
You Won’t Believe How Much Money We Wasted On Bad Hires In 2013 - francoismathieu
http://hub.uberflip.com/h/i/5420719-you-won-t-believe-how-much-money-we-wasted-on-bad-hires-in-2013
======
voidlogic
So if your new employee doesn't give you warm fuzzies- let them go fast? There
are lots of great talent that is neither an anti-social asshole, nor a social
butterfly; there has to be a some minimal time to "get to know" the new guy.
It sounds like this guys is hiring for a frat-house.

Also, Warning signs- Randy mentions "9-5" and "as they say goodbye at what you
may not deem not a legitimate end of the day."

I don't think I would want to work for Randy- Maybe this is just my impression
and not the case here, but if you think being a startup is an excuse for
_regularly_ _expecting_ employees to work more than 8 working hours a day then
you are deluded, taking advantage of your employees and hurting them. I would
not let my employees work more than 50 hrs/week even if they begged.

Side thought: Everyone in the valley mentions 9-5 as "standard working hours",
but a standard work day is 8 hours. So assuming a 1 hr lunch that is
7-4/8-5/9-6... Where I grew up in the upper midwest, there everyone used the
term 8-5...

~~~
emhart
re: side thought - we do 8:30-5 where I'm at, as we generally set aside half
an hour for lunch. That said - in the service industries I worked in for many
years, you would work an 8 hour shift with one short break, one half hour
break and get paid for 35 hours at the end of the week. I know that isn't
universal, but it was a very common experience in my work life.

~~~
cema
Just one of the reasons service industries suck. (Especially with respect to
software industry, but also manufacturing.)

------
notacoward
25 rockstars, eh? And $70K (fully loaded) on six bad hires who lasted a median
53 days. Let's assume that the salary distribution for those new hires is
similar to that for those rockstars. In the absence of other information,
we'll also have to assume that the median period of employment for those six
is also the average. So we're talking about rockstar salaries (fully loaded)
in the range of $84K. Where can I get rockstars that cheap?

Also, he never really says what was wrong with these employees. Vague doubts
about "fit"? "Get under your skin"? "Don't mesh"? All sounds like a
discrimination or wrongful-termination suit waiting to happen. Anybody who is
in any way dealing with HR should know that firing someone requires
_extensive_ documentation of actual wrongdoing, not just this weak "feels
wrong" crap. I'd be very surprised if that's _less_ the case in Canada than in
the US.

This author really needs to worry less about cover letters, and more about why
his company is having these cultural-fit problems. Maybe putting "Like to work
late?" and "Test your ping pong and foosball skills" on the Careers page
doesn't attract the right kind of employees. I'd love to hear what some of
those ex-employees found once they got there, especially regarding the little
Pocket Napoleon of a COO.

~~~
dangrossman
> firing someone requires extensive documentation of actual wrongdoing

In the US? Maybe to help avoid frivolous lawsuits, but barring having signed a
contract stating otherwise, you don't need any wrongdoing to terminate
someone's employment.

~~~
voidlogic
My understanding in most locales:

Terminating an employee without cause is acceptable for at will employment,
but it means you will be paying them unemployment.

Firing is terminating an employee with just cause and means you don't have to
pay unemployment.

If this guys is letting people go because they don't fit into his super-
culture, that is the former and not the latter.

~~~
dangrossman
That's my understanding as well. I would assume if the termination reasons are
as vague as this post, that those people he let go are eligible for
unemployment.

------
emhart
I can only imagine how grating this post must be to those people still in his
employ who had developed any sort of relationship with those let go. Or those
still employed who worry, every day, if he isn't looking at them with disdain
as they walk in the door. In my experience, the "culture" upper management
experience is rarely the culture on the floor.

~~~
quasse
There are so many things that make me think working there must be so many
things about abusive startup culture that I hate.

>You get this uncomfortable feeling when you see that hire [...] say goodbye
at what you may not deem not a legitimate end of the day.

Come on Randy. I can smell bullshit management speak for "didn't work an
unpaid extra four hours every day" a mile off here. Did you actually feel they
weren't getting enough done or not putting in the work you paid them for? Why
not say that if so?

