Comment by kthejoker2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kthejoker2 | Hacker News Reader

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Having hired dozens of devs, I can confidently say there is absolutely 0% chance to consistently successfully identify good developers in any reasonable amount of interviewing / assessment time period.

The best way is someone brings in an existing code portfolio and discusses it.

The second best way is someone completes multiple design and development exercises of varying complexity, constraints, and use cases.

The third best way is they complete a single exercise and provide commentary on alternative designs.

There is no fourth best way; all other approaches are essenrially stochastic and select for interviewing traits not development traits.

The actual best method I think is a 3 month probationary period which is more or less an extended interview. They're asked to contribute to existing codebases, participate in code review, go through some architecture design sessions, conduct stakeholder interviews - things that again are mostly impossible to accurately gauge in a typical candidate assessment window.

By the way a tremendous book for interviewers and hiring managers is How Judges Think by Richard Posner. A lot of it applies to hiring, and he's a great writer.

#1 is great, but impossible for a lot of people due to NDAs. The 3-month probationary period is indeed the only way to really evaluate devs, but I'm not so sure it's a good way to hire them. After 3 months, the mediocre devs have friends, etc., which makes it hard to get rid of them without creating a weird morale issue and massive team disruptions. And then you have to add in the limiting effect on the hiring pool (though I wonder if that really matters, I suspect good devs know who they are).

Number 3 is my favorite, but there's a trade-off: almost anything large enough to allow for multiple designs is probably too large to require all applicants to complete. But I also love having a candidate discuss their own code. I'm really curious what types of exercises you have for this kind of thing, and where it fits in the interview process?

> After 3 months, the mediocre devs have friends, etc., which makes it hard to get rid of them without creating a weird morale issue and massive team disruptions

I’ve seen this mistake happen so many times. Especially in early stage start ups. If you want morale issues and disruptions, you’ll achieve it 100% of the time by retaining underperforming staff. Even worse, this ultimately leads to your best team members leaving if it’s an issue you can’t solve. Fail fast applies to HR too, you need to learn to fire fast.

It's true that keeping on terrible employees is worse than firing them, but that's the answer to a different question. The question at hand is should you opt for a system you know is going to involve a lot of firing fast, or do your best to avoid bad hires even at the cost of a higher false negative rate?

Hiring and firing are expensive in a whole lot of different ways, but it takes time and effort to get right, and you’ll never get it right every time. So actually using the probationary period properly, and getting good at firing people are things you’ll have to do anyway.

The actual best method I think is a 3 month probationary period

My workplace has a six month probationary period; I brought in a mandatory three month review after watching one group screw this up badly. At the end of the six months, the employee came in to work all happy as usual thinking everything was great, and was promptly fired.

The three month review is the point at which the employee is told that they're on track, or they're below standard. If on track, just keep going the same way and if they don't get taken aside for a specific chat in the following three months, told to assume that they're going to pass the probation period; we have definitely turned probation failures into probation successes via this mid-point review. It's also their opportunity to tell the company what the company is doing wrong; what the company is doing that will make them choose not to stay. This too has happened, and we have retained good employees by listening to them at the three month point and making changes.

If they're below standard, they're told what they need to improve and are offered help to improve, or they can just sack it now and walk (or, as happened once and once only so far, they're considered unrecoverable and we take a long hard look at how that person was hired).

The principle we subscribe to is that if the employee is surprised by the results of their probation period, that employee's team lead and by association "the company" has really screwed up. If an employee doesn't know how they're doing after six months on the job, something has gone very wrong.

Nobody does probationary periods because few candidates would pick a probationary period offer over a standard job offer. And it's presumed that top level talent will have multiple offers on the table, and if you don't then there's something wrong with you, so having a probationary period selects for lower quality candidates.

I would assume that a company without probationary periods is lower quality; either the work is so uniform that anyone can do it and employees are fungible, or they simply accept bad employees and live with them. Every company I've worked for has had some kind of probationary period.

