Imagine a small company.

Departments are broken down by:
Operations.
Sales.
IT/MIS.

The Operations group wants a certain project done.

It asks the MIS group how long / much it would take
to to do it.

MIS says it will take a full time person 4 months. But
they are a bit stressed right now, and definitaly will
not even start on it for 2 months, and then since their
people usually have plenty to do, it might stretch
6 months past that.

Note: The current people are not VERY stressed. They
are getting their work done, they have enough people with
enough shared skill sets that no one is hassled over vacation
time or sick days. Hey, they even take the occasional
training day off. They just have no slack. If someone
got hit by a bus, at that point they WOULD be very stressed
for a couple of months while bringing a new person up to speed.

Operations really wants the project. MIS says they can
hire a new programmer if Operations funds the position, but
then the job would probably take longer anyway since the new
person would have to learn about their current systems in
order to write software to integrate it.

MIS knows that the person would have to be watched like a
hawk since new people can cause immense damage to an already
operational MIS environment. Hidden bugs, bad data, etc,
could kill them. Most new people are not allowed to touch
internal systems for a LONG time without lots of review of what
they are doing. This kills current employee time since the
time to talk through and review multiple implementations of
someone else's code is far more time costly than just letting
a current person do it, but it is a requirement of adding
new people to staff.

The Operations project will require only requires minor updates
of current systems, which means current staff can do that in
conjunction with specs from the new guy, as long as the new
guy truly understands what he needs.

Assume a new person would be $100K when taking benefits into
account. But they will take $30K of other people time while
they ramp up. That $30K is split between management oversight
which is usually very high for a new hire, along with multiple
co-workers do extensive mentoring. Other projects will be
allowed to slip a bit during this time frame since it would
be unreasonable to expect the co-workers to stick to previous
deadlines while also dealing with the new guy.

OK, at this point we think we understand the internal impact
in both cost and time of the new person.

MIS tells Operations they need $130K for the position for the
1st year, dropping to $110K for each year after that. They
want a commitment from Operations for enough future work
to to keep the new person busy. After the initial project is
complete, they will continue to cross train the individual
to make them a more full fledged member of the department.

Operations gasps, and say:
This project will give us about $100K of savings per year.
This meant if you did it with a current employee, and it took
4 months, then it is well worth it. But to charge us $130K
and then $110K per year is crazy.

They look to outside consultants. Both MIS and Operations
work together to try to find someone that they can both afford
and trust. They find a couple of firms, but they really do
not like the idea of surrendering control to an outside
consultantancy.

The look at the numbers again, now with the CEO. They decide
that for the good of the company, the position will be funded,
out of general funds, with an initial charge of $100K to
Operations budget since that is the 1st year's savings.

So now they start interviewing.

They already have specced out a particular technology, method
of interaction with the various systems and people, but the
project hasn't truly been designed down to the highlevel pseudocode.

Their new person needs decent interview / people skills since that
is part of the requirements in dealing with the Operations people
in order to extract the business rules from their heads.

They have to be able to not offend - yes I said it - not offend
the people they work with. Since it is so damn easy to offend
almost anyone, this means they have to dress and act conservatively
until they understand the hot buttons of the people they work
with, and either avoid them (the issue) or make damn sure they
have enough personal connection with enough people that the
occasional firestorm is forgivin.

This is all part of the job in any corporate environment, if it
requires any interaction with other people, and this is before the
core technical jobs skills come into play.

ABOVE ALL ELSE: WILL HE FIT IN?

So what happens if they get it wrong? They hire somoeone who
seems to have decent tech skills and should be able to accomplish
the project but after a couple of months starts flailing around,
annoying people, causing the Operations people to not want to
spend time with him, causing the MIS people to mistrust his
judgement on decisions that could affect the systems so he will
never advance to the next level of usability?

Assume you are able to make the decision within 3 months,
and the project was projected to take 7 months with a new
person to account for the training time.

Take your pick.

Fire him and start the process over.
Transfer him somewhere else he could be used (if possible
and affordable) and start the process over.
Assign him to bullshit tasks because you are too scared
or "sensitive" to fire him and start the process over.

All of these options include "start the process over."

At great cost and embarrassment to the MIS director and
any MIS employee who interviewed the person and allowed
them to be hired. And if this person is kept, the workers
KNOW the department will be given more work that he
will not be able to do, which in turn will raise their
workload while they "carry" him.

If any of the non-fire options are taken, now you have to
go fight for more money to fund the position AGAIN, or
you have to put it on your current people. And if you
give it to current people, you no longer have the option
to allow it to take longer, since you are already behind.
You are looking at a death march for the poor SOB who now
has the project.

If you hire a new person, you go into the train / mentor
cycle. And take the same chance again.

I've seen this play out several times in several ways.
In each case I ignored or was talked out of paying
attention to the bad vibes. It always ended badly.
In some cases, it tooks years to recover due to the
damaged customer relationships.

When interviewing a person, ANY hint of a red-flag is
a reason not to hire. You do not give the benefit of
the doubt to an interviewee. If they can't "perform"
for the interview, the most important meeting they could
possibly have, how can you trust them to handle the
job without extensive baby sitting?

While there may be tests for a lot of things, there
is no test in: WILL THEY FIT IN HERE?

It is subjective, but it must be considered the MAJOR
most pressing aspect of the interview. Given the right
skill base, most things can be taught. But not the ability
to meld with a team, at least not without risking your
current team.


3A) The Applicant may be at her best = so as to minimize time
wasting via excessive pickiness / freaking-out too many applicants
who just might..

3B) Possess more smarts than you were patient enough to discover.


You don't get it.

It does not matter how smart they are. If they can't handle the
interview pressure, then they can't be trusted to keep together
when the inevitable crisis hits.

And our interviews are not high pressure, many people ganging
up. We typcially have 2 techies or a techie and a manager.

But if you can't right a SIMPLE Perl script right in front of
me, you had no business answering the ad. No matter how much
pressure you think it is.

Done. End of store. No second chances.

Well not exactly. If they show up and say they had a traumatic
experience, then I'd tell them to setup another interview.
Nor would I treat them the way those assholes treated Lincoln.

But that's about it.