Firing somebody can set you back $100,000 (or more if they're in a protected class). Worse, a bad hire can wreck your schedule.

I've encountered programmers who know their stuff, can talk about it intelligently and knowledgeably, but cannot write code worth spit. It's not as rare as you might think. It's sort of like someone with an art degree who has no talent for actually painting.

It's just silly that startups will go months without filling a position so they can avoid spending a week on a person that they might need to fire. This is an example of a premature optimization. A problem faced by less than 1% of companies nationwide is not something you need to worry about. It would be like leasing the top floor of an office building in Silicon Valley for top dollar because you heard that NYC occasionally floods in the winter.

If someone is in a protected class and they get fired within the first week, does anyone really think they'll win a lawsuit alleging discrimination? Does anyone actually think they'd get beyond a motion to dismiss (usually the first motion filed by a defendant)? If the employer was discriminating against protected classes they wouldn't have hired the employee in the first place. These types of claims are quickly dismissed and usually incur minimal legal fees.

So, to be clear, firing is not the goal, it's just the worst case. 100k sounds high but honestly, not something I'm familiar with. I wonder how much money is lost on recruiting being so ineffective? Given that the current process is about ~6-7 hours of eng time per on-site candidate, I'm not convinced that the cost of firing is going to outway the costs of recruiting being considerably optimized.

I'm not sure I see how someone is going to: a) Write a take home project b) Explain their design decisions, respond to code review, etc, in person

and somehow not be able to "write code worth spit" or otherwise game the system consistently.

edit: Would love to hear (in the US) where that 100k comes from. At-will state means I can fire you for whatever reason, can't imagine it really comes close to 100k tbh.

Don''t know why you're being downvoted, but 100k is definitely not the cost of firing a just-hired employee in the US.

If you're paying a new-hire-fast-fire more than the salary due to them for the period worked (and any other amounts listed in their offer letter, if one existed), then you need to talk to a labor lawyer because you're definitely doing something wrong...unless you're paying them to shut up about the experience.

Lots of costs:

1. relocation expenses

2. starting bonus

3. headhunter fees

4. severance pay

5. COBRA

6. it can take a while to determine they're incompetent if they're good at the facade

7. if they're in a protected class, you have to go through a period (often 6 months or more) of documenting their incompetence and leaving a trail of trying to help them improve

8. firing someone always comes with it the risk of a lawsuit, and meritless lawsuits are commonplace, but they still cost a LOT of money to defend.

9. disruption to your team, scheduling slippage, having to allocate someone else to fix the incompetent work, etc.

If you actually think those are the costs of firing a new hire, you need to talk to a labor lawyer immediately, because 1, 2, and 3 are hiring costs which don't apply to most jobs--startups included. Only in the rarefied world of FAANG and VC-funded money-losing unicorns do new hires get relocation expenses and a starting bonus. Even associates starting new jobs at BigLaw firms don't get paid relocation expenses or starting bonuses. And if you're doing the hiring in-house why are you paying a headhunter fee?

5. COBRA is paid by the employee, not the employer.

6. Somehow every other industry except programming manages to do this just fine.

7. This is completely and utterly false. If a new hire doesn't work out you can just let them go. Somehow, companies do this all the time without issues, including companies with much cushier jobs than startups.

8. Everything comes with the risk of a lawsuit. You're prematurely optimizing for the 0.0001% case, for an imagined scenario that isn't that expensive to defend.

9. Most of these apply to leaving the position open for months without filling. So let me add one to your list that applies if you don't fill the job: employee burnout leaving to existing employees leaving before the open position is filled, leaving you with more positions to fill than you started with.

Paid relocation expenses is fairly common outside of SV for highly compensated employees, however, they are structured so that you must pay it back if you don't stay employed for a certain time (usually a year). I've never heard of a relocation bonus that wasn't structured this way.

Retention bonuses and starting bonuses are structured the same, you sign an agreement to get that bonus that says you pay it back if either you or the company decides to end employment within a certain timeframe.

I agree with you for the most part, however, you keep claiming that relocation are not usually paid. I know that relocation packages are very commonly offered to programmers, even in entry-level positions, in the finance and oil industries.

> severance pay

Unless this is a contracted for benefit, this isn't a separate cost from lawsuit risk, but a mitigation of lawsuit risk: severance pay is paid to people on condition of waiving claims.

> if they're in a protected class

If you start a sentence this way, it's a clear sign you don't know what you are talking about. Except for a few special cases (“age over 40” and “veteran status”), every employment protected class is a dimension on which discrimination against any value is equally restricted, and everyone has some value on each axis (race, sex, etc.)