I don't live or work in the US, though; we can dismiss someone during their probationary period with ease, but after that they have workplace protections. If we could fire anyone at anytime for anything we like, that effectively makes the entire employment period a probationary period. Probation never ends if you can be fired at any time.

> The actual best method I think is a 3 month probationary period which is more or less an extended interview

Most states in the US have at-will employment terms. Probationary periods are common in other countries. And yet no one seems to want to do what you're suggesting.

The problem is, most companies in the US want to hire you on as a Contractor and not a full time employee for those three months. I can't speak for everyone (but most folks, I assume), but I need medical and dental. I can't go three months for the chance of maybe getting it. I can't do it personally and i can't do that sort of thing to my family. there are other options in other countries (depending on the country). I'm a centrist by nature, but this makes a "three month interview" untenable, IMO.

Sorry what I meant was US companies could treat the first 3 months of any full-time/W-2 employee as probationary because they can fire anyone for any reason other than protected characteristics. It doesn't even need to be an official company policy documented anywhere.`

They could in theory, but nobody wants to. I used to see probationary periods, but I haven't seen a company use that for salaried staff for a long time. HR and Legal have put an end to that kind of thing.

So Jim is right, in practice the only way HR is going to let you have a probationary period is to use contractors, and that limits your hiring pool significantly.

Every decent sized contracting firm I've ever worked with offered benefits. It's more expensive, but you just price that into your rate. So I don't understand what the concern is. Is it the risk that after 3 months you won't be brought on full time?

Upheaval is the issue. First, most contracting firms have pretty crappy medical plans. Secondly, there's generally a wait period before full benefits kick in. Thirdly, you wind up switching your medical plan multiple times in a short period.

That's fine if you're single, but if you've got kids that might mean switching doctors multiple times, which is a gigantic huge deal. Also, you have multiple periods of time where you don't really know your benefits which is terrifying. And if the company does drop you after three months for whatever reason, now you're doing it again.

And keep in mind it's definitely a seller's market if you're a good dev. It's incredibly unlikely that the 3-month contract is the only offer on the table. So all things being equal, who would take it?

Your description sounds like this should only be a problem for families with serious medical issues, which would be the minority. I do have a kid. If your kid is relatively healthy then pediatricians are basically replaceable widgets. If it's important to you, just pay the cash rate for your favorite pediatrician during that 3 month period. If you're really hung up on it, you can just choose the COBRA option and keep your old insurance during your trial period. It's very expensive, but again, you just calculate that into your contracting rate.

>And keep in mind it's definitely a seller's market if you're a good dev. It's incredibly unlikely that the 3-month contract is the only offer on the table. So all things being equal, who would take it?

I don't feel any additional security whatsoever being a least tenured employee vs contractor. Maybe there's some statistical benefit, but it seems pretty small. So for me, it's practically zero cost to do the contract-to-hire thing. Any financial costs are just built into my rate. I'd rather spend my hiring currency on other stuff like working remote full time and extra vacation days.

It probably makes a difference that I spent a big chunk of my career as a self employed consultant. I do remember feeling some anxiety when I first transitioned from a regular employee to consulting. But I quickly learned my anxiety was unfounded.

I do a lot of consulting as well and am comfortable with it. But most people with families want more stability. I don't know why you're pretending to be surprised by this.

Your personal preferences aren't really the topic at hand.

It's not about my personal preferences. If you're concerned about an instability period on your healthcare you can literally keep you old healthcare for up to 18 months with COBRA. Adding the contract-to-hire period doesn't really impact instability, at least as far as healthcare is concerned.

I fear we've gone down a wrong turn. You may be 100% correct that fears about instability are irrational and not well-grounded, which is the point you've argued for several posts.

But nobody is arguing with you. Nobody is making the contrasting argument. That simply isn't the conversation anybody is having. It's an interesting conversation, it just doesn't happen to be this conversation.

I asked what the concern was and you responded primarily in the area of health care/insurance. So that's what I addressed. What else is the conversation about if not that?

How often are you hiring people whose professional work is open source? How often are you hiring people for roles where their professional work will be open source?

the OP isn't saying it's always possible, just that it's the best way if it is possible

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