[gameprogrammer] Re: Fire on the first day?

I'd feel bad for the poor guy.

Here in Venezuela, there's some kind of new contract where you start a test
period of 1-3 months, and if you develop well you might be in the company
permanently, if not, well, you were warned. I'm just 18 and I've made tons
of webpages, some 3D gamemaking, Linux programming, etc. and now I'm making
a 3D engine using OpenGL+SDL. I got interviewed in February at a company for
working as assistant programmer and tech support. I got interviewed first by
the webmaster and then by my boss, both asking clever questions and asking
to see -real- stuff, stuff I've made or put online, they asked me the
objectives of some of my projects, programming experience, they put me some
test situations and asked for my answer and solution for those, etc...
personally they did a great job interviewing me - and so should you have.
They were impressed though, that me, in high school still and no degree in
ANYTHING, could do so much of everything.

However, choosing the right employee isn't an easy task, you should've asked
the things you were really concerned about. Sometimes, one interview isn't
enough, you could have interviewed him two or three times before deciding.
It's less painful for both to reject him if you didn't found him worthy of
your project, than to hire him and fire him the next day, that gives you a
BAD, BAD reputation (and big companies aren't free from this, look what
happened to EA because they were abusing their employees in the making of
one of the LOTR games)... imagine what the guy could say around, that you're
some kind of jerk that fired him the next day, that you don't know how to
interview people, or just a greedy guy, etc... I don't think you'd like
that. Well, neither he would like to be fired after you ACCEPTED him, that's
what actually "hiring someone" means. You're not playing with variables,
files or code, you're playing with REAL PEOPLE, and with real people you
can't play in that way.

Also, developing a full game in 2-4 months? whoah, that could be possible if
no one you have in your team has a life... a game now requires lots, lots of
time... from about half a year to a year or two I tell ya, there's no way
you can ship a game in that deadline... or at least, a decent one.

I dunno, that's my opinion... let the guy impress you, encourage him to. He
might not be a good programmer, but he might be good at what he's good at,
so let him show you his best. If after all you're not satisfied, BE POLITE,
don't just be an ogre and scream "YOU'RE FIRED IDIOT" or stuff like that
xD... remember it was YOUR FAULT to not to have interviewed him correctly or
very throughoughly (spelling?) before --hiring-- him.

Hiring means you're already in and accepted and you're gonna stay with them
forever, or at least a reasonable time. Interviewing means you're in a test
period and there's no sure way to know if you're in or not.

- DARKGuy.

On 3/23/07, Kevin Jenkins <gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


If it had been the case that I hired him from another company I would
have waited longer.  He was unemployed from his own choosing to begin
with, so I feel less bad about it.

From a cost perspective, waiting a week is $1000 in salary costs,
plus another $1000 from my own lost time to support him, plus going
behind schedule, and waiting another week to hire someone else, and
95% odds are I wouldn't have gotten anything for it.

It sounds harsh, but the gentle route is also the way to fail as a
small developer.  One of the first guys I hired was from the Ukraine.
I tried to provide motivation, support, training, and overlooked
warning signs and red flags, etc.  I thought 3 months was a fair
probation period, so just kept trying to improve the situation.  In
the end I waited two months, fired him, got a week's useful work, and
was 2 months and $10K behind schedule because of it.  The only reason
it didn't put me out of business was that I planned to go overbudget
from the start.

I can't afford to do that again.  I've learned the hard way to cut my
losses early.

Leighton Haynes wrote:
> Wow. Firing after 1 day, that's pretty low. I hope you weren't rude
> enough to hire him away from another company to then fire the poor
> blighter on the first day. I have to say, I think it's one of the most
> pathetic things I've ever heard. There is no reality in which one day
> is enough time to work out how good/bad someone is. The only reason
> someone should be first on the first day is gross misconduct.
>
> If you can't afford to give him a week to work stuff out, you can't
> afford to be hiring people period.
>
> Leighton....

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