4 ms·

I’ve just hired a wrong person. I’m extremely worried how I should manage an exit plan with her, I don’t see a good way of minimizing the impact. Some employer

I’ve just hired a wrong person. I’m extremely worried how I should manage an exit plan with her, I don’t see a good way of minimizing the impact. Some employers are stupid and make bad decisions because they’re too shy to ask for a third round of interview when we assume everyone at that level will know the standard set of JS skills, especially since the market is difficult for employers. While it’s painful to give them the time to evaluate you properly, it may also save you from a bad employer.

philliphaydon 4y ago
This is why propbation periods exist. It’s a chance for the employee or employer to back out.
- rnk 4y ago
  Probationary periods are good for companies, but they're horrible for early stage engineers. They don't know how to take it, and they probably don't have a lot of money saved up. I think if companies decide to fire someone after a probationary period they should give them a $1,000 bonus or something to carry them over. That engineer has given up other opportunities and maybe moved or made changes in their life. Not everyone is a reasonably well off software engineer with money in the bank.
  - snovv_crash 4y ago
    Probation periods are also good for employees. If you arrive at a company and the new boss screams at you to work harder you can leave without having to stay for the full notice period.
    - rnk 4y ago
      I can quit any job any time I want in the us, perhaps unless I've signed an unusual contract. Never seen that in software but I'm also not a contractor but a full time employee only. So what's the benefit to the employee to be on probation?
      - philliphaydon 4y ago
        I don’t know about the US but in UK, NZ, AUS, Singapore, Taiwan (countries I know about) it’s pretty standard to have a notice period of 1-2 months. So you can’t “just quit”. Probation shortens that notice period to typically 1 week however most people tend to leave straight away as it’s fruitless to both parties if the employee stays.
      - snovv_crash 4y ago
        Standard contract in Europe is 1 month notice for the first year, after that 3 months. This way there's actually time for handover and employers can better invest in and give responsibility to their employees.
  - conradfr 4y ago
    In France if you're let go during the probation period you're entitled to unemployment (if you have accrued the rights).
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > This is why propbation periods exist. It’s a chance for the employee or employer to back out. It's not an equal risk though - the employer can easily weather (or not even notice) the ending of that employment, while the employee undergoes a life-changing event.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    I disagree. > the employer can easily weather In a large business maybe, but more often than not in a large business you're a number and you're gonna pass probation regardless. In a smaller business, the cost of recruitment process can be huge, it's not just 1 hour interview and you're done as an employer. It's hours of reviewing CVs, contacting people, arranging times, conducting interviews, weening people out, disruption to your primary job role, etc etc. That's a huge cost and drain on the business. If the business decides they don't want you during that probation period, you must have done something pretty bad, because that's a huge cost sink to that business. In a medium business alot of that goes away, sure, but they pay for in recruitment fees, interviews (less) offers, onboarding, etc. My point is, its very difficult for a business to weather this stuff. If a business lets you go during a probation period, it must really not be a good fit. I've been involved in some recruitment process over my 18 year career, never the primary person doing it, so only reviewed CVs and been in the interviews. Only once did we let someone go during probation, because he was quite toxic and spent all his time complaining rather than working. At the same time I've only seen 1 person quit during probation after 1 week. He was hired to do Design and HTML/CSS, but decided after 1 week he didn't like doing HTML/CSS and decided to leave. Which made my boss absolutely furious because of the wasted time that the typical 1 week notice was thrown out the window and he was asked to leave the building right away.
    - lelanthran 4y ago
      > In a smaller business, the cost of recruitment process can be huge, it's not just 1 hour interview and you're done as an employer. It's hours of reviewing CVs, contacting people, arranging times, conducting interviews, weening people out, disruption to your primary job role, etc etc. That's a huge cost and drain on the business. Not as life-changing to the business as it is to the employee. > At the same time I've only seen 1 person quit during probation after 1 week. He was hired to do Design and HTML/CSS, but decided after 1 week he didn't like doing HTML/CSS and decided to leave. Which made my boss absolutely furious because of the wasted time that the typical 1 week notice was thrown out the window and he was asked to leave the building right away. And yet, that did not cause the business to pay the current employees less, or downstaff, did it? After all, if the financial implication did not involve cutting costs down just to survive, then it is not comparable to an individual, who literally has to spend less money and cut out existing costs just to survive.
jahewson 4y ago
It happens. It's awkward because not only does it obviously suck for the employee but it means there's a big problem with the interview process. When I worked for a company that encountered the same problem we corrected for it by adding a screening call, after CTO chat and before an on-site. We used that call with a senior engineer to perform a trivial live-coding problem in Code Sandbox. Every candidate got the same problem, so it became our benchmark. It was a 5 minute problem, 10-15 if you're nervous in an interview. We were able to weed out not only all the candidates who couldn't solve it, but those that took 40 minutes, those that could barely find their way around a text editor, those who struggled to write syntacticly correct JS, and those who had to rely on Google to write a for loop. For those rare candidates that completed the problem rapidly, we would give them a follow-on question that was a more typical interview question, just so that they didn't think our bar was set stupidly low.
- rnk 4y ago
  Adding three interviews put you a little close to the joke situation on the original poster's article. Asking everyone to write fizz buzz smart though.
kurupt213 4y ago
Try to develop her during the probationary period. Sometimes it’s just a rough start

philliphaydon 4y ago

This is why propbation periods exist. It’s a chance for the employee or employer to back out.

