I'm curious what you mean by over-promised?
Unless you only do this for people who don't already have a job, this sounds more toxic than multiple interviews. "Oh yeah we want you to work for us, but quit your old company, we'll try you out for a few weeks and if not we'll go our separate ways" ... but they quit their previous company so it's not as nice as it sounds.
Rather than ensuring every bullet point on their resume is factual through six interviews I’ve found it’s better to assume they’re honest and as capable as advertised, interview for personality, and then if they’ve oversold themselves that’s why it’s called a 90 probationary period.
I don’t get cranky if someone quits (even with no notice) within 90 days, for any reason. And I’ll let someone go within 90 days, for any (legal, ethical) reason.
I think it's a cultural difference. Many companies see firing as a failure to competently hire. Many employees see firing as a sign of instability. In the few startups I've worked at, I saw top talent leave at the first sign of instability/layoffs.
Glad to see there’s still some love for DB knowledge. Seems like everyday someone is coming to me with an issue that could be quickly solved by leaning on a mature RDBMS, instead of an ORM/NoSQL/flavor of the year tool.
Too bad most roles in this industry (that pay well and don’t work you to premature balding) need niche specialists, instead of deep generalists.
And all the faddery (see: MongoDB, MySQL, DocumentDB). “We don’t need a full-fledged RDBMS. We’ll ride this malnourished pony all the way past the finish line. We gotta stay lean; we gotta stay hungry. There’s no ‘OLTP’ in first to market.”
t. TC 75k 7yoe
Personally I don’t understand how people can keep switching between different libraries all the time. I’ve been working Vue for the past year and I still know I don’t know everything.
Glad I’ve gotten hang of typescript though.
Of course "knows" is not that precise. Postgresql is vast and complex.
Unless it's asp or laravel. Then it is two weeks in which you have to be constantly drunk.
What percentage of people get let go within 90 days?
I just present myself as-is, which is probably less impressive, but I don't want to be hired somewhere based on false pretenses. That's just stress I don't need. I'd rather just switch careers and find something else to do before I do that. So I guess I just don't care enough to lie, which is kind of a lack of ambition of sorts. Misrepresentation is probably a better qualification for a sales position though.
I do think with poignant questions during interviews, you can tease out if someone knows what they're talking about. I just had a few interviews at a Fortune 500 and they peppered me with pretty great questions. Simple stuff, but good questions like, "what is a singleton" etc. You need to give a candidate some leeway, it's stressful and I don't sit around thinking about what a singleton is.. but I did have an acceptable answers to questions like that in my mind. "A static class which can only have a single instance". They liked me, but didn't hire me.
It's a tough industry that has brought engineers to their knees. Begging when nothing would work without them. It was supposed to be the next buoy of the American working class but instead the state of affairs is pathetic. That's what we get for disrespecting collective bargaining. At this point, there's definitely easier ways to make a buck than software. I wouldn't do it again but it's all I know.
If 20% of candidates are getting cut after the probation, I’m very hesitant.
Losing 5% quickly is only slightly above normal and may, in fact, be a positive sign of quality control.
They can take you the Fair Work Commission for an unfair dismissal claim so companies have have processes in place to make sure they don't face that risk, which includes things like written warnings for underperformance, setting clear expectations, and giving the employee a chance to correct underperformance.
Managers in Australia much prefer to rid of underperformers during probation.
Isn't getting unemployed always a possibility? It seems to me that parent commenter makes things clear and transparent to the candidate. Otherwise, the company could just fire without any such probation period anyways. Why should a company stick with an employee if the employee misrepresented themselves in the first place.
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.
It is funny they don't want to call it "probation" because Australian probation is just every job in America.
In the more western culture of recognising that company loyalty is severed both ways, a probationary period makes much less sense.
American, not Western. Probationary periods are the norm in Western(or developed for that matter) countries, same as worker rights (such as you can't be fired on a whim). Due to said worker protections, a probationary period gives the company some time to realise it made a mistake in hiring, because afterwards it's drastically harder to let someone go. Same goes for the employee, during the probationary period you can leave with little to no notice, but once it's over the mandatory notice is in the multiple weeks to months period (at my last job it was the max for France, 3 months).
And, speaking as somebody who's seen a 4-digit number of interview packets: The multi-interviewer format is far from flawless, too. The capability of groups of humans to collectively fuck up without ever talking to each other is quite impressive.
If you absolutely want to invest more time, at least build a multi-hour interview that has people do their job, in a team environment. Because that's what ultimately will happen.
Don't do multiple rounds of CS trivia.
For a small company the interviewer might well be the beneficiary of your work and in the end he needs you more than you need him. So a good one won't let his bad day ruin a nice candidate.
Also, depends on culture. There are countries where 1:1 interviews with a different gender candidate are okay.
Honestly we also have a senior contractor on my who we only did 1 or 2 60 min basic screens for and they’re a huge disappointment and we’ve been dealing with them for a year I guess because they’re not quite bad enough to fire immediately. I bet a full panel would not have accepted them.
Are you serious right now?
That's what contracting is for and I tell everybody to turn down any position that starts as a "contractor". Commit or GTFO, stop wasting peoples time.
I don't know why, but something about "not renewing a contract" makes HR and the C-Suite at most companies feel a lot safer than "we're firing you" despite the fact they're virtually identical with the standard US at-will employment contract.
On the balance, I prefer the probation approach as it makes life easier for everyone.
Probationary periods are a normal part of employment contracts in most developed/Western countries, with few glaring exceptions like the US, due to the presence of worker protection laws like the fact you can't be fired on a whim, and you can't quit on a whim without notice. So the probationary period leaves both parties the opportunity to quit before it becomes hard to do so.
Some US-based well funded companies that hire software engineers in Australia are willing to bid substantially higher for senior engineers (i.e. ~ AUD 300k comp + stock).
The old adage still applies, the jobs you want aren’t advertised and the candidates you’re looking for aren’t on job boards looking.
For someone new-ish to Sydney without much of a network, where should I be looking, if not the usual job boards?
It's a lot of work though.
If you’re senior ex-FAANG you can easily get $250+
$300+ is probably staff level and above.
When interviewing my own candidates, I use a 1 hour interview mostly focused on approach and personality. We have a probation period to work out if they’ve over-promised, and most of our tech industry is big banks that won’t notice if they waste a few weeks salary trying someone out. Honestly, for the salaries the local market provides, I think 1 interview is fair. Any more and I think we’re wasting peoples time for nothing.
Personally, I’ve dropped out of application processes when they’ve indicated there are multiple rounds, and my salary hasn’t suffered for it relative to my friends who put up with them, so I feel like I’m ahead.