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What I'm reading here is that even as an experienced interviewer you struggle to make the format effective and equitable. Sounds to me like the format isn't wo

What I'm reading here is that even as an experienced interviewer you struggle to make the format effective and equitable. Sounds to me like the format isn't worth keeping; time to hire more, and fire fast?

lbotos 5y ago
1. Often, legally, firing people is harder than hiring. 2. Hire more, fire fast sounds good on paper but will destroy morale as the team identity will be constantly influx. 3. Engineers will spend less time onboarding newer engineers to the detriment of everyone because well, they might not just last.
- dleslie 5y ago
  Basically everywhere in NA has allowances for probationary periods with at-will employment. Moreover, prospective hires could start on contract. Morale is improved when team members feel like they have some control over their membership. It seems like you're assuming that a great many people would be fired; why so? In my experience, having worked for several such companies, firing is rare because even minimal filters are effective. Resume check, reference check, and meet the team. Done.
  - ratww 5y ago
    > Basically everywhere in NA has allowances for probationary periods with at-will employment. Yep. Lots of places with even stricter pro-employee laws, including Europe, also have it.
  - StupidUser123 5y ago
    I’m not saying you’re categorically wrong, but this doesn’t match with my experience, at all. If you’re an HM and this works for you and your company, great, but the HMs responding here don’t agree. The processes you are questioning scale to thousands of people with varying backgrounds. It’s not an accident all of these companies do this. Your process places extreme trust in one group of people. It’s just so risky. Also, resumes are mostly bullshit, IMO. Reference checks are complete bullshit, IMO. I’ve worked with my buddies at startups (who get lofty titles) and just have them give me reference checks. Other references have asked me for call scripts. Also keep in mind that most of these big tech jobs are highly competitive. Your solution eventually requires a coin toss if you have limited spots. There’s only so much data you can collect from the process you propose. The natural thing is to then assess each candidate a bit more until you’re confident you’ve picked the right one. And then you’re here.
    - dleslie 5y ago
      I've hired more than my share, yes. Truly bullshit credentialing is immediately apparent to teams that receive new hires. In some places, it's fraud and actionable by the company as fraud. I don't think companies with billions in revenue really have a budget constraint on hiring; it's structural constraints that are holding them back. They can, and do, engage in mass hiring and construction of whole new departments when it suits their strategy. That said, further constraints can happen at the credentialling level; I'm not advocating hiring literally anyone.
  - prepend 5y ago
    How many people have you hired? This doesn’t seem like a perspective from experience but a proposed hypothetical in a world that doesn’t exist.
  - GeneralMayhem 5y ago
    What's practically possible is always a subset of what's legally possible. I think probationary periods/contract-to-hire situations are extremely unlikely to work for anything beyond absolute entry level, for a number of reasons. For one thing, it's a huge amount of uncertainty to put on the potential hire, which means you'll be strongly biasing your hiring pool towards people who don't have better options. It feels like in an effort to reduce the interview time, you've effectively expanded it to multiple months. Second, how do you calibrate the "default" option? Is the expectation that everyone on a probation period will be hired unless proven otherwise, or is it that most will be let go unless actively vouched for? Is that expectation clear across the team? If there's a mismatch across team members, you have big problems. People who want to keep a prospect will be annoyed if they're let go, and vice versa. People who need to work with a prospect will have to figure out whether it's safe to actually trust them with anything - on the one hand, you have to give them enough work to prove themselves; on the other hand, you can't give them anything too important or with too long a horizon, because they might be gone before they get to launch. And finally - how long does that trial period need to go on to be useful? The goal in designing a hiring process is to get a reasonable level of precision/recall (different companies will balance differently between those) with a reasonable level of investment. If you've increased investment without increasing precision, then you've done something wrong. Given how long it takes to ramp up a new hire and have them actually be productive, I don't think you're going to learn much in a ~6 month probationary period that you couldn't already tell in a day of interviews.
    - dleslie 5y ago
      The default option is simple: did the hire add meaningful value to the team? Very few people fail that simple test, in my experience; and folks who would have failed technical screenings would have excelled in subsequent performance-enhancing evaluations. Someone who can't balance a binary tree might be the single best technical coordinator you're going to hire, after all. I've worked at many companies, and those that hire fast, and fire fast, tend to be those that _fire least_. They have _lower expectations_ for performance, and so are more likely to be receptive to _training new hires_, rather than expecting them to hit the ground running as equally effective as their new team mates.
- abeppu 5y ago
  4. I think there's also a potential cost to your future ability to recruit. Once people know you're quick to fire, candidates will view your offer less favorably if they also have an offer from a company with a longer interview process, but who doesn't have the reputation for firing quickly.
