You Have to Feel It

One of the worst hires I ever worked with was excellent on paper, came with good credentials, had an impressive resume, and did objectively well on the interview questions.

However, everyone who interviewed him felt uneasy about him. He failed the vibe check, even though he checked all of the boxes and knew all the right things to say. At the time there was a big push for eliminating bias and being and as objective as possible in hiring, so we were lightly admonished for raising questions based on vibes.

When he was hired, it turned out our vibes were justified. He was someone who played games and manipulated his way through his career. He could say the right things and navigate his way through office politics unscathed while causing damage to everything he touched.

Since then I’ve observed a number of situations where decisions that seemed objectively good but came with weird vibes were later revealed to be bad. Some of the most skilled grifters I’ve encountered were brilliant at appearing objectively good but couldn’t pass vibe checks of experienced business people. Some of the most objectively good deals on paper that came with weird vibes later turned out to be hugely problematic.

I think the trap is thinking that vibes and feelings are wrong and should be ignored in favor of pre-selected objective measures. This is good practice when doing a scientific study, but it’s not a good practice when you’re entering a real world situation where an adversarial party can root out those criteria, fake them, and use your objectivity against you.

People who instantly take against you tend to see every mistake and interpret every event the worst possible way and eventually decide that their initial feelings were right. Once again intuition triumphs. You don't get a chance to prove you're no worse than anyone else - there's just a period of time where they look for evidence to confirm their vibe.

I remember going to work in a country where my apparent origin was seen in a positive way and realising that if I'd been from somewhere in Eastern Europe I'd have been automatically disrespected. I remember going to an interview for a flat share and the moment I said I was from Zimbabwe one guy said that "South Africans" (sic) "drink and party too much." Since I'm white I'd never been on the opposite side of prejudice before and it was highly interesting.

Oh yes, I agree, it is information that's telling you something but because one doesn't usually have a way of putting it into words it's not clear what the message is. People who are different from you are sometimes just nervous and not sure how to present themselves.

I have, however, had to fix the terrible work of grifters (e.g. no unit tests, every minor change breaks something silently) and nobody ever cottoned onto them even though they were quite obvious. The feelings they gave management were "good ones" despite them being terrible for the business. I, as the person fixing stuff after said grifter left suddenly, was blamed for everything that was wrong.

Not the one you're replying to, but is the above quote not enough to explain why they were a mis-hire?

If you go with vibes too much you only ever accumulate data saying that vibes matter.

- not answering questions (e.g. by asking counterquestions or giving long-winded non-answers)

- not taking responsibility in bad outcomes (when asked about problems they were facing)

- not saying "I don't know"

- using "we" for bad outcomes and "I" for good outcomes (socialising loss, privatising profit)

...

Set base credentials, lottery of everyone who passes the post, full hire or fire after a short (1 month, at most) probationary period where vibes are considered. There's no reason to go through rounds and rounds of interviews over months. It's a waste of everyone's time. Unless your criteria are completely compromised, you'll find someone within a few tries.

1) If such a short probationary period is involved, there's no reason to permanently move during it. A short-term rental will do. If the position works out, then move. (I have done this, it is doable.)

2) Then maybe the job isn't right for you.

The point is to strip the desperation to find The One True Candidate/Job On The First Try, from both sides. Companies are already hiring based on vibes, so this just formalizes it. Employees are already subject to swift termination, based on their employers' whims; this just makes that expectation transparent. From both sides: if it isn't going to work out, we get there quickly and move on. Little is worse than being on a job for half a year, only to get sacked because it took that long for the company to decide that it doesn't like you.

Except in practice, they mostly aren't because onboarding takes time and cost and relocating employees (if applicable) has costs.

Of course, if you're a pro football player, here today/gone tomorrow is the norm. But I'm not sure that is or should be the expectation for an engineer. In part, because I doubt there is a "One True Candidate" for the the most part.

Yes, roles shift/requirements shift and both companies and employees move on but there's generally some value to stability on both sides. Even if an employee can get an employer-paid rental for a month, thy've still presumably left their prior job and will have to scramble in various ways.