4 ms·

I never understand answers of this format: "status quo has flaw of some known, finite impact" time to "completely ridiculously overcompensate, overreact, and ma

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.
    - rockemsockem 5y ago
      Resumes aren't really credentials. They're lists of things provided by the individual themselves and are almost always inflated in some way. Reference checks are just "I got someone you don't know (and shouldn't trust) to say good things about me", and meet the team is just "I can talk to people and sound smart for about an hour or two". There are a very large number of idiots who can do those things. I strongly disagree that this is a significant filter.
      - dleslie 5y ago
        Those who lie on their resume in a harmful way are immediately apparent upon hiring, and so are quick to fire. Those who do not, are not, and aren't fired. It's really not the risk folks seem to think it is.
        prepend 5y ago
        Why do you think it’s easy to find who has lied on their resume? It can take weeks for someone to orient, and as mentioned all over this thread it’s hard to fire people. I’d rather use a system that avoids hiring people that will need to be fired. Blindly trusting resumes is silly since resumes are hard to verify.
        dleslie 5y ago
        It's not easy to find liars. It's easy to find who are underperforming. There's a difference between the two. Resume, references, and team meeting filters out almost everyone who needs to be fired. Folks who lie on their resume, who arrange dishonest references and who defraud their way through a meet and greet are _exceedingly rare_. It's such a vanishingly small segment of possibility that it's not worth troubling oneself over. The reality is that companies use complex and obtuse hiring practices to cover for poor internal practices. They recognize an inability to deliver and perform on their teams, and consider it a hiring failure; but the reality, most of the time, is that it's a structural or management failure. Most hires, most of the time, are sufficiently able to deliver on their desired roles; but often, management is unwilling and unable to identify that they are responsible for poor performance. And so they blame the candidates, the new hires, to their teams. Not themselves.
- kjeetgill 5y ago
  I guess I don't think 2 phone calls and 5-6 hr onsite is that complex. Maybe the onsite could be 3 instead: 2 code + behavioral, but I can't imagine wanting to do less than that.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    5-6 hr onsite is a strong filter against folks who are presently employed; particularly those who cannot spare personal days or unpaid days for every interview.
    - GeneralMayhem 5y ago
      I don't think that argument is particularly relevant in the tech industry. It's not that hard to find a "sick" day, even if you don't have unlimited PTO. And especially during COVID, where going missing for a day might go unnoticed for a lot of people.
      - mahalel 5y ago
        Are you really advocating people take sick days to interview for other jobs?
        icedchai 5y ago
        That is actually a pretty normal thing to do, yes.
        GeneralMayhem 5y ago
        Well... yes. I think that for most HN commenters, who work for a non-hourly salary and provide hard-to-quantify value in a seller's market for labor, it's generally possible to get a day off if you need it. Many tech companies have gone to "unlimited" PTO, so there's no cost to taking a few days off. But even outside that, almost no managers are following the letter of the law. Last time I changed jobs, my employer at the time had explicit PTO time, but unlimited sick leave, and in practice during COVID (and especially near any holiday) was pretty lax with accounting for "I need to be out on Friday afternoon" as long as work was getting done and you were somewhat responsive to email/pings on the day in question. I wasn't hunting very actively, so it was just the one day of interviews with one potential new employer - I concede that if you needed to do many full-day interviews, it would eventually become conspicuous.

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.
  - rockemsockem 5y ago
    Resumes aren't really credentials. They're lists of things provided by the individual themselves and are almost always inflated in some way. Reference checks are just "I got someone you don't know (and shouldn't trust) to say good things about me", and meet the team is just "I can talk to people and sound smart for about an hour or two". There are a very large number of idiots who can do those things. I strongly disagree that this is a significant filter.
    - dleslie 5y ago
      Those who lie on their resume in a harmful way are immediately apparent upon hiring, and so are quick to fire. Those who do not, are not, and aren't fired. It's really not the risk folks seem to think it is.
      - prepend 5y ago
        Why do you think it’s easy to find who has lied on their resume? It can take weeks for someone to orient, and as mentioned all over this thread it’s hard to fire people. I’d rather use a system that avoids hiring people that will need to be fired. Blindly trusting resumes is silly since resumes are hard to verify.
        dleslie 5y ago
        It's not easy to find liars. It's easy to find who are underperforming. There's a difference between the two. Resume, references, and team meeting filters out almost everyone who needs to be fired. Folks who lie on their resume, who arrange dishonest references and who defraud their way through a meet and greet are _exceedingly rare_. It's such a vanishingly small segment of possibility that it's not worth troubling oneself over. The reality is that companies use complex and obtuse hiring practices to cover for poor internal practices. They recognize an inability to deliver and perform on their teams, and consider it a hiring failure; but the reality, most of the time, is that it's a structural or management failure. Most hires, most of the time, are sufficiently able to deliver on their desired roles; but often, management is unwilling and unable to identify that they are responsible for poor performance. And so they blame the candidates, the new hires, to their teams. Not themselves.
kjeetgill 5y ago
I guess I don't think 2 phone calls and 5-6 hr onsite is that complex. Maybe the onsite could be 3 instead: 2 code + behavioral, but I can't imagine wanting to do less than that.
- dleslie 5y ago
  5-6 hr onsite is a strong filter against folks who are presently employed; particularly those who cannot spare personal days or unpaid days for every interview.
  - GeneralMayhem 5y ago
    I don't think that argument is particularly relevant in the tech industry. It's not that hard to find a "sick" day, even if you don't have unlimited PTO. And especially during COVID, where going missing for a day might go unnoticed for a lot of people.
    - mahalel 5y ago
      Are you really advocating people take sick days to interview for other jobs?
      - icedchai 5y ago
        That is actually a pretty normal thing to do, yes.
      - GeneralMayhem 5y ago
        Well... yes. I think that for most HN commenters, who work for a non-hourly salary and provide hard-to-quantify value in a seller's market for labor, it's generally possible to get a day off if you need it. Many tech companies have gone to "unlimited" PTO, so there's no cost to taking a few days off. But even outside that, almost no managers are following the letter of the law. Last time I changed jobs, my employer at the time had explicit PTO time, but unlimited sick leave, and in practice during COVID (and especially near any holiday) was pretty lax with accounting for "I need to be out on Friday afternoon" as long as work was getting done and you were somewhat responsive to email/pings on the day in question. I wasn't hunting very actively, so it was just the one day of interviews with one potential new employer - I concede that if you needed to do many full-day interviews, it would eventually become conspicuous.