Dan Luu

On the flip side, when I've worked with people who are unproductive, it's never been the stuff people say interviews filter for (can't program, not smart enough). It's been stuff like: we sucked at helping the person ramp up, manager or senior team member was hostile to them, etc

What data/evidence do you use to differentiate between "doesn't currently have the skill mix to be sufficiently productive" and "we sucked at helping the person ramp up"? The onboarding status quo is very, very bad almost everywhere.

In interviews, I ask about hires that don't work out. Common answer: "They would sit at their desk, not ask for help, and produce almost no working code. They weren't a culture fit because they obviously weren't trying."

I can think of several root causes that would produce that behavior (not caring, low-trust history discouraged help, mismatched expectations, too junior, bad project management, etc). But the explanation given has been "not a culture fit" in ~35 of 40 discovery interviews.

That "low trust history" problem is very real, agreed. And under-discussed. There are a lot of dysfunctional teams out there, and I have to remind myself that moving to a better one doesn't automatically change someone's norms. I've made that (wrong) assumption before