Hacker News Reader

Comment by hiringmanager | Hacker News Reader

Your profile says you want to hire people, but your comment here says you are prejudiced.

You're operating from the 1950s veiwpoint which is really a cultural hold over from the great depression- that employees should be desperate to find a job and companies should be free to screen them out for any arbitrary reasons. Let me guess, you make them write code on a white board too.

If you have a one year cliff you are providing a huge financial incentive for your employees to leave after a year, by shifting the risk onto them.

Maybe that's why you don't have enough people already?

View on HN

Way to build up an imaginary strawman to argue against. I never claimed any of the things from your comment, I don't make anyone write code on a whiteboard, and I don't have trouble hiring either.

If I'm going to invest into onboarding an employee, training them, providing opportunities for growth, etc. I'm not sure why you find it so disagreeable that I would prefer that they stick around as long as possible. Both parties are free to discontinue the relationship when the fit is no longer there, and that's fine by me.

I'm indeed prejudiced against cowboy coders that want to jump from team to team, focus on picking up new tech for their resumes and do their best to avoid any maintenance work. Maybe that's just me, though...

>I'm indeed prejudiced against cowboy coders that want to jump from team to team, focus on picking up new tech for their resumes and do their best to avoid any maintenance work.

Being at a company for a year doesn't tell you someone is like that. This is why I called it a prejudice.

Being at a company for a year can also indicate that the person is quality enough to be choosy about where they work and not to stick around when management proves themselves incompetent.

Most statups fail. Most startups management is very poor. The best software developers realize that they are making an investment by working for a startup. Thus staying around past the first year is a judgement call on the future of the company.

It's completely reasonable to want potential employees who are likely to stay at your company for more than a year. If someone's entire experience is leaving places after less than a year, either they are bad employees who are fired or quit due to performance issues, or they never intend to stick around long anywhere.

For some kinds of work, that's fine, but I think most companies of all kinds would prefer employees who will stay with them for at least a year.

It's totally valid for someone to want to hop companies and favor that lifestyle. But it's also valid for companies to favor people who don't want to hop.

I think what isn't being mentioned is that sometimes the company changes beneath your feet. Apps get sold and teams get aquihired, friends get let go or leave, roles get redefined; company priorities shift.

And companies turn out to be poorly run.

With the 4 year vesting schedule, employees are incentivized to leave after a year to diversify their holdings.

It's not necessarily a case of expecting candidates to be grateful for even being considered. Avoiding a bad hire is surprisingly important.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com