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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

> or at least a return to in-person interviewing for more companies.

This has been broken for a while now, and companies still haven't reset to deal with it. The incentives to the contrary are too large.

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The disincentives are huge though. Hiring a bad employee is a very expensive problem and hard to get rid of.

Isn't it as simple as going on pip for fangs, a short conversation for a founder of a startup and a few weeks notice pay?

That comes after the decision that you can't fix the situation, which comes after you discovered that the hire was bad, which comes after a number of visible failures. That's a lot of wasted time/effort, even if the firing itself is simple.

The cost of hiring, firing, rehiring approximates the position’s yearly salary.

Depends on the country I think - in Australia at least it seems like you can sue for unfair dismissal if you're angry about being kicked out, so HR departments only seem to get rid of someone as a last resort.

In my area they just tell you to leave. No warning. No severance. Midwest US.

The process is anything but simple at large companies. Even if the new hire is a complete fraud and can barely write code it'll still take an average manager 6-12 months to be able to show them the door. And it'll involve countless meetings and a mountain of paperwork, all taking away time from regular work. And then it'll take another 6 months to get a replacement and onboard them. That means your team has lost over a year of productivity over a single bad hire.

In which country?

In France, for instance, you have a (typically) 6 months long no questions asked window to fire a new hire, if they prove a bad employee. Presumably, if you haven't found out in 6 months, you wouldn't find out by changing the interviewing strategy.

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