Stop asking why a new hire should leave. Ask why they should stay

Until recently, my default decision at the end of a probation period was “yes, you pass.” I bet I’m not the only one who believes the default should be “pass.” From now on, my default is “no.” Not because I’ve become harsher, but because the flipped default changes the question. Instead of “why shouldn’t this person stay?”, I have to answer “why should they?” What did they do in these three months that made the team better? What did they understand about our product and our users? Why will the team be stronger with this person in it than without?

This is a bit controversial, I know. What about the benefit of the doubt, trust, credit, and all the rest? I have a reason for changing my default. More than one case, in fact, where I made a big mistake and had a hard departure with someone who should not have passed probation.

The story

I’ll tell you one story. But it stands for a whole bunch of stories about bad reasoning at the end of a probation period.

I hired a lead at a crisis point in the team. I had a lot of hopes and dreams about our future work, and I gave him a lot of freedom from the start.

Looking back, the signs were always there:

• Tasks handed out in the corporate messenger instead of the task tracker

• No visible results where I expected something more tangible than thoughts and research

• Conflicts in the team

• Interesting tasks instead of important ones

But I always had a reason why he was acting like this right now. He just hadn’t adjusted yet. The task was too complicated. The team was too hard to manage. And so on. After the first four weeks I had already written down my doubts and some feedback from the team. But then I saw some progress, some new value, new ideas. And by the end of the probation period, I decided he would pass. For the next five or six months, the same back-and-forth went on in my head. Then I decided we should part ways — but I was weak, and I gave him one last chance. I found a reason to keep working together for another month. Looking at the whole thing now, I can see how much time I spent thinking “maybe he’s just…”, “maybe he’ll be fine by the end”, “maybe it’s not worth going through the hiring process again”. Yes, I hate the hiring process. It’s a pile of interviews, a lot of decisions to make, and a lot of new people who just don’t fit. I hate it to my bones. But I have to do it, because I really, really want a great team, and I really believe great teams build great products.

It’s not you, it’s the default

What I’ve described is not a personal weakness, as you can probably see by now. It’s status quo bias, and I, like everyone, am prone to it. The research on this is striking: change the default, and the numbers change drastically. In a well-known study on organ donation, switching the default from opt-in to opt-out roughly doubled consent.

A UK survey of employers on probation periods found that 36% of managers dread telling an employee they didn’t pass, and 80% would rather extend the probation period than decide. That’s the default “pass” in institutional form: no decision made, and the person stays. The same survey found that 22% of employees admit they try harder during probation than after. So what you see in those three months is not a sample of the future — it’s the ceiling. Judge it as the best you’ll get, not the least.

The trap

There’s a trap in this default, and I want to name it. When your default is “no,” it’s easy to do nothing during onboarding: not invest in the new person, not spend extra time and effort on them, and then, after 90 days, just say, “No, you didn’t pass.” How could they show that the team is better with them, without any of that?

So you have to build it. That’s why I believe that at the start of the partnership, when we sign the offer, both sides should agree on and commit to the terms of these three months. What exactly is expected from the new hire during onboarding? What is expected from me? How will we handle the lack of information, the change of requirements, the time pressure? For this default not to ruin the company, both sides need to understand from the very beginning what they are putting into this period and what result they expect from it. Without that — with total freedom, with credit but no terms, or with micromanagement from the manager’s side — a default of “no” doesn’t fix hiring. It quietly ruins it.

Say it out loud

The hardest part, as I see it, isn’t the decision at day 90. It’s saying the rule out loud at the interview, or in the first week: “The default here is no. Passing probation means showing me, in three months, why the team is better with you in it.” It is the least attractive thing you can say to someone you’re trying to hire. You want them to choose you and accept the offer. And yet, in my story if I had said it — to employee and to myself — I would have had my answer at week four instead of month ten.

A default is a decision you didn’t make. This one, I’m making now.