rnk 4y ago
Probationary periods are good for companies, but they're horrible for early stage engineers. They don't know how to take it, and they probably don't have a lot of money saved up. I think if companies decide to fire someone after a probationary period they should give them a $1,000 bonus or something to carry them over. That engineer has given up other opportunities and maybe moved or made changes in their life. Not everyone is a reasonably well off software engineer with money in the bank.
- snovv_crash 4y ago
  Probation periods are also good for employees. If you arrive at a company and the new boss screams at you to work harder you can leave without having to stay for the full notice period.
  - rnk 4y ago
    I can quit any job any time I want in the us, perhaps unless I've signed an unusual contract. Never seen that in software but I'm also not a contractor but a full time employee only. So what's the benefit to the employee to be on probation?
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      I don’t know about the US but in UK, NZ, AUS, Singapore, Taiwan (countries I know about) it’s pretty standard to have a notice period of 1-2 months. So you can’t “just quit”. Probation shortens that notice period to typically 1 week however most people tend to leave straight away as it’s fruitless to both parties if the employee stays.
    - snovv_crash 4y ago
      Standard contract in Europe is 1 month notice for the first year, after that 3 months. This way there's actually time for handover and employers can better invest in and give responsibility to their employees.
- conradfr 4y ago
  In France if you're let go during the probation period you're entitled to unemployment (if you have accrued the rights).
lelanthran 4y ago
> This is why propbation periods exist. It’s a chance for the employee or employer to back out. It's not an equal risk though - the employer can easily weather (or not even notice) the ending of that employment, while the employee undergoes a life-changing event.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  I disagree. > the employer can easily weather In a large business maybe, but more often than not in a large business you're a number and you're gonna pass probation regardless. In a smaller business, the cost of recruitment process can be huge, it's not just 1 hour interview and you're done as an employer. It's hours of reviewing CVs, contacting people, arranging times, conducting interviews, weening people out, disruption to your primary job role, etc etc. That's a huge cost and drain on the business. If the business decides they don't want you during that probation period, you must have done something pretty bad, because that's a huge cost sink to that business. In a medium business alot of that goes away, sure, but they pay for in recruitment fees, interviews (less) offers, onboarding, etc. My point is, its very difficult for a business to weather this stuff. If a business lets you go during a probation period, it must really not be a good fit. I've been involved in some recruitment process over my 18 year career, never the primary person doing it, so only reviewed CVs and been in the interviews. Only once did we let someone go during probation, because he was quite toxic and spent all his time complaining rather than working. At the same time I've only seen 1 person quit during probation after 1 week. He was hired to do Design and HTML/CSS, but decided after 1 week he didn't like doing HTML/CSS and decided to leave. Which made my boss absolutely furious because of the wasted time that the typical 1 week notice was thrown out the window and he was asked to leave the building right away.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > In a smaller business, the cost of recruitment process can be huge, it's not just 1 hour interview and you're done as an employer. It's hours of reviewing CVs, contacting people, arranging times, conducting interviews, weening people out, disruption to your primary job role, etc etc. That's a huge cost and drain on the business. Not as life-changing to the business as it is to the employee. > At the same time I've only seen 1 person quit during probation after 1 week. He was hired to do Design and HTML/CSS, but decided after 1 week he didn't like doing HTML/CSS and decided to leave. Which made my boss absolutely furious because of the wasted time that the typical 1 week notice was thrown out the window and he was asked to leave the building right away. And yet, that did not cause the business to pay the current employees less, or downstaff, did it? After all, if the financial implication did not involve cutting costs down just to survive, then it is not comparable to an individual, who literally has to spend less money and cut out existing costs just to survive.

jahewson 4y ago

It happens. It's awkward because not only does it obviously suck for the employee but it means there's a big problem with the interview process. When I worked for a company that encountered the same problem we corrected for it by adding a screening call, after CTO chat and before an on-site. We used that call with a senior engineer to perform a trivial live-coding problem in Code Sandbox. Every candidate got the same problem, so it became our benchmark. It was a 5 minute problem, 10-15 if you're nervous in an interview. We were able to weed out not only all the candidates who couldn't solve it, but those that took 40 minutes, those that could barely find their way around a text editor, those who struggled to write syntacticly correct JS, and those who had to rely on Google to write a for loop. For those rare candidates that completed the problem rapidly, we would give them a follow-on question that was a more typical interview question, just so that they didn't think our bar was set stupidly low.

rnk 4y ago
Adding three interviews put you a little close to the joke situation on the original poster's article. Asking everyone to write fizz buzz smart though.

kurupt213 4y ago

Try to develop her during the probationary period. Sometimes it’s just a rough start