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Comment by gymbeaux | Hacker News Reader

But usually there’s a 90 or 120-day probation period for new hires. How about letting them “interview” for the job, on the job. Screen them obviously, but after that… I mean the best way to see if they’re a good hire is to actually hire them. There’s no interview question or interview process that can perfectly duplicate that.

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From the point of view of the applicant, I wonder if I would prefer a long probation period over a long interview period.

If I'm unemployed and I have bills to pay, a paid probation period is the better option - even if I get fired after 90 days, that's still 3 months' salary. On the other hand, if I already have a job, joining another company is a big risk - I'm giving up a comfortable position for a job I might lose in 90 days if it doesn't work out - maybe I'll be in over my head, maybe I don't get along with the manager or the team, whatever. A long interview process gives me plenty of opportunity to gauge my prospective employers and back out at any point.

Sure, but, at least in my experience, new hires are ALWAYS on probation. So to me the status quo is this: you get vetted "harshly" in the interview process, then you have to clear the probation period. That said, I think it's pretty much a given you clear the probation period if you don't clash with coworkers, and write decent code. During your first ~90 days, you're ramping up, learning the company's procedures and coding conventions (and code base itself), and getting to know your coworkers... so I think the only time probation really bites you is if it's a bad fit culturally (which I would think you're at higher risk for the smaller the company - those startups are selective as hell about who they hire).

You can and probably should negotiate that clause away. If an employer offers you an at-will contract, it should have a US salary written on it or at least a large sign-on bonus.

I've never had a job where there wasn't a probation period. It's one of my major gripes with the current hiring process. They can fire you at any point during the probation period, so why the hunger games during the hiring process itself? That's the whole point of probation periods: because sometimes they get it wrong.

My guess is because of the opportunity cost. If you hire the wrong person you end up firing 3 months later, you likely missed your chance to hire a better candidate (who is unlikely to apply again to work for you) and you will need to restart the whole expensive hiring process again (even a more lightweight process is expensive in employee time, maybe paying recruiters and job listing sites, etc).

Also onboarding is expensive: even an experienced developer who has all the skills you need still has to learn your codebase, processes, business logic etc. while drawing a salary, and all that goes to waste if they leave before they can start becoming a net positive to your company.

Probation periods seem to be a thing in some countries but they’re not universal. I have never had a job with one.

Also, even with a probation period, a bad hire can damage morale and waste a lot of the team’s time.

In the US I suspect "contract to hire" fills a similar function. I see that all the time but I don't think I've ever seen an official "probation period" on an employee role. (Could also be regional or industry dependent.)

The idea behind probation period is that it becomes much more difficult to fire someone after that due to labor laws. US doesn't have such laws, most states are at-will employment so you don't have to give any reason to fire someone.

Probation periods are seen in the US, despite "right to work" labor laws because A) the company is large and has employees in California, or another state where labor laws favor the employees a bit more or B) the company wants to minimize the chance of getting slapped with a wrongful termination lawsuit. Regardless of labor laws, it's universally illegal to discriminate/fire someone for their race, religion, gender, marital status, age, et. al. and I think companies, especially when they want to fire someone who might believe they are being discriminated against, want an airtight defense (usually a PIP). Even though the employer will probably win the legal case, they still would rather not have a lawsuit at all.

I'm in the US and the last few jobs I've had all came with a probation period. All were salaried positions.

This works well. I’ve been in the industry about 20 years now and every job I’ve taken has had a short interviewing process followed by a probationary period, and then a full time offer is made after the probationary period.

I’ve only seen this approach fail once, and it wasn’t that big a deal, because very little time was sunk in to hiring the employee that had to be let go. At most a day or two was lost on-boarding.

Perhaps this is the right place to ask -- what would be the point of a probation period in the USA? All contracts I've seen here are at will and can be terminated for any reason or no reason. Now my experience is rather that most managers are uneasy about firing, but legally they are in the clear afaiu.

Probation in Germany goes both ways. Recently I worked there at a (small end of medium sized) company where work and pay was just so-so (nice, smart colleagues though). Then in a meeting the superior or my superior mentioned that there was some redundancy. Aha, I thought, I take that as a sign and promptly resigned some two weeks before the end of the probation period. They still expected me to come in 'til the last day, which I didn't mind too much, but still found a bit silly, since both parties agreed about the separation (also given the finite funds of that company).

It provides additional legal protection to the employer in the case they decide to terminate the employee during the first X days. Additionally, it serves as a "motivator" for new employees to be on their best behavior and to give it their all, at least for the first x days.

Laws that benefit the company, such as "right to work", mean that employers will often win lawsuits from former employees for things like wrongful termination suits, however companies would prefer to not be sued at all- even if they have a strong case. Court is expensive and a hassle.

That said, I did some moonlighting work for an employment law firm, and they say that they take less than 5% of the prospective clients who contact them, because they (and most law firms who only get paid if the client wins) want to be as sure as possible they will win the case. Of course if the prospective client were willing to pay up-front regardless of the case outcome, I'm sure most law firms would oblige. In such cases, I expect the former employers like to settle out of court to save time and money, even if the odds are good that they'd win in court.

This depends on where you are. What if the company is paying for the candidate's relocation? That can be quite expensive if it's international. And probationary terms might not be so easy to do in some countries.

If you have 10 promising candidates, and you'd like to hire one of the better ones among them -- then how are you going to accomplish that, with the strategy to "actually hire them"?

If among promising looking and speaking candidates, few are actually good, then what will the current employees think about people getting hired, fired, replaced a lot

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