> is it though? CA is at-will employment, so there's literally nothing stopping a company from firing someone that isn't working out (besides timidity on the part of the person who would have to do the firing).

Last I checked, I was 9700 kilometers away from California. Not everybody on HN is from Silicon Valley.

> personally, i'd rather tell some people it's not working out than miss out on incredible talent because i'm too scared to fire someone.

Then you've never seen one bad hire destroy whole teams.

> reading 'desperation' into someone's application is projecting your own fears and experiences onto theirs without actually taking the time to learn more.

This thesis has no null hypothesis. The same arguments could be applied to about anyone who's perceving any emotions from other people, in any context, aside from listening to a person narrate his emotions out loud. See, none of us have any emptathy or eye for emotion, we're all just projecting something of our own. And if you, or anyone, has any counter-argument against this clearly absurd statement, the same counter-argument could equally rebute yours as well.