Comment by michpoch
3 days ago
> Also, the best (albeit the most expensive) selection process is simply letting the new person to do the actual work for a few weeks.
What kind of desperate candidate would agree to that? Also, what do you expect to see from the person in a few weeks? Usual onboarding (company + project) will take like 2-3 months before a person is efficient.
Candidate would be compensated, obviously. That's why it's expensive.
You don't need him to become efficient. Also I don't think it is always necessary to have such long onboarding. I'll never understand why a new hire (at least in senior position) can't start contributing after a week.
> Candidate would be compensated, obviously. That's why it's expensive
Ok... take me through it. I apply to your company and after a short call you offer me to spend 4 weeks working at your place instead of an interview.
I go back to my employer, give them resignation letter, work the rest of my notice period (2 months - 3 months), working on all handovers, saying goodbyes.
Unless the idea is to compensate me for the risk (I guess at least 6 months salary, probably more), then I do not see how you'd get anyone who is just a poor candidate to sign up for this.
> You don't need him to become efficient
So what will you see? Efficiency, being independent and being a good team player are the main things that are difficult to test during a regular interview.
And so that self-selects for people who already are unemployed then, right? Most developers I know (including myself) look for a new job while still having a job, as to not create a financial hole in-between. I'd be curious if that doesn't then end up with lower quality candidates who ended up unemployed to begin with?
And, additionally, it encourages your candidates to still be interviewing while they're on their probationary period with you, since they may be back to unemployed after 4 weeks or whatever. Which creates even more potential issues if they get a much better offer while they're onboarding with you.
> self-selects for people who already are unemployed then
You can say that about all forms of hiring process. If you're unemployed, you obviously have more time: to spend more time on the take-home assignments (which I hate, see another thread [1]), to add more stuff to your GitHub profile, to go to more interviews, etc.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40200397
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I'd argue the bigger expense is on the team having to onboard what could potentially be a revolving door of temporary hires. Getting a new engineer to the point where they understand how things work and the specific weirdness of the company and its patterns is a pretty big effort at anywhere I've worked.
> can't start contributing after a week.
Because you have zero context of what the org is working on.
If you work with Boring Technology, your onboarding process has no reason to be longer than a week, unless you're trying to make the non-tech parts of the role too interesting.
> unless you're trying to make the non-tech parts of the role too interesting.
Unless your role is trivial to replace with an LLM, you need to understand the business. Maybe not for really junior role, but everything above - you need to solve issues. Tech is just a tool.
You don't have to understand the entire business to start being productive. Particularly when you have experience from other, similar businesses.
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