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If they said in the interview they’re very comfortable with Vue.js and Postgres, and then you find out after a few weeks that actually they barely know Vue or P

If they said in the interview they’re very comfortable with Vue.js and Postgres, and then you find out after a few weeks that actually they barely know Vue or Postgres, they actually come from a React/SQLite background, they’ve overpromised. Rather than ensuring every bullet point on their resume is factual through six interviews I’ve found it’s better to assume they’re honest and as capable as advertised, interview for personality, and then if they’ve oversold themselves that’s why it’s called a 90 probationary period. I don’t get cranky if someone quits (even with no notice) within 90 days, for any reason. And I’ll let someone go within 90 days, for any (legal, ethical) reason.

nomel 4y ago
> And I’ll let someone go within 90 days, for any (legal, ethical) reason. I think it's a cultural difference. Many companies see firing as a failure to competently hire. Many employees see firing as a sign of instability. In the few startups I've worked at, I saw top talent leave at the first sign of instability/layoffs.
nuclearnice1 4y ago
I agree with the other poster. The possibility of ending up unemployed is a bit stressful here. What percentage of people get let go within 90 days?
- PebblesHD 4y ago
  For us, it’s a tiny fraction. I’ve hired around 30 engineers over 5 years and we’ve let go of 2 during probation, both for dramatically overstating their capabilities compared to their actual experience, to such a degree that it was clear it was done intentionally and with no effort to try and bridge the gap with learning during the period. Others who may have slightly embellished their skills but could learn as they went turned out fantastically, and I feel like those sorts of hires would not make it through the multi-round grillings satirised in the article.
  - nuclearnice1 4y ago
    That number might be low enough that there is no need to emphasize the probation period to candidates. If 20% of candidates are getting cut after the probation, I’m very hesitant. Losing 5% quickly is only slightly above normal and may, in fact, be a positive sign of quality control.
    - freddie_mercury 4y ago
      The poster is in Australia which has a different set of employment practices than America. Every company in Australia talks about the probation period. During probation it is basically like America at-will employment. After probation it is harder to get rid of staff with legal standards on dismissal periods, redundancy pay, and so on. They can take you the Fair Work Commission for an unfair dismissal claim so companies have have processes in place to make sure they don't face that risk, which includes things like written warnings for underperformance, setting clear expectations, and giving the employee a chance to correct underperformance. Managers in Australia much prefer to rid of underperformers during probation.
  - BuckRogers 4y ago
    I like that approach now more that you said that. It's very true, many will surprise you for various ways, and would never survive the absurd interview gauntlet and tests. I just present myself as-is, which is probably less impressive, but I don't want to be hired somewhere based on false pretenses. That's just stress I don't need. I'd rather just switch careers and find something else to do before I do that. So I guess I just don't care enough to lie, which is kind of a lack of ambition of sorts. Misrepresentation is probably a better qualification for a sales position though. I do think with poignant questions during interviews, you can tease out if someone knows what they're talking about. I just had a few interviews at a Fortune 500 and they peppered me with pretty great questions. Simple stuff, but good questions like, "what is a singleton" etc. You need to give a candidate some leeway, it's stressful and I don't sit around thinking about what a singleton is.. but I did have an acceptable answers to questions like that in my mind. "A static class which can only have a single instance". They liked me, but didn't hire me. It's a tough industry that has brought engineers to their knees. Begging when nothing would work without them. It was supposed to be the next buoy of the American working class but instead the state of affairs is pathetic. That's what we get for disrespecting collective bargaining. At this point, there's definitely easier ways to make a buck than software. I wouldn't do it again but it's all I know.
- laserlight 4y ago
  > The possibility of ending up unemployed is a bit stressful here. Isn't getting unemployed always a possibility? It seems to me that parent commenter makes things clear and transparent to the candidate. Otherwise, the company could just fire without any such probation period anyways. Why should a company stick with an employee if the employee misrepresented themselves in the first place.
dfee 4y ago
Find me an engineer who knows both vue.js and Postgres and they’re worth their pound of salt. And, if you’re differentiating against React and SQLite - e.g. they’re not familiar with JSONB style queries or CTEs, but instead have some alternative, par familiarity with another db… and the same level of sophistication with an FE stack - e.g usage of useRef vs forwardRef… and you cut them loose… well, they’ll probably be going on to a better position at another company.
- rejor121 4y ago
  Vue / Vuetify / Nuxt dev here, and a pinch of php. I used to work with some Postgres in a previous job. Personally I don’t understand how people can keep switching between different libraries all the time. I’ve been working Vue for the past year and I still know I don’t know everything. Glad I’ve gotten hang of typescript though.
- throwaway74829 4y ago
  Vue / C# / Postgres / AWS / Linux Sysadminery here. Glad to see there’s still some love for DB knowledge. Seems like everyday someone is coming to me with an issue that could be quickly solved by leaning on a mature RDBMS, instead of an ORM/NoSQL/flavor of the year tool. Too bad most roles in this industry (that pay well and don’t work you to premature balding) need niche specialists, instead of deep generalists. And all the faddery (see: MongoDB, MySQL, DocumentDB). “We don’t need a full-fledged RDBMS. We’ll ride this malnourished pony all the way past the finish line. We gotta stay lean; we gotta stay hungry. There’s no ‘OLTP’ in first to market.” t. TC 75k 7yoe
- conradfr 4y ago
  Hello, please deliver the salt. Of course "knows" is not that precise. Postgresql is vast and complex.
ReptileMan 4y ago
And anyone should be able to learn a new framework/tech stack in a week anyway. Unless it's asp or laravel. Then it is two weeks in which you have to be constantly drunk.
wly_cdgr 4y ago
Wow, that is...really sane
thematrixturtle 4y ago
I would expect any halfway decent hire with real React and SQLite experience to be able to pick up survival level Vue and PG within those 90 days though? At the end of the day JS is JS and SQL is SQL, particularly if you're a dev and not a DBA. You'd have a problem if they (say) have never touched a database before.

nomel 4y ago

> And I’ll let someone go within 90 days, for any (legal, ethical) reason. I think it's a cultural difference. Many companies see firing as a failure to competently hire. Many employees see firing as a sign of instability. In the few startups I've worked at, I saw top talent leave at the first sign of instability/layoffs.

nuclearnice1 4y ago

I agree with the other poster. The possibility of ending up unemployed is a bit stressful here. What percentage of people get let go within 90 days?

