friends. I happen to know that Google gets lots of repeat applicants. They have an explicit "wait a year before reapplying" policy. I really doubt many people who want to work for these companies decide not to because a friend didn't get the job. That's just sort of crazy.

bryanrasmussen 9y ago
maybe, but if you trust your friend and he says the recruitment process sucked are you really going to want to go through it?
- remline 9y ago
  It's really about blasting advertising and hiring good enough cheap. The engineers with a network will know not to go through your process and would expect a salary appropriate to the job, the ones that developed a lot of skills on their own with no network (or afraid of honest discussions with peers where they might not be the best) will settle for what they are offered. When I look at who from my network (or really missing from my network) is at the places with these tactics.. Losing time and failing to get the job is not the worst outcome.
Clubber 9y ago
>Also, firing is terrible for morale. You really can't do it that often. If you hired a bad engineer, not firing them is bad for morale, assuming you have a quality team. They will be pissed at picking up the bad hire's slack and spending so much time helping them. >If you're paying a 6 figure salary with massive benefits like Facebook or Google, you usually have a long queue of qualified candidates to choose from. But that's the exception, they have what most companies don't: prestige (rightfully or not). You listed the two companies that actually can get away with this without hurting themselves. Few others can. See, this article wasn't written for Google and Facebook, it was written for everyday company CIOs, and this is very harmful for them for the reasons I stated. Who wants to spend hours writing calculators during an interview for Initech? Almost nobody. Also, a six figure salary is pretty much the norm for good developers all over the country. The main benefit for working at Facebook and Google is stock options and it looks good on a resume.