>our 25 rockstar team members

I think the work rockstar has been hashed over here enough, but seriously. I'm
sick of it being used a code word for overworked 20-somethings that don't know
any better.

>And it’s definitely not to make it seem like we’re a tough or crummy place to
work – pretty sure our Instagram feed would show otherwise.

Ooh, I can almost see the fun jumping off the page. Ski trips for the exec
team, office pumpkin carving, #startuplife? There's hashtags so it must be a
good work environment.

~~~
FireBeyond
I thought this was a little snarky, but I checked out the Instagram feed...
like you say... executive ski trips versus office ping-pong. Employees working
two to a desk that is little wider than their display while the CxOs do photo
shoots and get filmed in the office ...

------
brianmcconnell
You won't believe how we just fucked employee morale in 2014...

Having hired and fired employees as an employer, and having been fired myself,
I have two pieces of advice for readers here.

#1: this person is an asshat, and at worst is setting himself up to get sued,
and at best, just fucked morale among his not yet fired rockstars who'll
rightly wonder "Am I next?".

#2: suck it up. hiring is hard. it's inevitable that you are going to make
mistakes. you can either hire people and see how they work out, or you can
burn your technical team out doing endless interviews. pop quiz. what's even
more annoying to your developers than unnecessary meetings? doing two hour
long interviews with yet another not properly vetted by HR candidate, that's
what.

I've found its easier to hire people on contract, see how they work out, see
how they like the company, and go from there. One of two things happen. Either
they really like the work and company and you like them (yay), or they
mentally check out, and you both amicably part ways or figure something else
out.

Hiring someone at below market pay, and then publicly slagging them like this,
that's just low class.

What does Uberflip do anyway? (Never heard of them).

------
Aloha
I'd caution against anyone from applying anything from this article as a
universal truth.

For Example:

Changing Jobs every 6 months - The economy has been shit for 5 years - and
unless you have spent your whole career in the Bay Area - you're likely to
have been job hopping from contract to contract.

Commute - again, this is highly tied to which market you're in. An hour away
in Seattle is a doable commute - its either 30 miles (if going to Seattle) or
up to 60 miles (if heading away).

Followup to Interview - I used to do this - but after getting no reply 90% of
the time, I stopped. I now only do this if I'm really, really interested.
Typically something that makes me really interested is a great resume builder,
salary or benefits - I try not to apply for jobs that I don't find interesting
from a technology level.

On a personal note: Lack of personalized cover letter - I've been in the
position where applying for work was more like an assembly line - How
personalized should it be? I have a form letter I modify light for each job I
apply for - I'd be leery of any employer that expects me to write an essay of
ball gargling - The cover letter IMO should exclaim my strengths to the job -
not why I want to work for you - I want to work for you, because the work
sounds interesting, and for one reason or another, I'm in a the market for a
job.

The Good - Listen to your intuition - I think this is great advice - but only
listen when its screaming - not just when you meet someone different then you.
A warning, intuition is how you judge that 'fit to culture' \- If your
intuition says too many people are off - the problem isn't the candidates, its
your culture.

~~~
kamaal
>>Changing Jobs every 6 months

Regarding this. I am afraid there are some people who just don't stay at any
place for a meaningful period of time. And its not like they are getting fired
all the time. These people just in their full consciousness and responsibility
just keep hopping jobs in hopes of a mythical super career.

In my country(India) its standard to get a ~15% hike on a job change on your
current pay. The net result is you have a market full of job hoppers with
hardly meaningful experience. It takes some time to come to speed in your new
job and you hardly do any work in your notice period. So you essentially do
some small time work in the minute period of time you serve at any company.

