5 ms·

> “It's safer to pass on a good candidate than hire a bad employee.” After a decade of building teams in machine learning, I regard this as one of those hallow

by mlthoughts2018 7y ago

> “It's safer to pass on a good candidate than hire a bad employee.” After a decade of building teams in machine learning, I regard this as one of those hallowed mythical pieces of wisdom that is just totally wrong. It dramatically over-estimates both the chances and costs of hiring a bad employee, while discounting the huge, huge opportunity cost of not hiring rare, exceptional candidates. I’d much rather spend a year or two managing someone out as a result of actually trying to hire exceptional people than living with mediocre hires who memorized the right fizzbuzz HackerRank crap and said all the right Team Player catch phrases to get hired.

solveit 7y ago
How large is your company?
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  The policies in question have worked well for me doing team building in 4 companies, 3 were medium/large ecommerce companies (~1000-8000 employees), one was a 40 person start-up.
mc32 7y ago
A large company can afford bad hires. You can shuffle them around or find something they can do. A small company can not afford that luxury so they have to be more careful in their hiring. A bad hire completely distracts a small team.
- boring_twenties 7y ago
  Why is simply letting the bad employee go not mentioned as an option? We had a new hire that didn't work out at a place I used to work at. Fired after 3 months. No hard feelings, he took it well and found a good job a few weeks later. Everyone is happy.
  - qes 7y ago
    > Fired after 3 months. Which means you probably went 6 months or more without a role properly filled. On a small team that's a huge dent. For half a year. Not to mention the time spent in the hiring process itself, which you now get to repeat.
    - mc32 7y ago
      That’s one of the things. The other is some people are more litigious than others. When that happens, even though they don’t have a case, it can result in distractions —gags, evidence gathering, being called as witness, etc. On occasion companies will rather settle and get the distraction over with than go to court because it drains a small team who are now weary when hiring.
    - boring_twenties 7y ago
      I mean, if you keep a guy who can't do the job, you still end up without a role properly filled.
    - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
      You can’t have it both ways though. If you have a more selective process than the one that hires-then-fires-after-3-months, you’re _already_ going more than 6 months without filling the role, because by being risk averse to hiring “bad” candidates, you’re passing on good candidates. So either you pay the cost by trying more people more quickly, or you pay the cost desperately waiting and waiting because you’re so confident your interviewing filter is tuned correctly and that you know better regarding who to hire. (In a small company, the process of hiring is often quite poor because it’s idiosyncratically controlled by the early employees and founders, and usually reinforces their cultural views and their biases of interviewing, so having a restrictive filter is even more harmful to small companies.)
- mewpmewp2 7y ago
  Google for example does not hire when they think it is not beyond reasonable doubt that the hire is a good one. They rather let a good candidate pass. This should prove that numbers speak towards the idea that bad hires are very costly. Google's policy is also not to give feedback. 50 percent of their hires had to apply more than once. I would say large companies do not need that exceptional candidate since they have so many great ones already. Exceptional won't make a difference unless it is executive role or something like that.
  - gwbas1c 7y ago
    > 50 percent of their hires had to apply more than once. That's one of the reasons why I pass when a Google recruiter comes why way. (The other is that I don't want to move. I'm no longer a bachelor who can move on the drop of a hat, moving is way to disruptive to my family.)
  - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
    > “ This should prove that numbers speak towards the idea that bad hires are very costly.” Why? I do not agree that Google’s hiring practices have anything to do with “bad hire” costs.
tempestn 7y ago
Why do you assume the quoted phrase implies some ridiculous fizzbuzz HackerRank memorization-based hiring process? I agree with Spolsky that generally it's safer to err on the side of false negatives when hiring. I guess the exception would be if truly skilled people in your industry are extremely rare, so you essentially have no choice but to deal with false positives if you want to be able to hire at all. But none of that has anything to do with the screening process itself, and it's certainly not advocating screening based on bullshit.
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  The screening process is what generates the true/false positives & true/false negatives. Any policy about the relative importance of true/false positives vs negatives is a policy about screening processes.
wisty 7y ago
Most managers don't want an employee who will be best for the company, they want an employee who will be best for the manager. Easy to get along with, not too likely to cause extra work, etc.
test1235 7y ago
"The last time I came across a difficult problem and overcame it was ..." "The thing I enjoyed working on the most was ..." "In five years time, I see myself ..." "If I could choose to be any animal, I would be a ..."

