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It makes sense if you think of this as pruning dead weight while also getting in fresh inflow of talented people (some of whom will inevitably not work out late
by hzay 4y ago
It makes sense if you think of this as pruning dead weight while also getting in fresh inflow of talented people (some of whom will inevitably not work out later).
- snozolli 4y agoWhy is management hiring people who turn out to be "dead weight"? Particularly with the ludicrous interview cycle employed by big tech companies these days? It's a failure of management to hire correctly and/or manage and develop people. Management is broken and incompetent and relentlessly scapegoats those below them.
- skeeter2020 4y agoHiring is really hard. I try to be very selective, use work-like assessments and wait until it's painful to add headcount, but I also need to go fast enough to keep devs interested and not waste their time, and interviews at best are only a very rough proxy-indicator of what the future looks like. Firing is even harder.
- cpitman 4y agoIf you have a method for hiring exactly the right people, that those people will put up with (ie a process that filters out "dead weight" but does not filter out high performers), then that is a startup right there. But overall, no one has magical hiring process that doesn't involve finding out actual performance after they start.
- narwally 4y agoYep, google published a bunch of research about their hiring processes and it basically said "we've tried everything and nothing works... anybody else have any ideas?"
- midoridensha 4y agoYet they continue their leetcode interview process...
- snozolli 4y agoIf you have a method for hiring exactly the right people, that those people will put up with Yeah, hire and then show actual managerial skill. If you still can't get the performance you need, then fire them. Tech hiring culture has become completely bananas and it wastes insane amounts of resources. Tech management in the US 1) can't hire competently, 2) can't lead, 3) can't develop those under them and 4) can't man up and fire the employees they mistakenly hired and failed to lead.
- smachiz 4y agoThat's not just tech. It's everywhere. It's _really_ hard to hire good people consistently.
- coredog64 4y agoGriggs vs Duke Power might like a word.
- brewdad 4y agoPlenty of terrible employees interview well. Many potentially great employees don't interview well.
- hd95489 4y agoTerrible employees have lots of practice
- snozolli 4y agoSo fire them. It's bizarre that companies appear to think that you should do cargo cult interviewing, sometimes multiple rounds with months of waiting around, then hire people, fail to lead or develop them, then just dump them en masse. Hire them and if you can't get the performance you need, then you due them. Alternatively, hire them as contract-to-hire if your head of HR has conditioned you to be terrified of doing what you're allowed to do in the US.
- kamaal 4y ago>>Why is management hiring people who turn out to be "dead weight"? People are rarely ever dead weight. Products and services most certainly are. Products/Projects etc fail for a variety of reasons, and it can often be hard to anticipate if they will. When you are building them you need the top people to build it for you. If the product fails, you now have people you have to pay for running the product that doesn't earn you money. Now you make a loss. While you did hire the top people, the product failed and now you don't need them. Keeping them around costs lots of money and, their work, even if high quality hasn't given much profits. It is then you have to let go people.
- snozolli 4y agoIf the product fails, you now have people you have to pay for product that doesn't earn you money. Now you make a loss. Sounds like capitalism to me. Better get to work developing new projects and products to stem that loss.
- kamaal 4y ago>>Better get to work developing new projects and products to stem that loss. Yes. The road to progress in any system involves being known as someone who initiates new order of things. And always remember this. Its the new projects, and initiatives that get most of the resources because people want to see them win.
- hzay 4y agoHiring is not a perfectly solved problem, so you should cut whoever you're accusing some slack. Also, making the relationship work is a two-way responsibility, not just that of the management.
- ferrumfist 4y ago> pruning dead weight That wasn't my experience with the current layoffs at big tech. There was no effort to find positions for the engineers who performed well in the previous year(s). They just cut some orgs by the hundreds (I was in a call with 350+ other devs, many of whom are far smarter and more experienced devs than myself). They just started cutting "weight" at some point, the "dead" adjective was dropped during the previous rounds of layoffs.
- fidgewidge 4y agoSmart + experienced != productive and valuable. It's possible to be good at your job and also dead weight. Motivation matters.