What's worse is these people are expensive compared to actual genuine
contributors, they hardly stay and contribute anything. Since they won't be
around in your company in the next 6-8 months why bother hiring them at the
first place. And given that, you can't trust them with any long term
responsibilities. Or any work of strategic importance.

~~~
Aloha
That kinda wage raise is impressive - at one company I was at we had the
"<company name> raise" \- which is to say, take a job at another firm, get a
50% pay bump, then come back to <company name> and get another job. The short
timer thing though sucks, I've only left one job for a raise - the rest were
for layoff, work conditions, and one honest to god firing (I was the wrong
person for the role).

I'd personally love to come and work in India for a year, just for the
cultural experience.

------
fiatmoney
You'd think there would be a description of what was actually "bad" about
these hires, beyond "you get this uncomfortable feeling" and they "simply
don’t mesh".

A interpretation is that the criteria they're using to hire, includes a large
amount of personality-matching based on their description, could be drawing
from a pool stocked more with winning personalities than with competent
developers.

~~~
phaus
He did:

>one of our Bad Hires failed on three of the following items which are usually
a make or break for me:

Sounds pretty serious. Let's find out what it is.

>They did not include a personalized cover letter with their resume when
applying.

Oh my. No personalized cover letter? The bastard should be shot, or at least
unemployed for the rest of his life. Or maybe instead the author should think
for a moment why his number one priority (its the first thing he listed) when
it comes to evaluating candidates has fuck all to do with anything that an
actual adult might care about.

~~~
fiatmoney
...and to top it all off, he then hired them anyway.

------
sukuriant
"Let’s start with the lost money – $70k. Whether you’re a big business or
startup like us, that’s a lot of cash burned on people who added little to no
value to your goals."

70k / 6 employees < 12k / employee.

That's a lot of money? That really doesn't seem like that much money,
especially if the vetting paradigm allowed the other 13 employees to bring
vastly more than that lost 12k / employee to the table.

~~~
rch
Exactly what I came here to type. I'd like to know what the OP thinks a
legitimate end of the day is too.

~~~
jurassic
Agreed. When I read that bit, I wondered if part of his "bad hire" profile is
somebody who has too much self-respect to kill themselves working >50 hrs/wk
for his company at what looks like below-market rates.

------
etfb
I'm going with my gut here: every sentence I read from this guy makes me hate
him more. If I read this article before applying for a job with his company, I
would only have myself to blame if he made an offer and I accepted it.

------
free652
>as they say goodbye at what you may not deem not a legitimate end of the day.

Thanks god I don't work for you. I'd be a bad hire too. 5pm is the legitimate
end of the day in US.

~~~
capisce
I sure hope that's not what he meant by "not a legimate end of the day".

------
logn
Yeah feel the vibes and listen to your gut. Bad Hires aren't about performance
or what they do wrong, it's about meshing and fitting in. Because if the boss
doesn't get good warm and fuzzy feelings when you walk by, clearly 100% of
your salary is being wasted.

~~~
rhizome
With apologies to John Lennon, "management is what happens while you're busy
crushing it."

------
xacaxulu
Don't be someone this person doesn't like! With such stringent criteria as
"uncomfortable feelings" and avoiding provoking random feelings of "buyer's
remorse", I can't wait to submit an application to UberFlop's house of wildly
swinging emotions. Every new hire gets a crystal ball to divine this persons
emotions and a mood ring to make sure to only think happy thoughts. Are these
adults we're talking about here? Holy fuck.

------
gone35
_They did not create a trial account of our product before the first
interview._

Minor quibble, but given that their two products are ostensibly not consumer-
oriented --a content management tool for marketers and a tool for creating
branded, flippable PDF viewers--, is it really too unreasonable that some
candidates did not sign for their product? Or maybe it's just seen as a sign
of lack of curiosity/interest about the company, dunno.

~~~
Aloha
Yes, this.

------
TrainedMonkey
What the article completely misses is that cost of bad hire is just as high
for the employee as it is for the company.

