Whole lotta comments here about how much better this is for the hiring org, and sure, I guess, but we can’t get candidates to do a 2hr take-home assignment at their own pace to knock half a day off the interview process, I don’t know how the hell you expect someone to commit to working at your shop for 3 months. Re: “call it a contract” - sure, and I should just take COBRA during your evaluation period?

Absolutely if you’re hiring new grads, go nuts with whatever this is, but if you’re looking for people with existing careers and responsibilities, this ain’t gonna work.

> ...but we can’t get candidates to do a 2hr take-home assignment at their own pace to knock half a day off the interview process...

Any decent submission for this type of exam takes more than two hours, and while the hiring company can view it as reducing the amount of time spent interviewing, it's just as stressful if not more so for the candidate. Throw in the time it takes to review and/or have a followup session to discuss with the candidate, and it's not a useful way to reduce interview time.

You can say just spend a couple hours on it but, unless it's really trivial, if the candidate wants the job, they'll spend the weekend on it--because they know other candidates will.

Most candidates will not spend a whole weekend on any given application. How could they, when it sometimes takes hundreds of applications to get a job? Sometimes no compelling jobs are on the table, and other times they exceed the time you have available to interview.

As an interviewer/hiring manager, I think you should keep your examination light until you're serious about maybe hiring the person. It's less of a burden for everyone, including you. Most jobs aren't all that glamorous so stop expecting people to bend over backward to show stunning low levels of dignity and respect for their own time.

So I'm sure they'll jump right on the opportunity to do 10 hours of contracting work for you.

There are cases where you really do need to see a work product sample. At a prior employer, we needed to see a writing sample. If you had an example or two already, great. But if you didn't have anything you could share, you'd have to create something.

I would have considered that back when I was actively looking–if I were being offered senior contractor rates. That's $150/hour minimum these days. I'm guessing that's not what they had in mind, but you never know!

Heck I’d just become a professional interviewee

In most other industries, it works this way. If a hire isn’t performing, they have a process called “firing” in which the person stops working for the company and they stop paying them a salary. It’s kind of like a layoff except it’s just one person. It’s also an incentive for the worker to do a decent job instead of rest-and-vest.

Defaults matter though. If getting rid of someone after a probationary period is a rare event, that's different from it being pretty common.

The more I think about this the less sense it makes. Over-hiring expensive tech workers with planned firings after a few months will burn incredible amounts of cash. If management can't effectively evaluate candidates for a single role, then why assume they will have success by increasing the number of employees? And if engineering management can't evaluate candidates, then they probably stink at onboarding as well, so that initial period will likely prove very little about the new hires. They also have to communicate their intentions up-front not only for ethical reasons but to avoid lawsuits from fired employees that almost certainly have the resources to sue for any alternative opportunities that they were screwed out of. So the company has to compensate people for their risk to even get qualified candidates, which means paying contract rates.

To be clear, internships/co-ops/summer jobs can make a lot of sense for university students. But, even new grads, if they get cut after 3 months (and it can take a while for a new grad to get into work life), they're now on the street outside their university placement resources and on-campus interview flow.

I agree with everything you are saying. The temporary nature of a college internship is mutually beneficial. That's not in the case with general employment where workers desire more stability, so employers have to sweeten the deal to bring in equivalent workers.

Maybe it's because I spent the early part of my career in New York startups, but back then firings were relatively commonplace. Not excessively common, but if you couldn't do your job, you could expect to get fired. There would be a meeting and a manager would say, "We had to let X go." Everyone would look around and make faces like "Yeah, I saw that coming," and then we'd move on. At one company, someone literally had their job replaced by a shell script. In contrast, I spent eight years at a major Bay Area tech company with over a hundred engineers, and I never saw a single person get fired. We had a couple rounds of layoffs, but no one was ever fired.

I was at a very small tech-adjacent company for almost 10 years and we definitely let people go who just weren't working out. What surprised me was how blindsided they typically were when it was blindingly obvious to everyone else there was a problem. They'd probably all have been able to find a role to coast in at a larger firm.

It makes sense that big companies are going to be slower and dumber at stuff like this, but the crazy thing is that now, even tiny startups think they should follow the same procedures as FAANGs. They're all doing three rounds of interviews, followed by a full day of coding/system design/behavioral BS, and they're all rejecting people that could potentially help their business a lot. And they're wasting a huge amount of energy and time in the process.

It’s called probation

It would work wonderfully for candidates who don't currently have a job, or at least a job they have much interest in keeping. Examples:

* newly graduated student

* someone who wants to break into software engineering from an unrelated industry

* someone re-entering the workforce after an extended leave (e.g. caring for a child, parent, or one's own medical issues)

For someone like you who (I assume) is currently employed as a software engineer, it's obviously a worse option than the traditional leetcode-oriented interview.

Call a contract organization and bring in a few people for a 6 month contract. At the end of the contract offer jobs to the good ones.