- b20000 5y ago
  in the US employment is at will or whatever it's called so they can fire you on the spot for no reason at all.
  - thrtythreeforty 5y ago
    This is true but if it's well known that you fire, say, 30% of your hires after 6 months then you'll have a much harder time attracting the kind of candidates you want to be attracting. You can compensate for the devs' opportunity cost with, well, compensation, but you'll be competing with FAANG, whose high-turn reputation isn't even 30% bad (with the possible exception of Netflix)
  - GeneralMayhem 5y ago
    They can legally fire you on the spot, yes, but all that means is that the fired person can't sue their former employer. That doesn't mean it's actually a good strategy for the employer to do so frequently, because the employer's relationship with any given employee doesn't exist in a vacuum, and has effects on the employer's relationship with other employees and potential hires.
edmundsauto 5y ago
Hire fast and fire requires even more effort and commitment from a candidate, I’m not sure how that would be an improvement. Firing fast would be like 3 months of interviews! I’d also like to add that having multiple interviewers, if they have diverse backgrounds, is more likely to be equitable than a single interviewer.
- dleslie 5y ago
  It's not so much effort or commitment if the team is fully remote.
  - StupidUser123 5y ago
    You’re asking someone to quit their job to maybe get this new job. And you won’t know for months so all your other offers are gone. So if it doesn’t work out, you’re unemployed with no prospects. Sounds terrible. I’d take 15 interviews before taking that risk.
    - dleslie 5y ago
      If it takes months to determine that someone is a bad fit for a team then the team has internal issues that need to be resolved. Moreover, if someone has the skills on paper, and the references to support that, then any tech screening is unnecessary. It just tests for ability to pass tech screens.
      - kyawzazaw 5y ago
        That's what internships are in a way. Do you think that's a bad idea?
        TheCoelacanth 5y ago
        Internships are probably the best way to hire, but they only work for people at that specific stage of life. University students already have a three-month gap in their schedule where they aren't doing anything, so they are willing to take a temporary role to fill that gap. Experienced people who already have a job aren't going to drop that to take on a temporary role unless they have an unusually high risk-tolerance or unless they are desperate.
marssaxman 5y ago
"Hire more, fire fast" does not sound like a company I'd want to work for.
kjeetgill 5y ago
I never understand answers of this format: "status quo has flaw of some known, finite impact" time to "completely ridiculously overcompensate, overreact, and make arbitrary move?" I can't even fathom in what ways you think "time to hire more, and fire fast?" is more "effective and equitable"? You just shove even more risk onto individuals who might be getting their footing still. You're just turning a 8-9 hours commitment to an interview into a 6 month commitment. Sure, you get paid but you also have to deal with churn and burn. I mean, did you think stack ranking was a good idea?
- dleslie 5y ago
  The response is to the needless growth in complexity of the hiring process; advocating for reducing that complexity is appropriate. You're tacitly expressing a concern that a fast hiring commitment would be riskier; but that's not necessarily so. A minimal set of filters are meaningfully effective: resume, references, and meet the team. Anything beyond that doesn't have just diminishing returns, it can negatively impact the company by narrowing the field of viable candidates too far.
  - prepend 5y ago
    > expressing a concern that a fast hiring commitment would be riskier; but that's not necessarily so. I think it is necessarily so. Hiring fast is effectively hiring randomly and that is way riskier. Would you read random books? Watch random movies? Maybe, but probably not. Would you buy a random car? Of course not. Would you buy a random home? Etc etc You can logistically reduce the number of days by maybe doing multiple interviews into a single day, but that’s still hours. I’ve worked back in the dot com days where you were hired on the spot and that was fun until they fired on the spot. Having a well-designed process that takes a while is not perfect, but is better than the other options. “Slow to hire, slow to fire” is a good maxim.
    - dleslie 5y ago
      I'm not advocating for hiring literally anyone. If they pass your credential requirements, reference checks, and team meet then they're already passing through significant filtering.
TameAntelope 5y ago
Have you ever been fired before? It sucks. I’d much rather not get hired then get fired “fast”.
sokoloff 5y ago
To be honest, it sounds like "the format with only 3-4 interviews wasn't effective and equitable, so we adjusted it to make it more so, resulting in the current 5-7 format..."
- dleslie 5y ago
  Yah, and I expect they'll find that insufficient and find themselves considering 8-9 interviews! ;)
dclowd9901 5y ago
I’m not sure that’s feasible. Not sure what the roadblocks are, but every company I’ve ever worked for seems to have real reservations, usually at the HR level, with simply getting rid of bad eggs.
vsareto 5y ago
Fire fast is a harmful policy to employees in the US due to health insurance being tied to employment.
analyst74 5y ago
Amazon follows the hire fast PIP fast strategy. Look what that did to their reputation and company culture. Netflix is a little more successful at this, but they have a much smaller eng footprint and much higher compensation in order to attract and retain top performers.
- dleslie 5y ago
  Where I am, in BC, Amazon is recognized as a challenging but rewarding employer; one that compensates better than most and expects consistently strong results. I wouldn't consider that negative, really. Daunting, perhaps.