Particularly fire "fast" option, for the employees next job it raises
uncomfortable questions of why. So the goal is to not hire bad people. If you
did hire a person, own it up and provide them with close performance feedback.
Fire people if you have to, but not before they had at least few chances to
improve their behavior and were clearly communicated as to what is going to
happen if they do not.

~~~
memracom
Right. Therefore it is better for both the employee and the employer that you
fire people in the first few days if you do not feel comfortable with the
worker. The employee can just continue their job hunt, and you will not spend
so much on getting clear on the fact that this person does not fit.

And if a few days strikes you as being too short, then try a week or two.
Personally the only time I fired someone that was just not suited, was after
two weeks. But in thinking back on it, I already knew this aftera few days,
just needed some time, and some conversations with the employee to convince
myself. Of course, part of that decision was that the conversations did not
lead to improvements, but the important take away is to act fast on your
hunches.

If you don't trust yourself to fire someone after 3 days then at least set up
some tests that will provide you with the data to know whether or not the
employee will work out.

It is better for everybody that way.

~~~
TrainedMonkey
If after few days you can tell employee is not a good fit, maybe the problem
is your hiring process?

------
rhizome
There's not a lot of self-reflection in this analysis.

------
mrxd
> You get this uncomfortable feeling when you see that hire stroll in first
> thing in the morning… They get under your skin even though they haven’t done
> anything 'bad' quite yet.

I'm no lawyer, but I wonder whether saying things like this creates legal
liabilities related to employment discrimination by implying that the company
makes hiring decisions on non-job related criteria.

------
JabavuAdams
I guess as an entrepreneur you have to believe that your shitty little
lacklustre company is the next big thing, but man. The arrogance!

If they're not building space-ships, robots, or general AI, I'm now officially
at the stage of my career where I expect employers to get down on their knees
and seduce me.

------
leggo2m
You won't believe which company I'll never apply to work for in 2014.

------
wch
This post gives off a really bad brogrammer vibe.

And I hope these aren't developers they were hiring and firing. The average
salary of these bad hires was about $57,000 per year. (The total was $70,000,
divided by 6 people who stayed an average of 75 days.)

~~~
rickyc091
This was actually closer to my calculations as well. I was getting about
60k-70k a hire assuming they worked a 9-6 job for 5 days a week. Feels like
these are college grads or junior devs.

Edit:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soxnNYT5res](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soxnNYT5res)
Found a video, yep, they look young.

------
adammil
That's quite fluffy, ethereal "bad hire" criteria. Nothing about ability to
get the job done, communication with the team, quality of deliverables,
reliability, or really anything a reasonable person would use as objective
criteria to identify a bad hire. I wish I could read between the lines and
understand what the author is really saying here, because we occasionally see
articles written like this. What is your magic criteria to be in cool club?
Please just speak plainly!

------
memracom
Sounds more like a bad company problem than a bad hire problem. If management
is always nervously looking at the clock, then the company is fundamentally
rotten. You get what you measure. If you measure hours at work, then you will
get people who pad their time while they produce a pile of crap.

Nevertheless, this Canadian employer should know better. In the first three
months they can let people go instantly. If they aren't confident in the
person after a few days, show them the door.

------
priyakanth024
Its high time this guy should realize that the problem is with him and his
company.

------
drewmate
Here are 10 crazy reasons I regret reading your link-bait titled post...

Next time spare me the article and just tell me the one weird trick.

------
rhizome
I'm not usually one to focus on the meta, but I wonder what the rationale was
for killing this story from HN's front page. A friendly favor, or removing a
weak post that is so easily ridiculed on obvious points?

~~~
emhart
I was actually wondering the same thing! It was posted by one of his
employees, and he mentions HN in one of the comments of the post. It's likely
entirely cynical of me, but I can't help but wonder if the marketing folks are
made to submit his blog posts to HN and when this one got traction and
negative attention they collectively flagged it.

------
kubiiii
Isn't the bad hire/good hire feeling that is described here much to personal?
If the so called bad hire somehow senses the hostility, no wonder why he
leaves the company.

If you inadvertently cross a few red lines as a new hire you can ring a few
alarms in your hirer's mind. If those red lines are in the company culture
that's fine, you might be a bad hire (or the company culture might suck, which
should have the same consequences). But sometimes those red lines are totally
hirer specific.

------
DanBC
> One of the things I’ve started to do is make one of the interviews over
> lunch to see the true side of the candidate.

How does lunch help with hiring technical staff?

------
klepra
This guy sounds like a douche.

