3 ms·
> Not hiring idiots in the first place is IMO the proper solution to this problem, If you hire all rockstars and you have to let go of 10%, then how does this
by unlimit 8y ago
> Not hiring idiots in the first place is IMO the proper solution to this problem,
If you hire all rockstars and you have to let go of 10%, then how does this help?
- Pfhreak 8y agoAcross thousands of hires, can you hire all rockstars? When you hire 1,000 people, how many do you expect are underperformers?
- logfromblammo 8y agoNo matter how many people you hire, at least half of them are going to be at or below the median for your new employees. So I'd say 500. You'd have to be very good at hiring to get a lower number, and judging from my anecdata, companies that hire software pros use hiring processes that are terrible predictors of future performance, if not entirely useless.
- bitL 8y agoMS managers had a hack around this - a few months before expected lay-off cycle they hired some incompetent developers or developers from their competition they hated, then let them go at the time of lay-off. Wouldn't be surprised if Amazon managers used similar tricks.
- erik_seaberg 8y agoIf a company isn't positioned to turn a profit on the output of a rockstar, why is that company trying to retain a development team at all? Every company I've worked at for a decade was eagerly hiring every rockstar they could find, except the one on the verge of bankruptcy that was trying to get acquired.
- AstralStorm 8y agoIt's a good tactic, denying the competition the resources, until it gets to expensive.
- ex_amazon_sde 8y ago> If you hire all rockstars and you have to let go of 10%, then how does this help? It keeps salaries lower than where they would be and pushes the remaining 90% to work very hard.