[aprrrr]

Sure there are. The standard rationale is that when hiring, the cost of a false negative is far lower than the cost of a false positive.

I guess it's also true that the cost of a false negative is unknown and not felt. It would be a really extreme case to be forced to say, "Hey, remember that woman we didn't hire two years ago? She went off and founded Company Y that's now eating our lunch." With a false positive, you feel the pain of cleaning up their messes until after they're gone.

Finally, sad to say, the majority of job applicants are not competent to do serious engineering work. A negative bias is right most of the time.

[tgflynn]

Finally, sad to say, the majority of job applicants are not competent to do serious engineering work.

I've often heard this claim. I have no data for denying it.

However I have a suspicion that when people make this claim the observation that it is actually based on is that "the majority of job applicants aren't very good at answering programmer interview questions.". They are hence making an implicit assumption that not being good at interview questions implies not being competent to do serious engineering work. I think this assumption is highly suspect, because of the extreme differences in stress levels, time scales and general context between interviews and actual work situations.

[aristus]

That is a very good point, but what alternative do you suggest? Keep in mind that hiring can consume a lot of existing employee time.