6 ms·

Ah, the "market for lemons" argument: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1879431 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1879431 > Because the cost of a bad hire is so conseque

Ah, the "market for lemons" argument: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1879431 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1879431 > Because the cost of a bad hire is so consequential, This is stated all the time and I feel it is true. But is there any way to make it less consequential? That was my main argument for contract-to-hire (though I know there are downsides to that approach). Are there any other ways to make hiring less risky?

tibbon 1y ago
Trial periods. Asking employees to do less in their first months. Maybe not great mitigations, but that’s what I could come up with
sigwinch 1y ago
After interviews, you hire Alice but Bob was a close second. Bob goes to a competitor. Alice doesn’t work out. A double whammy. Why not immediately try to get Bob? I’ve only seen this a few time.
- mooreds 1y ago
  Relatedly, if you hire Alice and she works out, but in months or a year, you hire for the same role, why not reach out to Bob again? You invest all that time into interviewing Bob, but then if they don't get the offer, you never reach out to them again. I don't get it. I don't think I've ever seen this done well.
accrual 1y ago
In the US at least it seems common to review performance and put certain benefits on hold for 90 days to see if it's working out. This wouldn't mitigate the costs of the initial hiring or the opportunity cost of not selecting another candidate, though.
gwbas1c 1y ago
> Are there any other ways to make hiring less risky? Professional licensing. Many other fields require professional licenses. I don't understand there's so much opposition in our field. (Ok, I do understand.) In general, licensing has some risks: The lemons will get excluded from the field. (Which is kind of the point.) Or, the lemons will decide what the criteria for a professional license is; which turns it into a BS hurdle. --- That being said, the article gets closer to the point of what a professional license is for: "An interview is like running 100m and a job is like a 10k.". If the license is more like running a 10k, then interviewers can rely on it to do a better screening than they could ever hope to do.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  The issue with professional licensing, is that it's very, very specific. In things like civil engineering, there's usually mandated context. You have to work within certain parameters, so it's not too difficult to test with real-world criteria. With software engineering, it's all over the place. In fact, one of the most exciting things that I used to look for, in potential candidates, was people who were not bogged down with dogma, and would bring alternative viewpoints to the team. Since anyone coming into my team would require a ton of training; regardless of their seniority, I always had a nice, long on-ramp, in which I could evaluate people.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    There can be a halfway solution that helps: A professional software engineering license that signifies an extremely basic, barebones level of skill. Companies would still need to interview candidates, but they wouldn't have to do FizzBuzz or "write a for loop" types of interviews with candidates who literally cannot write code at all. It wouldn't guarantee the person was an expert in inverting binary trees, but it would at least represent a minimal knowledge and skill bar that one would expect any software engineer to meet.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      It really, really sucks, that we have to be here. Maybe have online application pages, that can’t be submitted, unless you fizzbuzz. :(
    - gwbas1c 1y ago
      One of my interview questions used to involve putting up a parameterized SQL statement on the whiteboard, (select userid, email from users where userid=?), give the candidate instructions on how to use a data reader, and then expect them to construct a "user" object. I did this because I was part of a project that failed because the leads did not know how to work with a database. They thought the ORM would just magically load objects. Without understanding the basic limitations of data readers, they painted themselves into a corner. Licensing basically needs to filter this kind of thing. IE, you don't get a license to work with a SQL database unless you can work with a data reader. --- The irony was that we very rarely touched SQL, but the question was one of the greatest filters out there! It showed who understood basic concepts, who was just BSing their way though, and who would get stuck in high-level abstractions.
condiment 1y ago
The 'cost of a bad hire' is received wisdom that needs to go away. The first order effects of your team's time investment are easy to see and make good content for your engineering leadership blog when you're aiming for promotion. The second order effects are what get debated in threads like this ad infinitum. Paradoxically, a higher bar for hiring increases these consequences for everyone. A bad hire is only consequential in the first place because hiring managers are slow to cut them loose. Managers are slow to cut loose because they are morally culpable for the consequences to the individual they hired. When a manager extends an offer, they are accepting some responsibility for a significant change in a person's life. It's very difficult to walk that back when it's a bad fit, knowing that hiring is a slow process and every other company out there is scared of making a bad choice. But at the end of the day, interviews are an approximation of the candidate/company fit in what is ultimately a matching problem. More attempts make for better matches. Companies and candidates both would be better served by being faster to hire and faster cut loose.
GlibMonkeyDeath 1y ago
In my experience, the hiring managers with the best track record have these in common, which mostly boil down to the hiring teams doing their homework: (1) The expectations for the position are clearly defined (2) The hiring team members coordinate on questions and expected responses, and they are consistent in interviews. (3) The hiring team members know how to spot potential issues (e.g., excessive bad-mouthing of previous employers, etc.) (4) The hiring teams effectively leverage their networks for references. Ideally, there are not-too-distant trusted relationships between the candidate and the hiring team. In the absence of this, references are followed up on carefully (this has become an art form in modern times.) These reduce the risk of someone slipping through the cracks. Hiring teams also get better with experience, so any mistakes should be carefully analyzed and corrective actions incorporated into the hiring process.

