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"but the real cost of an upfront hire is my time, not money" The most arduous hiring processes are often little more than an illusion of selection, yielding a

"but the real cost of an upfront hire is my time, not money" The most arduous hiring processes are often little more than an illusion of selection, yielding a process that is more the rolling of dice. Most hiring processes hire based upon interview skills that have extraordinarily little correlation with job performance. Google has such a famous interview process that everyone tries to clone it. For that they get employees with an average tenure of 3.2 years, made worse that internal project-to-project migration is endemic. They have a tiny core of institutional knowledge, and then a passing army of travelers. This industry would be far more robust if it hired quickly and fired fast, because the only way you know how someone will do in the role/team/org is by actually having them in the role/team/org. Everything else is just loose proxies that do little. Iterate through people and just punt out the ones that don't work. That shouldn't be a big deal.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago
Interviews aren't the only cost of hiring. Onboarding is very expensive for knowledge workers.
- defaultname 5y ago
  Onboarding is expensive at dysfunctional organizations. Further, the reality that churn is high among better employees [1] offsets the concern. But regardless, going through an extensive vetting process is an illusion. It has extraordinarily little correlation with actual work fit or productivity, but the more "rigorous" the process, the more likely you are to stick with a poor fit. [1] - low performers will hang around forever. The fundamental of the hire slow/fire slow reality is that eventually every organization is 80% dead weight. If you want to avoid onboarding costs (versus dealing with the issues that make onboarding expensive, which is almost always institutional liabilities), hire the worst candidates and they'll be with you forever.
  - SilurianWenlock 5y ago
    perfectly said +1
johncessna 5y ago
> This industry would be far more robust if it hired quickly and fired fast Agreed 100%. Maybe the fail fast movements in the SDLC, devops, marketing, and product management will start reaching into HR.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago

Interviews aren't the only cost of hiring. Onboarding is very expensive for knowledge workers.

defaultname 5y ago
Onboarding is expensive at dysfunctional organizations. Further, the reality that churn is high among better employees [1] offsets the concern. But regardless, going through an extensive vetting process is an illusion. It has extraordinarily little correlation with actual work fit or productivity, but the more "rigorous" the process, the more likely you are to stick with a poor fit. [1] - low performers will hang around forever. The fundamental of the hire slow/fire slow reality is that eventually every organization is 80% dead weight. If you want to avoid onboarding costs (versus dealing with the issues that make onboarding expensive, which is almost always institutional liabilities), hire the worst candidates and they'll be with you forever.
- SilurianWenlock 5y ago
  perfectly said +1

johncessna 5y ago

> This industry would be far more robust if it hired quickly and fired fast Agreed 100%. Maybe the fail fast movements in the SDLC, devops, marketing, and product management will start reaching into HR.