The reason they want to remove the risk is because it takes years to prune bad talent.
The best teams embrace and level up their low performers and make the whole team better.
The delta can’t be too big.
The problem is management are often too busy or overwhelmed with other stuff to observe and provide feedback until someone's passed the probation period then releasing them becomes a bureaucratic nightmare - and when the new hire's not getting feedback, you can be sure not a lot of the rest of the team are.
I've never understood this given that the hiring is so often at will.
Honestly, I don't have a good solution to the problem.
In the past I would never have been interested in a contract-to-hire. These days though if the company and role is right, and this an option to short-cut a ridiculous interview process, I might spring for it.
When I was an actuary we used to do “intern to hire” for unemployed recent grads, but I can’t imagine leaving a full time position for a contract-to-hire position. I think for me personally the opportunity would have to be really interesting and the comp upon converting to FTE would need to be at least double my previous comp (meaning the contracted rate would probably be something like 4x my implied hourly).
I've see that work before, but it was some time ago. The company also had a very large test department with separate management and kept to a strongly enforced waterfall-esque design routine.
Of course, it used to be a lot harder to ship out version 1.01 of the software.
I just assume it was a different world as this was in the days of US manufacturing, very limited set of software tools, high importance placed on domain knowledge as opposed to toolset, longer average stays at employer, lower wages for programmers. Probably not applicable to modern times.
There's a quality-distribution of both books and films.
There are only so many good books. And a percentage of films end up poorly made.
Sufficiently low-quality books tend not to get made into films. The ones that succeed are notable --- there's nothing but upside.
A good book can be made into either a good or a bad film. If it's a good film, then yay, but if it's a bad film, people are aware of it (through the book's quality and popularity). This is a perception illusion called Berkson's Paradox. It's an illusion because what awareness fails to account for are all the bad films made from bad books.
Hannah Fry of Numberphile does a much better job than I of explaining this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FUD8h9JpEVQ
In the interviewing / performance case, you have good vs. bad interviewees, and good vs. bad performers.
Someonehone who interviews poorly but performs well is a positive exception. Someon who interviews well and performs well meets expectations. It's the good interviewer/bad performer who stands out. But it's the poor-interviewer/poor-performer who is missed by this assessment.
The company doesn’t have to prove that the employee was failing. It’s perfectly legal for a company to fire an employee because they the employee likes the wrong football team.
The employee or people pursuing legal action on behalf of multiple employees has to prove that the company fires the employee(s) because they were a member of a protected class.
Assuming there are no incriminating emails stating that that was the reason, the only realistic way to do that is to show a pattern.
If an employee decides to sue, whether you had them on a documented performance improvement plan for 6 months or 6 days isn’t going to be the deciding factor.
They do if the employee sues claiming age discrimination, for example. At least, they have to defend the accusation to show it’s not discrimination. When someone has been at the company for 25 years like in the parent’s example, and they get fired abruptly without notice for liking the wrong football team, it’s likely the stated reason is untrue and inviting a challenge.
> If an employee decides to sue, whether you had them on a documented performance improvement plan for 6 months or 6 days isn’t going to be the deciding factor.
It certainly helps show that the company isn’t discriminating arbitrarily, and gave the employee notice and a chance to improve the situation.
BTW actual legal action isn’t necessary for firing to be getting harder. The fear of legal action is all you need, and that is in fact going up.
They don't have to show anything. The employee has to prove that it's age discrimination.
>When someone has been at the company for 25 years like in the parent’s example, and they get fired abruptly without notice for liking the wrong football team, it’s likely the stated reason is untrue and inviting a challenge.
Without a pattern of discrimination this isn't a problem. If there is pattern of discrimination then it is. However, if that's the case it doesn't matter how much documentation they have.
>It certainly helps show that the company isn’t discriminating arbitrarily, and gave the employee notice and a chance to improve the situation.
You can't discriminate arbitrarily. Discrimination in this context means firing someone because they are part of a protected class.
>gave the employee notice and a chance to improve the situation.
Whether you gave someone the chance to correct the situation or not isn't relevant.
>BTW actual legal action isn’t necessary for firing to be getting harder. The fear of legal action is all you need, and that is in fact going up.
The number of charges filed with the EEOC has gone down over the last 20 years https://www.eeoc.gov/statistics/charge-statistics-charges-fi...
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/eeoc-roundup-part-i-10-...
"At the same time, FY2020 saw the lowest number of charges received from workers in more than two decades. The agency received 67,448 charges—continuing the steady downward trend since 2017 in the numbers of discrimination charges filed with the EEOC."
Yes that’s a compelling data point for decreasing legal actions (and it’s interesting, thanks for including it), but not all actions and not all fears end up in front of the EEOC, right? This data point alone is likely due to decreasing union membership over the last 20 years, but is also explained by the increasing prevalence of mandatory arbitration clauses. What it doesn’t explain is why HR departments nationwide are increasing efforts to educate employees about anti-harassment policies. If they are legally in the clear, why is that happening? Twenty or thirty years ago it was hardly a thing, today it’s the norm.
> They don’t have to show anything. The employee has to prove that it’s age discrimination.
You are right about the legal burden of proof in court, absolutely. Court isn’t the only possible outcome of a discrimination claim, though, and the one specific example you gave is a defense against a discrimination claim that would not hold up in court (firing a long-time employee for claiming to not like the right football team).
I agree with everything you’re saying about what is required in court, and what are the legal rights for all employers in the US, not just tech companies. That’s just not exactly what I was talking about.