PebblesHD 4y ago
For us, it’s a tiny fraction. I’ve hired around 30 engineers over 5 years and we’ve let go of 2 during probation, both for dramatically overstating their capabilities compared to their actual experience, to such a degree that it was clear it was done intentionally and with no effort to try and bridge the gap with learning during the period. Others who may have slightly embellished their skills but could learn as they went turned out fantastically, and I feel like those sorts of hires would not make it through the multi-round grillings satirised in the article.
- nuclearnice1 4y ago
  That number might be low enough that there is no need to emphasize the probation period to candidates. If 20% of candidates are getting cut after the probation, I’m very hesitant. Losing 5% quickly is only slightly above normal and may, in fact, be a positive sign of quality control.
  - freddie_mercury 4y ago
    The poster is in Australia which has a different set of employment practices than America. Every company in Australia talks about the probation period. During probation it is basically like America at-will employment. After probation it is harder to get rid of staff with legal standards on dismissal periods, redundancy pay, and so on. They can take you the Fair Work Commission for an unfair dismissal claim so companies have have processes in place to make sure they don't face that risk, which includes things like written warnings for underperformance, setting clear expectations, and giving the employee a chance to correct underperformance. Managers in Australia much prefer to rid of underperformers during probation.
- BuckRogers 4y ago
  I like that approach now more that you said that. It's very true, many will surprise you for various ways, and would never survive the absurd interview gauntlet and tests. I just present myself as-is, which is probably less impressive, but I don't want to be hired somewhere based on false pretenses. That's just stress I don't need. I'd rather just switch careers and find something else to do before I do that. So I guess I just don't care enough to lie, which is kind of a lack of ambition of sorts. Misrepresentation is probably a better qualification for a sales position though. I do think with poignant questions during interviews, you can tease out if someone knows what they're talking about. I just had a few interviews at a Fortune 500 and they peppered me with pretty great questions. Simple stuff, but good questions like, "what is a singleton" etc. You need to give a candidate some leeway, it's stressful and I don't sit around thinking about what a singleton is.. but I did have an acceptable answers to questions like that in my mind. "A static class which can only have a single instance". They liked me, but didn't hire me. It's a tough industry that has brought engineers to their knees. Begging when nothing would work without them. It was supposed to be the next buoy of the American working class but instead the state of affairs is pathetic. That's what we get for disrespecting collective bargaining. At this point, there's definitely easier ways to make a buck than software. I wouldn't do it again but it's all I know.
laserlight 4y ago
> The possibility of ending up unemployed is a bit stressful here. Isn't getting unemployed always a possibility? It seems to me that parent commenter makes things clear and transparent to the candidate. Otherwise, the company could just fire without any such probation period anyways. Why should a company stick with an employee if the employee misrepresented themselves in the first place.

dfee 4y ago

Find me an engineer who knows both vue.js and Postgres and they’re worth their pound of salt. And, if you’re differentiating against React and SQLite - e.g. they’re not familiar with JSONB style queries or CTEs, but instead have some alternative, par familiarity with another db… and the same level of sophistication with an FE stack - e.g usage of useRef vs forwardRef… and you cut them loose… well, they’ll probably be going on to a better position at another company.

rejor121 4y ago
Vue / Vuetify / Nuxt dev here, and a pinch of php. I used to work with some Postgres in a previous job. Personally I don’t understand how people can keep switching between different libraries all the time. I’ve been working Vue for the past year and I still know I don’t know everything. Glad I’ve gotten hang of typescript though.
throwaway74829 4y ago
Vue / C# / Postgres / AWS / Linux Sysadminery here. Glad to see there’s still some love for DB knowledge. Seems like everyday someone is coming to me with an issue that could be quickly solved by leaning on a mature RDBMS, instead of an ORM/NoSQL/flavor of the year tool. Too bad most roles in this industry (that pay well and don’t work you to premature balding) need niche specialists, instead of deep generalists. And all the faddery (see: MongoDB, MySQL, DocumentDB). “We don’t need a full-fledged RDBMS. We’ll ride this malnourished pony all the way past the finish line. We gotta stay lean; we gotta stay hungry. There’s no ‘OLTP’ in first to market.” t. TC 75k 7yoe
conradfr 4y ago
Hello, please deliver the salt. Of course "knows" is not that precise. Postgresql is vast and complex.

ReptileMan 4y ago

And anyone should be able to learn a new framework/tech stack in a week anyway. Unless it's asp or laravel. Then it is two weeks in which you have to be constantly drunk.

wly_cdgr 4y ago

Wow, that is...really sane

thematrixturtle 4y ago

I would expect any halfway decent hire with real React and SQLite experience to be able to pick up survival level Vue and PG within those 90 days though? At the end of the day JS is JS and SQL is SQL, particularly if you're a dev and not a DBA. You'd have a problem if they (say) have never touched a database before.