Comment by DavidWoof | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DavidWoof | Hacker News Reader

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#1 is great, but impossible for a lot of people due to NDAs. The 3-month probationary period is indeed the only way to really evaluate devs, but I'm not so sure it's a good way to hire them. After 3 months, the mediocre devs have friends, etc., which makes it hard to get rid of them without creating a weird morale issue and massive team disruptions. And then you have to add in the limiting effect on the hiring pool (though I wonder if that really matters, I suspect good devs know who they are).

Number 3 is my favorite, but there's a trade-off: almost anything large enough to allow for multiple designs is probably too large to require all applicants to complete. But I also love having a candidate discuss their own code. I'm really curious what types of exercises you have for this kind of thing, and where it fits in the interview process?

> After 3 months, the mediocre devs have friends, etc., which makes it hard to get rid of them without creating a weird morale issue and massive team disruptions

I’ve seen this mistake happen so many times. Especially in early stage start ups. If you want morale issues and disruptions, you’ll achieve it 100% of the time by retaining underperforming staff. Even worse, this ultimately leads to your best team members leaving if it’s an issue you can’t solve. Fail fast applies to HR too, you need to learn to fire fast.

It's true that keeping on terrible employees is worse than firing them, but that's the answer to a different question. The question at hand is should you opt for a system you know is going to involve a lot of firing fast, or do your best to avoid bad hires even at the cost of a higher false negative rate?

Hiring and firing are expensive in a whole lot of different ways, but it takes time and effort to get right, and you’ll never get it right every time. So actually using the probationary period properly, and getting good at firing people are things you’ll have to do anyway.

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