So, everyone is “in a protected class”. Well, several of them, actually.

> you have to go through a period (often 6 months or more) of documenting their incompetence and leaving a trail of trying to help them improve

No, you don’t, and you can’t really count this “requirement” and lawsuit risk as separate costs, since this is simply a policy companies adopt to mitigate lawsuit risk.

> you can’t really count this “requirement” and lawsuit risk as separate costs, since this is simply a policy companies adopt to mitigate lawsuit risk.

Mitigating lawsuit risks is costly.

> Mitigating lawsuit risks is costly.

It certainly has a cost, but it's part of the cost of lawsuit risk, not a separate, additional cost.

Oh, those are costs of hiring someone, not just the firing.

And I said earlier I maintain that my method of interviewing will actually reduce those costs.

And when you fire someone, you have to hire another. So the costs are incurred because you made a bad hire.

This all feels like a stretch.

Think of it this way. If I sell my house, I pay a 6% commission. If I reject the offer, I still owe the commission. I pay the commission. Then if I sell it again, I pay another 6% commission.

I understand your misunderstanding now.

If you sell your house, you pay a 6% commission on closing. If you reject the offer, there is no closing, and you don't owe the commission. Because the house didn't sell. If you sell the house, you can't sell it again unless you're committing fraud...But assuming you meant you find another buyer, and successfully close with the second buyer, you would then owe a single 6% commission to your real estate broker, not two 6% commissions.

This is also not how recruitment bonuses work, and I say that as someone that works closely with HR on the tax/legal side of things.

If you pay a recruiter a recruitment bonus, their recruited employee has to remain with the company for X amount of time (aka "trial period"). Usually at least 3 months, but it varies. Once that happens, the bonus "vests" and is due to the recruiter. (Many recruiters will try to get paid before the trial period ends, but you don't actually have to pay them yet.) If you terminate the employee before the trial period ends, the recruiter is not owed a recruitment bonus. These are all standard provisions for recruitment contracts involving 3rd party recruiters. (Note: this is for the contract with the recruiter, not the recruitment employee. The employee's employment contract, if any, may not include any language about a trial period.)

Of course, it's very possible for a startup without an HR department to leave out the trial period language from their recruiter contracts. Because they didn't know any better because they didn't think that HR personnel provided useful functions. Now you know why HR departments exist.

> I'm not sure I see how someone [...]

I understand, it isn't intuitive. I hope my analogy of someone well trained in art, yet still can't paint worth a damn, makes sense.

Or pilots who ace all the pre-flight training, yet simply are too uncoordinated to fly well. (That's me. I know all about flying, yet should never be in the pilot's seat.)

Some people are just unable to synthesis good code out of all their knowledge.

I don't really like arguing analogies. I'm not convinced that a take home + code review is easily gamed.

I've seen it happen often enough to know. It's not that hard - just read the code you copied until you understand how it works.

If they understand how it works well enough to go through a code review and modify it based on that code review, what's the problem? That just... sounds like what your work is going to be.

> what's the problem?

Good question. Like I said elsewhere in this thread, there are many people who are knowledgeable and intelligent about coding, but cannot code. They are different skills. I've met many people like this.

I could study Romeo+Juliet and know everything about it that lit professors know. But I could never write it.

For another example, from my time at Boeing, the engineers were divided into two independent groups. One group designed, the other group analyzed and checked the designs. They were different skills, and the engineers would gravitate to whichever path best suited them.

My point is more that if they can do all of those things and "game" the interview they seem like a good hire.

It’s because everyone is copying Google.

FAANG companies have this problem: when you hire thousands of people a year, a higher false-positive rate is a big deal.

When you are startupbro.com, you don’t have this problem, but you’re desperately cargo-culting your way to success, and doing anything in a way that goes against the grain causes the other bros to accuse you of “bad signaling”.

See also: why tech companies cram together in San Francisco.

>when you hire thousands of people a year, a higher false-positive rate is a big deal.

My friend's employer is currently hiring thousands of people a year with a single interview lasting 1-2 hours without problems. Some highly technical and some manual laborers.

Then do this by putting new employees on a probationary period for the first six months. Many of their employees are union, and it still works out, the unions agree to this arrangement.

Couldn't agree more. Almost every startup in LA I interviewed with seemed to suffer from some sort of imposter syndrome. Even a hint of a question about their technology choices or their business model and they look at you like you just ran over their dog. HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THE GREAT AND WISE WIZARD?!??