lbotos 5y ago

1. Often, legally, firing people is harder than hiring. 2. Hire more, fire fast sounds good on paper but will destroy morale as the team identity will be constantly influx. 3. Engineers will spend less time onboarding newer engineers to the detriment of everyone because well, they might not just last.

dleslie 5y ago
Basically everywhere in NA has allowances for probationary periods with at-will employment. Moreover, prospective hires could start on contract. Morale is improved when team members feel like they have some control over their membership. It seems like you're assuming that a great many people would be fired; why so? In my experience, having worked for several such companies, firing is rare because even minimal filters are effective. Resume check, reference check, and meet the team. Done.
- ratww 5y ago
  > Basically everywhere in NA has allowances for probationary periods with at-will employment. Yep. Lots of places with even stricter pro-employee laws, including Europe, also have it.
- StupidUser123 5y ago
  I’m not saying you’re categorically wrong, but this doesn’t match with my experience, at all. If you’re an HM and this works for you and your company, great, but the HMs responding here don’t agree. The processes you are questioning scale to thousands of people with varying backgrounds. It’s not an accident all of these companies do this. Your process places extreme trust in one group of people. It’s just so risky. Also, resumes are mostly bullshit, IMO. Reference checks are complete bullshit, IMO. I’ve worked with my buddies at startups (who get lofty titles) and just have them give me reference checks. Other references have asked me for call scripts. Also keep in mind that most of these big tech jobs are highly competitive. Your solution eventually requires a coin toss if you have limited spots. There’s only so much data you can collect from the process you propose. The natural thing is to then assess each candidate a bit more until you’re confident you’ve picked the right one. And then you’re here.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    I've hired more than my share, yes. Truly bullshit credentialing is immediately apparent to teams that receive new hires. In some places, it's fraud and actionable by the company as fraud. I don't think companies with billions in revenue really have a budget constraint on hiring; it's structural constraints that are holding them back. They can, and do, engage in mass hiring and construction of whole new departments when it suits their strategy. That said, further constraints can happen at the credentialling level; I'm not advocating hiring literally anyone.
- prepend 5y ago
  How many people have you hired? This doesn’t seem like a perspective from experience but a proposed hypothetical in a world that doesn’t exist.
- GeneralMayhem 5y ago
  What's practically possible is always a subset of what's legally possible. I think probationary periods/contract-to-hire situations are extremely unlikely to work for anything beyond absolute entry level, for a number of reasons. For one thing, it's a huge amount of uncertainty to put on the potential hire, which means you'll be strongly biasing your hiring pool towards people who don't have better options. It feels like in an effort to reduce the interview time, you've effectively expanded it to multiple months. Second, how do you calibrate the "default" option? Is the expectation that everyone on a probation period will be hired unless proven otherwise, or is it that most will be let go unless actively vouched for? Is that expectation clear across the team? If there's a mismatch across team members, you have big problems. People who want to keep a prospect will be annoyed if they're let go, and vice versa. People who need to work with a prospect will have to figure out whether it's safe to actually trust them with anything - on the one hand, you have to give them enough work to prove themselves; on the other hand, you can't give them anything too important or with too long a horizon, because they might be gone before they get to launch. And finally - how long does that trial period need to go on to be useful? The goal in designing a hiring process is to get a reasonable level of precision/recall (different companies will balance differently between those) with a reasonable level of investment. If you've increased investment without increasing precision, then you've done something wrong. Given how long it takes to ramp up a new hire and have them actually be productive, I don't think you're going to learn much in a ~6 month probationary period that you couldn't already tell in a day of interviews.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    The default option is simple: did the hire add meaningful value to the team? Very few people fail that simple test, in my experience; and folks who would have failed technical screenings would have excelled in subsequent performance-enhancing evaluations. Someone who can't balance a binary tree might be the single best technical coordinator you're going to hire, after all. I've worked at many companies, and those that hire fast, and fire fast, tend to be those that _fire least_. They have _lower expectations_ for performance, and so are more likely to be receptive to _training new hires_, rather than expecting them to hit the ground running as equally effective as their new team mates.
abeppu 5y ago
4. I think there's also a potential cost to your future ability to recruit. Once people know you're quick to fire, candidates will view your offer less favorably if they also have an offer from a company with a longer interview process, but who doesn't have the reputation for firing quickly.
b20000 5y ago
in the US employment is at will or whatever it's called so they can fire you on the spot for no reason at all.
- thrtythreeforty 5y ago
  This is true but if it's well known that you fire, say, 30% of your hires after 6 months then you'll have a much harder time attracting the kind of candidates you want to be attracting. You can compensate for the devs' opportunity cost with, well, compensation, but you'll be competing with FAANG, whose high-turn reputation isn't even 30% bad (with the possible exception of Netflix)
- GeneralMayhem 5y ago
  They can legally fire you on the spot, yes, but all that means is that the fired person can't sue their former employer. That doesn't mean it's actually a good strategy for the employer to do so frequently, because the employer's relationship with any given employee doesn't exist in a vacuum, and has effects on the employer's relationship with other employees and potential hires.

