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Comment by Clubber | Hacker News Reader

>False positives are always a big problem. False negatives are usually much smaller one.

I would agree with you if the supply and demand weren't so skewed towards top developers. Do you think you are choosing between A and D people, or are you really choosing between C and D people and A and B people never walk through the door?

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It's still the case! At the end of the day, the person making the call is a hiring manager.

It's pretty hard for a hiring manager to be called out as too selective. However, if you let in a few bad apples then you look really bad.

The incentives are for hiring managers to be too careful.

It is, oddly enough, the case that if you are not hiring any bad engineers that you probably are being too selective.

It's easy to fix a false positive, it's impossible to fix a false negative. You figure FOMO would kick in at some point.

Once you hire someone you have to give them a chance to be successful. As the threshold for firing someone is (rightly) much higher than simply not hiring them, fixing a false positive is much more expensive than missing out on a good candidate.

Also you can fix some false negatives - allow people to interview again for other positions at the company. I've seen multiple people get hired on the 2nd or 3rd time around and ultimately be successful.

Simple - contract to perm.

You have therefore eliminated everyone not interested in that from your pool. Good candidates know they are good and will avoid too much contrived hoop-jumping.

True. But I love contract to perm. As an architect either by name or responsibility, it's usually the first six months that are the hardest and take the most hours. I get paid for every single hour I work and can make good money until they realize the error of thier ways and make me permanent.

When we first got married my wife was really hestitant about me working on contract. Over the years, she's seen how much larger my checks are when I do.

I know companies do this, but I don't understand how it works. Given the competitive nature of hiring good engineers what type of candidate would accept a contract position when they probably have five other offers?

As I said below - I will at the proper hourly rate. With the right hourly rate, I can make more than enough to make up for any gap in employment and I'm in a market where jobs are a dime a dozen.

Besides, there are some opportunities where companies just want someone to come in, fix a problem and then after that it's just boring maintenance work. If it's a contract, I can come in, fix the problem, and look for a more interesting full time job without being labeled a "job hopper". I can just put on my resume that the 6 month job was a contract.

I prefer contracting but I found that more companies are willing to pay me my minimum salary than the commensurate hourly rate I ask for to make up for the possible gap in employment, unpaid time off, and self employment taxes.

But, my wife has a stable government job with decent benefits that allows me to go back and forth between contracting and permanent and allows me to take risks working at companies that pique my interest without concern about the long term viability of my job.

In my experience, there was considerable pressure on hiring managers to hire someone, because people are honestly needed. So, the risk of hiring one bad apple is offset by risk of being seen as someone who will never hire anyone (and thus will be excluded from hiring).

Then again, probably one of the worst bad apple I have seen would ace whiteboard as he was quite good at trics. He just did not like the actual work involved in software development and tended not to do work he don't like except bare minimum.

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