tibbon 1y ago

Trial periods. Asking employees to do less in their first months. Maybe not great mitigations, but that’s what I could come up with

sigwinch 1y ago

After interviews, you hire Alice but Bob was a close second. Bob goes to a competitor. Alice doesn’t work out. A double whammy. Why not immediately try to get Bob? I’ve only seen this a few time.

mooreds 1y ago
Relatedly, if you hire Alice and she works out, but in months or a year, you hire for the same role, why not reach out to Bob again? You invest all that time into interviewing Bob, but then if they don't get the offer, you never reach out to them again. I don't get it. I don't think I've ever seen this done well.

accrual 1y ago

In the US at least it seems common to review performance and put certain benefits on hold for 90 days to see if it's working out. This wouldn't mitigate the costs of the initial hiring or the opportunity cost of not selecting another candidate, though.

gwbas1c 1y ago

> Are there any other ways to make hiring less risky? Professional licensing. Many other fields require professional licenses. I don't understand there's so much opposition in our field. (Ok, I do understand.) In general, licensing has some risks: The lemons will get excluded from the field. (Which is kind of the point.) Or, the lemons will decide what the criteria for a professional license is; which turns it into a BS hurdle. --- That being said, the article gets closer to the point of what a professional license is for: "An interview is like running 100m and a job is like a 10k.". If the license is more like running a 10k, then interviewers can rely on it to do a better screening than they could ever hope to do.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
The issue with professional licensing, is that it's very, very specific. In things like civil engineering, there's usually mandated context. You have to work within certain parameters, so it's not too difficult to test with real-world criteria. With software engineering, it's all over the place. In fact, one of the most exciting things that I used to look for, in potential candidates, was people who were not bogged down with dogma, and would bring alternative viewpoints to the team. Since anyone coming into my team would require a ton of training; regardless of their seniority, I always had a nice, long on-ramp, in which I could evaluate people.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  There can be a halfway solution that helps: A professional software engineering license that signifies an extremely basic, barebones level of skill. Companies would still need to interview candidates, but they wouldn't have to do FizzBuzz or "write a for loop" types of interviews with candidates who literally cannot write code at all. It wouldn't guarantee the person was an expert in inverting binary trees, but it would at least represent a minimal knowledge and skill bar that one would expect any software engineer to meet.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    It really, really sucks, that we have to be here. Maybe have online application pages, that can’t be submitted, unless you fizzbuzz. :(
  - gwbas1c 1y ago
    One of my interview questions used to involve putting up a parameterized SQL statement on the whiteboard, (select userid, email from users where userid=?), give the candidate instructions on how to use a data reader, and then expect them to construct a "user" object. I did this because I was part of a project that failed because the leads did not know how to work with a database. They thought the ORM would just magically load objects. Without understanding the basic limitations of data readers, they painted themselves into a corner. Licensing basically needs to filter this kind of thing. IE, you don't get a license to work with a SQL database unless you can work with a data reader. --- The irony was that we very rarely touched SQL, but the question was one of the greatest filters out there! It showed who understood basic concepts, who was just BSing their way though, and who would get stuck in high-level abstractions.

condiment 1y ago

The 'cost of a bad hire' is received wisdom that needs to go away. The first order effects of your team's time investment are easy to see and make good content for your engineering leadership blog when you're aiming for promotion. The second order effects are what get debated in threads like this ad infinitum. Paradoxically, a higher bar for hiring increases these consequences for everyone. A bad hire is only consequential in the first place because hiring managers are slow to cut them loose. Managers are slow to cut loose because they are morally culpable for the consequences to the individual they hired. When a manager extends an offer, they are accepting some responsibility for a significant change in a person's life. It's very difficult to walk that back when it's a bad fit, knowing that hiring is a slow process and every other company out there is scared of making a bad choice. But at the end of the day, interviews are an approximation of the candidate/company fit in what is ultimately a matching problem. More attempts make for better matches. Companies and candidates both would be better served by being faster to hire and faster cut loose.

GlibMonkeyDeath 1y ago

In my experience, the hiring managers with the best track record have these in common, which mostly boil down to the hiring teams doing their homework: (1) The expectations for the position are clearly defined (2) The hiring team members coordinate on questions and expected responses, and they are consistent in interviews. (3) The hiring team members know how to spot potential issues (e.g., excessive bad-mouthing of previous employers, etc.) (4) The hiring teams effectively leverage their networks for references. Ideally, there are not-too-distant trusted relationships between the candidate and the hiring team. In the absence of this, references are followed up on carefully (this has become an art form in modern times.) These reduce the risk of someone slipping through the cracks. Hiring teams also get better with experience, so any mistakes should be carefully analyzed and corrective actions incorporated into the hiring process.