edmundsauto 5y ago

Hire fast and fire requires even more effort and commitment from a candidate, I’m not sure how that would be an improvement. Firing fast would be like 3 months of interviews! I’d also like to add that having multiple interviewers, if they have diverse backgrounds, is more likely to be equitable than a single interviewer.

dleslie 5y ago
It's not so much effort or commitment if the team is fully remote.
- StupidUser123 5y ago
  You’re asking someone to quit their job to maybe get this new job. And you won’t know for months so all your other offers are gone. So if it doesn’t work out, you’re unemployed with no prospects. Sounds terrible. I’d take 15 interviews before taking that risk.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    If it takes months to determine that someone is a bad fit for a team then the team has internal issues that need to be resolved. Moreover, if someone has the skills on paper, and the references to support that, then any tech screening is unnecessary. It just tests for ability to pass tech screens.
    - kyawzazaw 5y ago
      That's what internships are in a way. Do you think that's a bad idea?
      - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
        Internships are probably the best way to hire, but they only work for people at that specific stage of life. University students already have a three-month gap in their schedule where they aren't doing anything, so they are willing to take a temporary role to fill that gap. Experienced people who already have a job aren't going to drop that to take on a temporary role unless they have an unusually high risk-tolerance or unless they are desperate.

marssaxman 5y ago

"Hire more, fire fast" does not sound like a company I'd want to work for.

kjeetgill 5y ago

I never understand answers of this format: "status quo has flaw of some known, finite impact" time to "completely ridiculously overcompensate, overreact, and make arbitrary move?" I can't even fathom in what ways you think "time to hire more, and fire fast?" is more "effective and equitable"? You just shove even more risk onto individuals who might be getting their footing still. You're just turning a 8-9 hours commitment to an interview into a 6 month commitment. Sure, you get paid but you also have to deal with churn and burn. I mean, did you think stack ranking was a good idea?

dleslie 5y ago
The response is to the needless growth in complexity of the hiring process; advocating for reducing that complexity is appropriate. You're tacitly expressing a concern that a fast hiring commitment would be riskier; but that's not necessarily so. A minimal set of filters are meaningfully effective: resume, references, and meet the team. Anything beyond that doesn't have just diminishing returns, it can negatively impact the company by narrowing the field of viable candidates too far.
- prepend 5y ago
  > expressing a concern that a fast hiring commitment would be riskier; but that's not necessarily so. I think it is necessarily so. Hiring fast is effectively hiring randomly and that is way riskier. Would you read random books? Watch random movies? Maybe, but probably not. Would you buy a random car? Of course not. Would you buy a random home? Etc etc You can logistically reduce the number of days by maybe doing multiple interviews into a single day, but that’s still hours. I’ve worked back in the dot com days where you were hired on the spot and that was fun until they fired on the spot. Having a well-designed process that takes a while is not perfect, but is better than the other options. “Slow to hire, slow to fire” is a good maxim.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    I'm not advocating for hiring literally anyone. If they pass your credential requirements, reference checks, and team meet then they're already passing through significant filtering.

TameAntelope 5y ago

Have you ever been fired before? It sucks. I’d much rather not get hired then get fired “fast”.

sokoloff 5y ago

To be honest, it sounds like "the format with only 3-4 interviews wasn't effective and equitable, so we adjusted it to make it more so, resulting in the current 5-7 format..."

dleslie 5y ago
Yah, and I expect they'll find that insufficient and find themselves considering 8-9 interviews! ;)

dclowd9901 5y ago

I’m not sure that’s feasible. Not sure what the roadblocks are, but every company I’ve ever worked for seems to have real reservations, usually at the HR level, with simply getting rid of bad eggs.

vsareto 5y ago

Fire fast is a harmful policy to employees in the US due to health insurance being tied to employment.

analyst74 5y ago

Amazon follows the hire fast PIP fast strategy. Look what that did to their reputation and company culture. Netflix is a little more successful at this, but they have a much smaller eng footprint and much higher compensation in order to attract and retain top performers.

dleslie 5y ago
Where I am, in BC, Amazon is recognized as a challenging but rewarding employer; one that compensates better than most and expects consistently strong results. I wouldn't consider that negative, really. Daunting, perhaps.