6 Months is only because that is what contract organizations want - you can buy the good people out sooner, but they need 6 months from people to make their budgets work. 6 months is plenty of time to ensure you know if someone is bad or just slow to get productive, but not too long to pay someone who is not worth it.

That leaves you only with candidates that are willing to work on a contract. Most are not that desperate. Do you want desperate employees? then go ahead. Also, don't be surprised when people that like contract work jump ship as soon as something slightly better appears on the horizon.

This happened to me. Company was on the verge of extending me an offer for a full time position. Hiring manager and team loved me. Then the CTO pulled some bullshit and the offer became one for a 6 month contractor, not a FTE.

I took the job anyways because I was desperate (had just been laid off). But I continued interviewing every chance I got and jumped ship at around the 5 month mark. The CTO was livid that I abandoned ship.

That's if your agreement with the contract company allows you to recruit their people.

I’ve had that happen a few times. Generally there may be a signing fee paid to the contractor.

Though in one case I got the job first and the contracting house second. BigCo had approved vendors but was having trouble finding people with the skill sets they needed.

there is a lot of financial incentive to just dump everyone and restart again and again; also financial incentive to extract work beyond the terms of the agreement, and to invent failure to justify reducing new offers. Some senior management looks for people who signal that they can and will do this to others, also hire intermediaries to oversee the process who will bear false witness against the employed. Magnify all of this in the USA where access to health care (or a green card) are contingent on employment.

I think we should "invert, always invert", as Charlie Munger put it. Why do we expect a N-session by M-hour interview be a reliable signal that a candidate is someone you want to work together with for at least a month or two. And many companies not only have an ineffective hiring process, but also an ineffective firing one. Well, what about work together for a month or two and see how things go

I would also add ineffective onboarding. Two places I showed up 'we will not have your computer for at least 2 weeks'.

Ha ha, that happened to me years ago at a small startup. I spent the first day scavenging spare parts around the office and was able to build a working desktop PC.

Similar thing happened to a friend who joined a large defense contractor. They had stacks of new computers sitting in a storeroom but the workforce was partially unionized and only union electricians were allowed to plug in new computers. Totally crazy, but he had to wait a couple weeks until they got around to it.

Oh I haven’t had that happen in such a very long time.

Like CI, onboarding is a process we get better at by doing. If I work some place that hires consistently, I’ll make sure to sit with a new engineer at least once a year to 18 months and observe them going through the documented process. Save them when they get stuck, and rephrase that part of the documentation.

I’ll also prompt them to make changes as well, for one very particular reason: when you encounter a jargon term for the first time maybe the first half dozen times, you still have Beginner’s mind. You can still explain it to someone below you on the ladder. Senior staff can get trapped in circular definitions and unspoken assumptions.

Generally speaking, I find that the people who hate ramping up new engineers have made a mess that they don’t like to think about, and onboarding makes them look at it.

I find that for most seniors, you should follow the documentation with check ins from current employees. If the documentation is obtuse then have the new hire correct it so that the next new hire having the same information at that point will understand what to do better.

Yes, but double check their work. If they’ve made a mistake that is visible in the documentation, you can fix it now and also have a teachable moment. But as I said above: resist the urge to rephrase what they’ve said unless it’s factually wrong.

When I’m onboarding people, fixing bugs in the docs is the first task they complete. It helps everybody, and it keeps them from having to jump into fixing bugs in code they don’t understand at all yet for just a little while longer, while they build their 10,000 foot view.

Last one I was at they ordered the computer my first day... You KNEW I was showing up 3 weeks ago...

> but also an ineffective firing one.

I don’t believe this is “also”. I think it is most of it. Software companies hate rejecting people who are in their club so much that they put all their energy in keeping them out in the first place.

Then there are also the people who believe interns are a waste of time. Theres a very high overlap between these people and the ones that some of us complain about at lunch as being a difficult coworker. If you can’t learn by teaching, then I have some serious doubts about whether you understand “teamwork”.

If companies could hire 1-2 devs in 6-12 months that would work. So not fired immediately but after 3 months or so and only if they really suck, not some hunger games style, survival of the fittest but if you hire 2 guys with intention to keep them if they are at least decent it seems fair and if one or both are not even decent, try to cut it as soon as possible.

Everything breaks when you have to hire 20 devs in 6 months. There is no process for hiring at that rate.

Yes they do and I actually think it is a fair way to hire.

In other professional areas if you want entry level salaries of 150k that can get you up to 500k you have to take extra education like masters, mbas or whatever, which means time and money. In software engineering you have to spend hours in hackerrank or leetcode and I would personally prefer to spend that time in a big company as an intern, even as a grown professional in the same way you take management programa. I think that time would be more profitable than doing brain teasers and for sure we (the company and I) will get to know each other.

> entry level salaries of 150k that can get you up to 500k

Only a tiny minority of programmers work in Silicon Valley. Those numbers are completely unrealistic everywhere else in the world. Don't act like we make the same as doctors and lawyers.