solveit 7y ago

How large is your company?

mlthoughts2018 7y ago
The policies in question have worked well for me doing team building in 4 companies, 3 were medium/large ecommerce companies (~1000-8000 employees), one was a 40 person start-up.

mc32 7y ago

A large company can afford bad hires. You can shuffle them around or find something they can do. A small company can not afford that luxury so they have to be more careful in their hiring. A bad hire completely distracts a small team.

boring_twenties 7y ago
Why is simply letting the bad employee go not mentioned as an option? We had a new hire that didn't work out at a place I used to work at. Fired after 3 months. No hard feelings, he took it well and found a good job a few weeks later. Everyone is happy.
- qes 7y ago
  > Fired after 3 months. Which means you probably went 6 months or more without a role properly filled. On a small team that's a huge dent. For half a year. Not to mention the time spent in the hiring process itself, which you now get to repeat.
  - mc32 7y ago
    That’s one of the things. The other is some people are more litigious than others. When that happens, even though they don’t have a case, it can result in distractions —gags, evidence gathering, being called as witness, etc. On occasion companies will rather settle and get the distraction over with than go to court because it drains a small team who are now weary when hiring.
  - boring_twenties 7y ago
    I mean, if you keep a guy who can't do the job, you still end up without a role properly filled.
  - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
    You can’t have it both ways though. If you have a more selective process than the one that hires-then-fires-after-3-months, you’re _already_ going more than 6 months without filling the role, because by being risk averse to hiring “bad” candidates, you’re passing on good candidates. So either you pay the cost by trying more people more quickly, or you pay the cost desperately waiting and waiting because you’re so confident your interviewing filter is tuned correctly and that you know better regarding who to hire. (In a small company, the process of hiring is often quite poor because it’s idiosyncratically controlled by the early employees and founders, and usually reinforces their cultural views and their biases of interviewing, so having a restrictive filter is even more harmful to small companies.)
mewpmewp2 7y ago
Google for example does not hire when they think it is not beyond reasonable doubt that the hire is a good one. They rather let a good candidate pass. This should prove that numbers speak towards the idea that bad hires are very costly. Google's policy is also not to give feedback. 50 percent of their hires had to apply more than once. I would say large companies do not need that exceptional candidate since they have so many great ones already. Exceptional won't make a difference unless it is executive role or something like that.
- gwbas1c 7y ago
  > 50 percent of their hires had to apply more than once. That's one of the reasons why I pass when a Google recruiter comes why way. (The other is that I don't want to move. I'm no longer a bachelor who can move on the drop of a hat, moving is way to disruptive to my family.)
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  > “ This should prove that numbers speak towards the idea that bad hires are very costly.” Why? I do not agree that Google’s hiring practices have anything to do with “bad hire” costs.

tempestn 7y ago

Why do you assume the quoted phrase implies some ridiculous fizzbuzz HackerRank memorization-based hiring process? I agree with Spolsky that generally it's safer to err on the side of false negatives when hiring. I guess the exception would be if truly skilled people in your industry are extremely rare, so you essentially have no choice but to deal with false positives if you want to be able to hire at all. But none of that has anything to do with the screening process itself, and it's certainly not advocating screening based on bullshit.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago
The screening process is what generates the true/false positives & true/false negatives. Any policy about the relative importance of true/false positives vs negatives is a policy about screening processes.

wisty 7y ago

Most managers don't want an employee who will be best for the company, they want an employee who will be best for the manager. Easy to get along with, not too likely to cause extra work, etc.

test1235 7y ago

"The last time I came across a difficult problem and overcame it was ..." "The thing I enjoyed working on the most was ..." "In five years time, I see myself ..." "If I could choose to be any animal, I would be a ..."