Comment by locknitpicker

> I don’t know why people are so hesitant to just fire bad people.

"Bad" is vague, subjective moralist judgement. It's also easily manipulated and distorted to justify firing competent people who did no wrong.

> It’s pretty obvious when someone starts actually working if they’re going to a net positive. On the order of weeks, not months.

I feel your opinion is rather simplistic and ungrounded. Only the most egregious cases are rendered apparent in a few weeks worth of work. In software engineering positions, you don't have the chance to let your talents shine through in the span of a few weeks. The cases where incompetence is rendered obvious in the span of a few weeks actually spells gross failures in the whole hiring process, which failed to verify that the candidate failed to even meet the hiring bar.

> (...) might as well probationally hire the whoever passes the initial sniff test.

This is a colossal mistake, and one which disrupts a company's operations and the candidates' lives. Moreover, it has a chilling effect on the whole workforce because no one wants to work for a company ran by sociopaths that toy with people's lives and livelihood as if it was nothing.