Comment by emestifs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by emestifs | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

And in US employment is at-will, no? What exactly is the risk for a company? Rogue employee stealing IP? Any employee can do that already. Can't fire a low performer? We just saw more 300k people in the industry let go in 2022/2023/2024. And at-will, trial period already exist.

If anything the risk is for the employee. But if companies stop trying to be Google and stick to their actual level of prestige, employees wouldn't have to do a multi week/month interviewing marathon just to get a foot in the door, and it balances out, easy to get your foot in another door.

I don't know if it's cargo culting, ego, or what, but non of the hiring practices so many companies carry out make sense. Pick top 10 resumes, spend 2h interviewing each, offer 3 month trial or at-will hire/fire your top pick. Saved you 50-100k in recruiter costs.

There is a lot of harm:

1. In order to get a job, a person need to quit one. If there is a risk (in form of trial period), why to accept such an offer? As result, best candidates pass, or at least stick to existing positions longer. Or pay raise must be more significant.

2. Reputational harm: read about Amazon's hire-to-fire practice. And try to guess, why a lot of people do not consider employment with Amazon.

3. Work harm: any new employee is investment. It has to be onboarded, and it is a heavy load for the accepting team.

Of course, it heavily depends on the job market segment. I know software eng. only. If most candidates are unemployed, trial period could be a blessing. In the current market, why would I even apply (and spend my time on the interview?

>What exactly is the risk for a company?

Maybe getting sued if they fire candidates fitting DEI or other protected class?

That's a reasonable assumption. I wonder if it's really going to hold up in court though. Basically wouldn't that imply once a non-white, non-male is hired you're basically with a high probability asking to be sued if you ever terminate their employment? That seems too broad to hold up in court. Couldn't the company say this person failed to meet expectations, so we decided to part ways? But, yeah, sure that's a risk, but idk if that's the real reason companies have all these hoops in their hiring process.

Most cases are resolved out of court, for a multitude of reasons. One being damage to public reputation and employee morale.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com