France here (not Paris). I’m a small startup, I spent 1 year going beyond 2 employees, and I needed to be 9. I had the income for 9, so I’m not a flimsy startup

France here (not Paris). I’m a small startup, I spent 1 year going beyond 2 employees, and I needed to be 9. I had the income for 9, so I’m not a flimsy startup, wages are cool, tech stack is state-of-the-art. - Indeed easily costs 500$ per month without result, - Employees know it so they slack around. Not only they performed bad work during this period, but I also had to deal with firing one to show the other that bad work in unacceptable. - Took recruiters at 7-10k€ per recruitee, for 1 year, didn’t work out, their candidates kept failing the basic Java tests (like they can’t align 2-for 1-if), - Took an inhouse recruiter, 3000€ per month for 8 months, he overhauled the communication, wording style, videos, blogging, LinkedIn news, and did those 30-minutes calls before our 2 rounds of interviews. Now we’re 8 and employees are actually pumped up motivated at work. And thanks to this, work is also more interesting than when we were few, because we have time to innovate, we’re not struggling under support workload or having to run around keeping the servers hot. —- I attribute the new fashion of 30-minutes calls to 1. scarcity due to Covid disorganization, 2. radios and media, even business shows, blasting out that the newnormal is 32hrs a week, 100% remote, and that if you haven’t been promoted to management in the last year you are wasting your life with your employer, 3. Students have been incredibly badly taught during Covid, so they suck at programming during interviews, 4. Therefore, employees are not worth spending the money on, and we’re better off spending the money on recruiters. So those 30-minutes call are a redistribution between who provides the value; the employee provides less value, the recruiter does.