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Comment by cgio | Hacker News Reader

I’ll side with you. I lead a big team, but also an employee myself, I find probation period a very uncomfortable concept. There is no promises in interviews. You ask your questions, you get your answers, you make your decisions. If your questions ask for promises to make your decision easier, you are doing it wrong. From my perspective, any hire that ends up with negative probation outcome should be marked against interviewers performance. We are people, working with people with families, obligations, dreams. We have to let that sink in our thinking rather than take cover behind corporate policies, procedures, legislation etc.

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I can absolutely see this position, for me it’s more a case of protecting ourselves against the rare but increasing occasions of candidates actually making misleading claims. As I’ve said in a sibling comment, for me I like to be able to take basic skills at face value, and focus on core competencies. If someone can learn the skill during probation, that’s totally fine.

To me it seems simpler to just let someone go if they're not working out after 90 days; no need to tell every new hire that they're "on probation".

To be fair to the original poster, in Australia, whether you tell every new hire or not, they are still on probation legally in terms of employer obligations, so it is good to tell if you want to establish clarity, and follow appropriate procedures in terms of setting goals and keeping them up to date as end of probation nears to avoid vagueness and stress. Depending on size of hiring organisation, probation is 6 months for big organisations and 12 months for smaller ones.

Yeah clearly there are a ton of Americans responding to that point.

It is funny they don't want to call it "probation" because Australian probation is just every job in America.

Probation is a legal term that has implications like you can let someone go for no reason. Most places don't have zero worker rights like the US does.

Where I live there is almost always 30-180 days probation period and then the contract turns into permanent. Usually not a big deal.

Leaving a fulltime position becomes a gamble.

It's always a gamble to some degree.

Not when you are not working.

Usually during this period you can also leave at will. I think it is in law that the contract should be symmetrical for both sides. The system seems to be working ok-ish.

And that is why you actually need a decent reason to leave. Be it money, seemingly better culture or more interesting work.

In our case, we try and be very upfront about the nature of the process and that it works both ways, i.e. if they find the workplace isn’t for them, then theres no hard feelings either. It’s part of Australian workplace law so whether we mention it or not it is going to apply, so we make sure its not something hidden that might surprise someone.

In our case, we do also explain the types of circumstance in which we might use such a clause, and for us those are very narrow, we don’t hire people just to let them go for nothing 6 months later.

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