4 ms·

I always wonder... Would you take a job if you heard 20-40% of people who accepted the job were fired within the first month? If an organization was good at fi

I always wonder... Would you take a job if you heard 20-40% of people who accepted the job were fired within the first month? If an organization was good at firing fast, would people be willing to take a job there? Would you be able to truly assess an engineer within a month in a way you wouldn't in an hour? The first two weeks are usually a wash. But you might be able to get more signal in that second two weeks? Does that same equation hold true if it's contract to hire? Would you take such a job?

thedufer 8y ago
I mean, we have plenty of people take ~this offer every year. The term is more like 3 months, and we call them "interns". For people who already have full-time jobs it seems like a much worse deal, though. I certainly wouldn't take it, at least - it makes very little sense to give up the certainty of my current job in exchange for being maybe unemployed in a month.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  That’s absolutely not the same. An internship has a defined start and end date and you need to do something egregious not to make it to the end. In that sense it’s more like a short term contract than anything else and contractors get paid a lot more than salaried employees to compensate them for the risk involved. Most internships are for hiring, not the labour the company gets from them. They function as three month long interviews but unlike a short term contract leading to hire it’s expected that they won’t immediately convert into a job as students return to university for another year. They’re also far more opaque to other employers on a cv. If someone did internships at three different companies over their degree they could have wanted to see many different companies or they could have performed below expectations at all three places. If you see their cv you won’t know.
  - thedufer 8y ago
    It still sounds awfully similar. If you're firing ~30% of hires after the first month, then you're clearly treating it as an extended interview. And the first month of any job (in software, at least) includes a lot of training/ramp-up, so you don't expect to get much labor out of that period. The main difference is just that an internship has a several-month unpaid leave starting 3 months after hire. I suppose it diverges more if you consider internships prior to the final one due to the weird optionality on following intern seasons, but I think that's a minority of internships due to the hiring goal (once you start looking at 2+ year lead-times before a potential full-time start date it becomes much harder to justify).
- ebiester 8y ago
  To be fair, we call it "contract to hire."
bartread 8y ago
> If an organization was good at firing fast, would people be willing to take a job there? It's an interesting question. Having worked for organisations that fire fast, and those that don't, in general I tend to see it as a positive cultural indicator [1] - albeit one that needs some digging to verify - but I can understand that it might unsettle some applicants. In fact nowadays I favour it strongly enough that next time I'm the one going through the interview process I'll probably investigate. I may even ask outright although, again, "What does somebody have to do to get fired around here?" is a question open to some misinterpretation. [1] Working with difficult or unproductive people for long periods can be hugely draining on a team, not to mention hugely damaging commercially. Left unchecked it can even destroy your business.
watwut 8y ago
If the company fires 20-40% within first month, I would assume they are looking for too specific mold to fit in. I do not like places with too much pressure on conformity, so I would pass. People in places where they fire easily and often are too insecure. That means taboos over things that should be discussion and fear of disagreement.
- ebiester 8y ago
  ...and that's why we have these ridiculous interviewing systems. It's one thing to take a chance on someone who may have had a bad technical interview but might be fine if they're not currently in a gig, but it's another for us to hire from a stable gig. So, we as an industry default to "no" instead of "yes."
krageon 8y ago
I have in the past accepted a job at a company that professed they had a 60+% turnover of employees within the first six months. At least half of that number was fired within the first month. It did not bother me that they did so, I just needed work at the time and I was confident I was good enough to stay.

thedufer 8y ago

I mean, we have plenty of people take ~this offer every year. The term is more like 3 months, and we call them "interns". For people who already have full-time jobs it seems like a much worse deal, though. I certainly wouldn't take it, at least - it makes very little sense to give up the certainty of my current job in exchange for being maybe unemployed in a month.

barry-cotter 8y ago
That’s absolutely not the same. An internship has a defined start and end date and you need to do something egregious not to make it to the end. In that sense it’s more like a short term contract than anything else and contractors get paid a lot more than salaried employees to compensate them for the risk involved. Most internships are for hiring, not the labour the company gets from them. They function as three month long interviews but unlike a short term contract leading to hire it’s expected that they won’t immediately convert into a job as students return to university for another year. They’re also far more opaque to other employers on a cv. If someone did internships at three different companies over their degree they could have wanted to see many different companies or they could have performed below expectations at all three places. If you see their cv you won’t know.
- thedufer 8y ago
  It still sounds awfully similar. If you're firing ~30% of hires after the first month, then you're clearly treating it as an extended interview. And the first month of any job (in software, at least) includes a lot of training/ramp-up, so you don't expect to get much labor out of that period. The main difference is just that an internship has a several-month unpaid leave starting 3 months after hire. I suppose it diverges more if you consider internships prior to the final one due to the weird optionality on following intern seasons, but I think that's a minority of internships due to the hiring goal (once you start looking at 2+ year lead-times before a potential full-time start date it becomes much harder to justify).
ebiester 8y ago
To be fair, we call it "contract to hire."

bartread 8y ago

> If an organization was good at firing fast, would people be willing to take a job there? It's an interesting question. Having worked for organisations that fire fast, and those that don't, in general I tend to see it as a positive cultural indicator [1] - albeit one that needs some digging to verify - but I can understand that it might unsettle some applicants. In fact nowadays I favour it strongly enough that next time I'm the one going through the interview process I'll probably investigate. I may even ask outright although, again, "What does somebody have to do to get fired around here?" is a question open to some misinterpretation. [1] Working with difficult or unproductive people for long periods can be hugely draining on a team, not to mention hugely damaging commercially. Left unchecked it can even destroy your business.

watwut 8y ago

If the company fires 20-40% within first month, I would assume they are looking for too specific mold to fit in. I do not like places with too much pressure on conformity, so I would pass. People in places where they fire easily and often are too insecure. That means taboos over things that should be discussion and fear of disagreement.

ebiester 8y ago
...and that's why we have these ridiculous interviewing systems. It's one thing to take a chance on someone who may have had a bad technical interview but might be fine if they're not currently in a gig, but it's another for us to hire from a stable gig. So, we as an industry default to "no" instead of "yes."

krageon 8y ago

I have in the past accepted a job at a company that professed they had a 60+% turnover of employees within the first six months. At least half of that number was fired within the first month. It did not bother me that they did so, I just needed work at the time and I was confident I was good enough to stay.