Hacker News Reader

Comment by solidasparagus | Hacker News Reader

I don't think people are naive, they just don't have a better solution. Most established professionals are not interested in a 10 week trial period after which they might be back on the job market.

View on HN

I would wager the opposite. That many people looking for a job are open to a (paid) trial week, when the alternative is countless grueling interviews that lead nowhere.

It depends on who we're talking about, but for high quality candidates in software heavy cities, this isn't very true. They are getting tons of offers and there's no reason to accept a trial offer. Plus you can't trial until you've quit your current job so for many people the whole premise makes no sense. It's not like you will have to interview with fewer places, it's just that each interview takes a lot longer.

Paid trials also have the issue that they might interfere with unemployment earnings while also being too short to earn unemployment afterwards. So they probably don't work for people with a job and don't work for people without a job.

Yep, that's the only intractable problem, so trials either go unpaid or pay without filling taxes, which is somewhat shady.

It's a myth that developers have a ton of offers. There are few developers who got lucky to have multiple offers at some point in their life. It won't last forever. They will eventually face a bad situation trying to get a job after being laid off or being on extended paternity or medical break.

Consider the current recession with record high unemployment, countless employees are desperate to get a job, including developers. Yet companies still prefer to have impassable interviews and hire nobody, than to give a trial.

I don't think this is true because taking a trial week requires leaving your existing job for... a trial. Why would you do that?

Very dependent if they have a job already. If they have a job already, references from people inside the company are a very strong signal. If they’re currently unemployed (or a student) the internship is very valuable.

The next challenge is it’s unfair to weight too much on referrals because it punishes people who don’t know insiders. It also fuels a monoculture.

You say that as if your boss can't wake up one morning and fire you because they don't like the way you pour your coffee. The only thing that changes is how much paperwork they have to do to make it happen.

This in no way jibes with my experience as an employee. I know the value I provide, how long it would take to replace me and how much the company has invested in me and there is zero chance that I get fired tomorrow. Theoretically my boss could wake up and fire me, but practically there are many reasons whey they "can't". Similarly, it is very rare to see someone get fired in the first 3-6 months on the job unless they are ridiculously unprofessional or unqualified. There are high-profile companies where it could happen, but they are noteworthy because it is so out-of-the-ordinary.

They can't in general, it's against the law to do that. And there are penalties if caught (and being caught is not so hard.)

I don't see how internships help. I get the point that at the end you know if they're a hire but you still had to filter who to intern in the first place so you're still back to interview people to be interns which is the same problem you had.

Also, training a new employee or intern in your systems, code, company procedures etc takes a bunch of time and investment so it's not like you can intern some higher multiple of people than you'd hire.

I think it's effective for college candidates. You pay them much less, they often work on greenfield projects where learning existing code/process is less important, and the company gets to try out more candidates than they end up hiring. All of that while still doing right by the candidates.

The distinction for interns is that there is a definite end to the internship, no harm no foul. An employer can easily pass on every intern that is not a perfect fit without tarnishing the interns' reputations. That allows a less restrictive filter to be applied in selecting interns.

Let’s say an internship increases the chance of your getting a good hire from 50% to 75%. In that case 10 weeks will pay for itself.

"Most established professionals are not interested in a 10 week trial period after which they might be back on the job market."

Why not? If the position isn't a fit for either side after X time on-the-job, that's OK right?

Because maybe they support families with their job? Unless they had a ton of savings, parents aren't going to switch jobs with a chance of being unemployed again in 2.5 months. I wouldn't do it and I'm young and single.

But isn't the chance implicitly always there?

> Why not? If the position isn't a fit for either side after X time on-the-job, that's OK right?

In the US at least, health insurance is a big one.

How are you going to convince me to leave my current job for a 10 week trial period? That right there loses you the set of all people who are currently employed and are fine where they are right now.

There are a few issues with the scenario you described.

For health and safety, security and tax purposes you would likely not be able to have an extended period of more than a couple of days without some form of contract for that 'trial' period.

If you are an 'established' professional then you most likely would interview for a new job while currently employed. So even in the remote scenario that you would take a couple weeks holiday for a 'trial' you would likely violate the contract with current employer by signing a 'trial' contract.

This would only work for junior positions or for senior professionals who have taken some time away from work. But if you make this a part of your recruitment process, there is the risk that you are discriminating against 'currently employed' candidates.

Some places have a contract-to-hire approach which is effectively a trial period.

I believe companies fall into two basic structures:

1. agency / consultant model - implement short-term projects, specific tasks, etc. It's easier in this approach to swap employees in and out as new projects start.

2. software product model - the company's entire business model is built around or highly dependent on internal software projects. Institutional knowledge is very important. It's really important to protect the product process and plan for the long-term implementation of strategic vision.

Contract-to-hire works well for #1. But for #2, the overhead and cost of disruption to the core process is too high. Top-tier software products require a relatively smaller number of highly engaged and skilled people to drive projects to an optimal point. These people need to also be directly involved in hiring and onboarding to maintain the culture and high standards. Bad hires can destroy such a team. Thus you end up with the current interview processes as they're efficient and err on the side of rejecting qualified candidates accidentally. If they spent 10x as long on hiring, they could improve the accuracy, but then they wont have as much time to build product which is the key tradeoff involved.

Other people have mentioned the logistical/financial problems this incurs, but one other important consideration is that you are competing against other companies that don't do the trial-to-hire process and can thus offer more stability. And to be honest, given the state of the software engineer market (in tech-heavy cities), you already get to spend a couple of months trying out a company and then leave if you want. The difference is that the employer isn't similarly able to get rid of you after 3 months (it's too short a time to evaluate a new employee, the company has already invested heavily in onboarding costs, it's much slower to backfill a position than it is for a software engineer to find a new job, etc).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com