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Comment by Paul_S | Hacker News Reader

That is a real cruel process. You are taking advantage of your position as an employer - are you at least honest with those people and tell them there's a 90% chance you will fire them in 90 days? Sure, it might be good for you as a company but it's really bad for the 90% of people who quit their job to get fired by you 90 days later because you can't be arsed to interview them. I can't believe you want to be praised for this approach.

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If it's really 90% of the people who are left behind, it's probably not good for the company really.

People in existing teams will be very fatigued from getting to know new people and then trying to forget them. This is well documented in the military. After a while veterans don't want to get to know the fresh reinforcements that arrive into their unit, as the new guys will probably die quickly simply because they are inexperienced and thrown to battlefield. As a result, any investment in social relationship with them is wasted. And as a result, the whole unit will get grumpy.

Interesting points.

We never found smart effective folks who did not want to get to know newer smart and effective folks.

I'd guess there is something like 50% cutoff point.

Less than 50% of hires stay: "oh geez, more meat to the grinder."

More than 50% of hires stay: "A new guy came, do you play ping pong?"

But my cut off point might be way off. And there might be some elasticity between those where people are more iffy about the whole deal.

I'd suggest testing this. Stack slightly not so promising new hires to one team and more promising in other. Let's hope there is different retain rate. Now you can measure the performance changes of both teams and see the net effect.

We are totally transparent about the process, but this is the standard process anywhere. i.e. if I interview at Google (7 hours) and am not a fit within 90 days, I sure hope we both figure that out (and not in 9-12 months). So given the same # of people who would be let go within 90 days, why waste time interviewing them for longer?

So even though this is implicit elsewhere, we make it explicit (if you don't think we're a fit for you, or we don't think you're a fit for us, we'll part ways)

Let me know if that makes sense

No, it's not the same. If unsuccessful at google you will waste a day of your life and and keep your old job. At your place you will waste up to 90 days of your life and lose your old job. Not the same. It's the same to you but it's not the same to the employee.

By interviewing and throwing away potential false negatives you also cut down on the number of people failing probation. You can't have it both ways: not interview and keep the same number of people.

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