
How much does a bad hire cost? - saadalem
https://josh.works/how-to-write-a-letter-of-recommendation-for-yourself#how-much-does-a-bad-hire-cost
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30minAdayHN
Here are some additional non-monetary costs I see in addition to those that
are called out:

\- Effect on good performers. If one person is not pulling enough weight, it's
generally pretty evident to others and feels demotivating to do good work.

\- Bad code and long term effects of maintaining it. In the short term, it
will create a lot of code review burden. As much as we desire to be thorough
in code reviews, bad code will slip through cracks and owning it long term is
pain

\- Attrition on the team

\- Based on anecdotal evidence, low performers point fingers at other not so
perfect things like peers not helping, things are complex etc. It raises the
base level of negativity on the team. It spreads through 1:1s

\- As a manager, you should covering their back and because of that, you won't
scale as a manager

\- Bad outlook for the team when they work on cross team / cross functional
projects. It takes disproportionately more time to change that bad outlook
perception. It comes into play during things like calibration, promo etc.
Though you can trust that right decisions will be made based on each
individual's impact, there is a burden on the manager to discuss at length.

(edit: formatting)

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vanusa
_Now it’s time to give the formal PIP, which everyone knows is “beginning the
firing process”_

Why not cut the crap, stop playing head games -- and get to the point? Just
have - you know - a regular conversation with them:

"We've been talking a lot about how things have been going the past few months
-- and I'm sorry to say this, but by this point we just don't think it's going
to work out for you here. We could put you on this thing they call PIP, but
honestly, to me that feels patronizing (and a waste of your precious time, to
boot). And seriously, it's much better for your career and your next job hunt
if you were to resign on your own accord, than for us to have to fire you.
We'll give you a week or two to think about it - but if you're willing to
resign voluntarily, we'll give you X dollars as severance" \-- where $X is a
non-trivial amount, basically on the order of what you would have spent on the
2 months going through the pointless, soul-crushing, and fundamentally
insulting charade that -- as you say, everyone knows -- is PIP.

I know what everyone is about to say at this point: "because legal", "because
temper tantrums, sabotage, etc". But in reality, the risk here is very, very
small. The one time someone (from that precious breed of a "kind, high-empathy
manager") went this route with me -- and from the few times it has happened to
close friends of mine -- sure, it stung for a few minutes -- but ultimately we
saw they were completely right course, and after the fact, we were nothing but
grateful for their honesty, and for the pure courage and humaneness of the
path they chose to take.

Your "reality" may differ of course. In a lot of companies (especially very
large ones), no one really knows, or can really trust anyone, fears of
sabotage (or a reaction substantially worse than a temper tantrum) are, shall
we say, part of air you breathe once you walk through door.

But if that's the case, then you have far greater problems on your hands than
the slightly awkward problem of firing a person that you just aren't clicking
with.

~~~
moralestapia
>And seriously, it's much better for your career and your next job hunt if you
were to resign on your own accord, than for us to have to fire you [...]

Careful with this, it's not legal.

~~~
vanusa
How specifically?

~~~
moralestapia
That's coercion, literally.

~~~
vanusa
True, technically.

But the all-around mindfuck that is PIP feels psychologically coercive as well
(even if it doesn't meet the precise legal definition) - and somehow, more
harmful (and just plain insidious) overall.

------
lapcatsoftware
1\. Spend a month and 25 hours of labor dev team manager labor to
find/interview the candidate(s) and winnow the applicants down to someone to
make an offer.

Don't do that. Pick out the top few résumés, maybe 3 at most, interview only
those people, and hire 1 of them if they seem good. Companies make hiring way
harder than it needs to be.

5\. Start getting nervous. Employee not batting it out of the park like you’d
hoped. Maybe still onboarding, give it another month (and $12,000 in payroll
expense).

Here's the problem already. A month of "onboarding" is already too long. If
you see a problem, act quickly. Talk with the employee, and if it's not
working out, cut your losses quickly. It's the company's own fault for
prolonging it 9 months. If your onboarding process takes a month or more, you
need to work on simplifying that. You probably have way too much bureaucracy
and red tape in your company. The new person's coworkers should be able to
help get someone up to speed quickly.

It's a business. Make business decisions, not personal decisions. The boss's
job to make the tough decisions. If you can't, then you're the one who is
losing the company money, not the job candidate.

The claim is "the team is currently short-staffed, and has been for a long
time. That’s why they’re hiring!" If that's true, then there can't be several
months on onboarding. You need the new hire to start making valuable
contributions ASAP, and your processes should be set up to allow that.

It's hilarious and ironic that all of these so-called "Agile" shops you see in
job postings are actually extremely sluggish.