(While I agree with the former, we do often make about the same as doctors in our own market once you subtract their liability insurance. Then factor in more opportunity cost and college bills at the beginning of their careers…)

That is exactly my point, as a software developer if you want to make the same than a doctor or a lawyer (btw this also only applies to the US where they make astronomic amounts of money) you have to go through this process.

My experience is that only the ones that give you access to top salaries, wherever you are are, are the ones using this type of recruitment. There are tons of positions you can get without going through this and paying less.

many young MDs in the USA are drowning in school debt; some middle years MDs have bad luck with money D-I-V-O-R-C-E ; some young attorneys do not have an onramp to the higher paying situations.. in other words, there is a curve, it is not instant financial success as it appears when viewing top-earners.

Most lawyers don’t work at firms that pay top salaries either.

Thanks for bringing this up. It's always good to remember that while there are lawyers earning seven digits, there are also those earning government/non-profit salaries, and lots in the middle.

[delayed]

> Yes they do and I actually think it is a fair way to hire.

... if you want to hire a bunch of fresh, young developers.

Yes, that was Spolsky's point. This is a good way to diversify the talent pool by bringing new people into the industry.

I think more aggressive use of probationary period, and more narrative interviews would probably work fine and be less stress on both sides of the hiring

How is a probationary period less stressful for the employee? Quit my current gig with salary + health insurance, only to work at a new place where I might get suddenly let go after three months? Then I am working against the clock to keep bread on the table. Let alone people who might have visa situations.

Sure, you can always be fired at the drop of a hat, but significantly worrisome to walk away from a stable situation for a new job where firing is more easily performed.

It isn't, but I'm pretty sure the status quo is a time consuming interview with lots of puzzle solving coupled with a probationary period and a vesting cliff. I think because hiring is so difficult (on both sides of the table) that people get cold feet with marginal performers during the probationary period. Employees are reluctant to leave - interviewing is very hard, and managers are reluctant to fire - sourcing is very hard.

My thesis is that if interviewing was easier, both leaving and sourcing would be easier and everyone would win

> more narrative interviews

Please no.

A lot of places have a promote-or-fire culture. Although that's often linked to abusive work practices.

You would get into a job with a small salary, and the expectation you'll have a larger one in an year or so.

That's not far from having a proper probation period.

It might be possible for a company like Google, which is so buried in qualified applicants that they could decide to only hire left-handed people born on a Monday and they'd still be able to fill all their open positions.

Especially if you're the kind of company that doesn't need to make many experienced hires, but recruits a lot of people straight off college campuses.

It's not unheard of. Some company fire low-performers without second thoughts. I work in a big tech company, and I've been quite surprised to see young recruits "disappear", even though the entry bar is high. I'd be curious to know the stats.

Programming would be much easier from a job-seeking aspect if we didn’t have private medical insurance, and it would be amazing if we also had UBI. Try stuff out, fail, try again.

I don't think the average software developer in the US is paying anything close to the average rate for rents or mortgages, so I'm not sure how you think UBI would help keep them afloat in between jobs.

Financial discipline doesn’t help you with a cracked filling or a broken arm.

If you’re really honest with yourself, and us, the people who say they can’t afford to quit their job (for financial reasons) we think less of those people. It’s not because we’re petty, it’s because they’re living beyond their means in a profession where that is just so dumb you have to question their judgement on other things.

If they say they have to stay because they need the insurance (for themselves or especially their family) we collectively groan and bitch about the state of medicine.

UBI for devs isn’t to pay rent, it’s to lower your burn rate between jobs.

Just swap to contract-to-hire. Easier interviews, entry levels can break in, etc.

I've done this at a few companies as a hiring manager--offer the candidates a 10 hour/week (or whatever they can commit to) contract to do X thing until Y date. They set their own hours, but they can't expect folks to be available afterhours. Evaluate how far they got based on the hours they committed. Typically shows how their work style will be, but can't really evaluate their interpersonal skills/"meeting persona".

Sounds great for entry-level, and terrible for people leaving jobs for new ones. It's an enormous life-changing decision to invest energy into leaving a job for a new one. I'm never going to do that for "a 10 hour/week contract to do X thing until Y date", and neither are any of the people I'd love to hire.

So how does that work if you are in another job? Most contracts forbid working for another company. And if they aren't in another job how do they pay bills on ten hours a week?

The contract to hire contracts I've worked as a developer the past 30 years were either 3 month or 6 month periods and 40 hours per week.

No offense but I'd be highly suspicious of someone offering contract to hire only 10 hours per week, it doesn't sound like the company has much skin in the game.

I think you're replying to a post proposing 10/week instead of the 30 interviews. Not instead of actual hiring.

Would work just fine for both parties if you're employed and open to changing jobs, for example.

10 hours/week is really just a compensated job interview.