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My immediate reaction is that the problem with that approach is that it’s simply too expensive for the hiring company Is it? The cost of hiring the wrong perso

My immediate reaction is that the problem with that approach is that it’s simply too expensive for the hiring company Is it? The cost of hiring the wrong person can be huge. Not just agency fees if they came through a recruiter (those aren't cheap!), but also all the time people then spend on the bad employee and all the damage that person does before the mistake is rectified. If this system of reading the resumes and then spending a few hours of senior employee time on an interview can reliably find good employees, that's an absolute bargain.

ozim 7y ago
If it really would be, then current state of things would not go into "making it cheap". I think for entry level employee, or just a regular employee, cost of bad hire is not that high. If turnover on those positions is high, then it also makes things cheaper just to fill in the seat. I have seen not that brilliant employees that still were earning company money. Just you know "we hire only best of the best" is a scam. Hiring bad manager or a senior dev, can be bad I agree. So it is not so good to use the same hiring way for seniors and juniors, but unfortunately companies treat senior devs also like juniors.
goatinaboat 7y ago
The cost of hiring the wrong person can be huge. This just isn’t true. Every company has a “probation period” usually 3 months where either party can terminate the agreement. That’s more than sufficient to cover this risk. You don’t pay the recruiter until probation is passed - everyone knows this. This meme comes from Spolsky who somehow also convinced the world that the hottest programming talent was beating down his door to work on a bug tracking tool for project managers. Maybe his talent was in blogging, and not actually in hiring?
- EliRivers 7y ago
  This just isn’t true. I believe that to be an incorrect statement, based on my own experience. I have seen companies hire the wrong people and pay the price. Every company has a “probation period” usually 3 months where either party can terminate the agreement. I believe that to be an incorrect statement; while I've always seen probationary periods, in this very set of threads "akelly" says that nobody has probation periods. This evidence suggests that "akelly" has never worked at a company with a probationary period (and has foolishly extended their own personal experience into the universal, but that's a separate mistake). I would also suggest that there is an opportunity cost attached; if someone is fired at the end of their three or six month probation period, the good candidate that replaces them is six months behind. Some companies end up with drifting dead wood employees; not fired, just moved around from team to team, department to department, because the company makes firing people harder (or more costly to the manager / team-lead) than moving them. This can go on for years. That seems quite a large cost. I've also seen managers simply sideline bad employees rather than dismissing them, for reasons of company politics and face. I've also seen bad hires get promoted, in cases where promoting someone is easier and less costly (to the relevant team lead or manager) than dismissing them; that can be really damaging.
- sethammons 7y ago
  > This just isn't true. Sure it is. People on our team need to take time to onboard the new hire. That's good and expected. The new hire will work slower and that's ok; they will need extra help, time to learn the codebases, etc. After a couple of months, a particular new hire did not work out. Time had to be taken to document reasons, meet with HR, meeting to talk about expectations, etc. In the end, the new hire is gone and so is the time the team spent helping, and the slowdowns on real deliverables, and the hit to team morale. It sucks when someone is let go. It was a net negative for our team and thus the whole org. Depending on a combination of level (leadership position?) and toxicity, negative impact on the team or company culture can occur. Bad hires can have a real cost.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    A real cost that can be mitigated by breaking work into smaller chunks at first, and firing quickly.
  - boohoojangles 7y ago
    This is all true to my experience but not just exclusive to hiring low performers (which I assume is wrong qualifier means here) but also to unsuitable fit, poorly management, failure to motivate a new hire (specially when hiring senior developers), etc.
- james_s_tayler 7y ago
  >This just isn’t true. Every company has a “probation period” usually 3 months where either party can terminate the agreement. That’s more than sufficient to cover this risk. Yeaaaah no. I've seen people nope out of a job within anywhere between 30 mins to a couple of months. I've also seen people that knew it wasn't right for them stay 1 to 2 years.

ozim 7y ago

If it really would be, then current state of things would not go into "making it cheap". I think for entry level employee, or just a regular employee, cost of bad hire is not that high. If turnover on those positions is high, then it also makes things cheaper just to fill in the seat. I have seen not that brilliant employees that still were earning company money. Just you know "we hire only best of the best" is a scam. Hiring bad manager or a senior dev, can be bad I agree. So it is not so good to use the same hiring way for seniors and juniors, but unfortunately companies treat senior devs also like juniors.

goatinaboat 7y ago

The cost of hiring the wrong person can be huge. This just isn’t true. Every company has a “probation period” usually 3 months where either party can terminate the agreement. That’s more than sufficient to cover this risk. You don’t pay the recruiter until probation is passed - everyone knows this. This meme comes from Spolsky who somehow also convinced the world that the hottest programming talent was beating down his door to work on a bug tracking tool for project managers. Maybe his talent was in blogging, and not actually in hiring?

EliRivers 7y ago
This just isn’t true. I believe that to be an incorrect statement, based on my own experience. I have seen companies hire the wrong people and pay the price. Every company has a “probation period” usually 3 months where either party can terminate the agreement. I believe that to be an incorrect statement; while I've always seen probationary periods, in this very set of threads "akelly" says that nobody has probation periods. This evidence suggests that "akelly" has never worked at a company with a probationary period (and has foolishly extended their own personal experience into the universal, but that's a separate mistake). I would also suggest that there is an opportunity cost attached; if someone is fired at the end of their three or six month probation period, the good candidate that replaces them is six months behind. Some companies end up with drifting dead wood employees; not fired, just moved around from team to team, department to department, because the company makes firing people harder (or more costly to the manager / team-lead) than moving them. This can go on for years. That seems quite a large cost. I've also seen managers simply sideline bad employees rather than dismissing them, for reasons of company politics and face. I've also seen bad hires get promoted, in cases where promoting someone is easier and less costly (to the relevant team lead or manager) than dismissing them; that can be really damaging.
sethammons 7y ago
> This just isn't true. Sure it is. People on our team need to take time to onboard the new hire. That's good and expected. The new hire will work slower and that's ok; they will need extra help, time to learn the codebases, etc. After a couple of months, a particular new hire did not work out. Time had to be taken to document reasons, meet with HR, meeting to talk about expectations, etc. In the end, the new hire is gone and so is the time the team spent helping, and the slowdowns on real deliverables, and the hit to team morale. It sucks when someone is let go. It was a net negative for our team and thus the whole org. Depending on a combination of level (leadership position?) and toxicity, negative impact on the team or company culture can occur. Bad hires can have a real cost.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  A real cost that can be mitigated by breaking work into smaller chunks at first, and firing quickly.
- boohoojangles 7y ago
  This is all true to my experience but not just exclusive to hiring low performers (which I assume is wrong qualifier means here) but also to unsuitable fit, poorly management, failure to motivate a new hire (specially when hiring senior developers), etc.
james_s_tayler 7y ago
>This just isn’t true. Every company has a “probation period” usually 3 months where either party can terminate the agreement. That’s more than sufficient to cover this risk. Yeaaaah no. I've seen people nope out of a job within anywhere between 30 mins to a couple of months. I've also seen people that knew it wasn't right for them stay 1 to 2 years.