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Comment by chrisdbanks | Hacker News Reader

I don't pay $200,000 a year for a car. If I were going to then I'd like to test drive it for 5-8 hours. An ideal test drive should help both sides understand what the future relationship will be like. That saves time and disappointment on both sides. You'd like to date someone before you marry them wouldn't you. I would always be happy to pay for a test drive though. If you're not willing to offer a test drive then you'll also probably miss out on some great relationships in your life.

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Fair point, though nobody is obligated to pay a year's salary to a candidate that didn't work out.

Have you ever run a business or paid employees from your budget?

Clearly you've never employed someone in the UK/EU.

The proceedings to jettison a bad hire can take 12 months alone, meanwhile they're still a bad hire being paid.

In the UK you can sack someone for being a poor fit without any of that within the first 2 years.

Good luck at the tribunal

Employees in the UK don't have access to an employment tribunal unless they've been at the company for longer than 2 years.

BRB, speaking with HR about some firings.

Thats just wrong, you can have 3 day, 3 week or 3 month probation and fire them immediately if you dont like them.

And if you cant tell whether they are good developer after 3 months, how is an intervoew going to help?

It is entirely normal to have a test period of 1-3 months here (inside the EU, which is not homogenous and doesn't look like the UK at all) where you can be fired immediately.

It isn't a magic bullet. I've had people perform well then tail off and while it may be a failure of my management that I couldn't help them perform better again, it isn't the norm and replacing those people isn't easy.

Rightly so, it should be hard to fire people and should require first showing evidence of trying to work together and help in good faith.

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