Probation Period

Hiring is a decision made on very little information. One document, two or three interviews, four hours of contact in total, and from that you decide whether to work with someone for years. What an interview reveals is how a person describes their own experience. How they actually work only shows up once you are working together.

Pagedeck hired an engineer who cleared three rounds of interviews, and what surfaced afterward wasn't about skill at all — it was about method. Used to deciding alone and building fast, they skipped the part where a decision gets aligned with other teams first. That was never a competence problem, and it was a thing the interviews could have probed, but nobody knew to look at it until two months of shared work had happened.

The same holds in reverse. It takes time for someone who has joined to learn how much the company from inside differs from the company they saw from outside. And discovering a mismatch at that point used to be awkward to act on. Removing a permanent employee is a heavy process, and the person has already wound down their previous job.

A probation period writes the time for that confirmation into the contract from the start. A few months are named as the window for checking each other, and at the end of it the question of continuing gets answered. It amounts to a promise not to postpone the check, which is the part that protects the person as much as the company.

Four things define the shape of it.

1. The length and its basis. Three months is the most common, with some companies going to six. What matters is that the employment contract says the period is probationary. Deciding after the fact that it was probation doesn't work.
2. The person is an employee throughout. Salary is paid, insurance applies, and paid leave accrues. Conditions can't be quietly reduced because someone is on probation, and where a partial salary reduction is customary, its size and form have to stay inside the line drawn by labor law — the body of law governing working conditions and the employment relationship, which sets out both the reduction limits and the notice obligations that apply here.
3. There is more room for judgment than after the period ends. Being able to decide at this point whether to continue is the whole purpose of the arrangement. But more room is not unlimited room. The company has to be able to say what was expected and what wasn't met, which is why teams keep records during the window.
4. It runs in both directions. While the company evaluates the person, the person evaluates the company. That is why the share of people who resign on their own is higher during probation than in any period after it.

Put together, this is a confirmation window rather than an evaluation window. No rating gets assigned and no ranking happens; exactly one question gets answered, and it has two possible answers.

When probation ends, employment becomes permanent. The condition that opens that door has to be handed over in writing during the first week. It states what the person should be able to do after three months — for an engineer, something like "takes one feature from design through to release without help." Without that sentence, the decision three months later gets made on impressions.

Midpoint checks are standard: one at a month, one at two, both held with that document on the table. The job those meetings do is the job of feedback — the running exchange about what went well and what should change — with the interval tightened and the criteria sitting alongside. Raise something in the closing conversation that was never raised by the second month and it stops being a confirmation and becomes a notification.

The outcome gets communicated before the window closes. Two weeks ahead is a common mark, because someone who isn't continuing needs time to arrange what comes next. Passing means following the same processes as everyone else from then on. Some cases land in between: when the direction is right but the pace is slow, extending probation by a month is an option — though the contract has to allow for the extension, and what will be looked at during it gets written down again.

The stage before this, preboarding, doesn't overlap with it. Preboarding covers getting equipment and accounts ready before the first day and carries no judgment. Probation starts on the first day itself.

"The three-month criteria go out in writing in the first week, and we both sign them."

Fixing in advance what the judgment will be based on.

"We owe them the decision two weeks before the period ends."

Leaving the person time to arrange what comes next.

"Don't save the call for the end. It needs raising at the one-month mark."

Observing for three months straight removes any chance to correct course, and a surprise at the end serves nobody.

Pagedeck built a criteria document after the episode above. Now Grace writes three items down and hands them over in the first week's conversation. For the engineer who joined most recently they were: take a feature through to release alone, share decisions that touch other teams before making them, and leave a weekly log every Friday.

The second item came up at the one-month check. Grace pointed to two specific instances, and by the two-month check it didn't come up again. Nothing new was said in the closing conversation, which is what a working probation period looks like from the inside.

The most common reading is that probation is a window in which anyone can be let go at any time. "Before permanent employment" sounds like that. What actually happened is that the room for judgment widened, not that it disappeared. Without a document saying what was expected and a record showing it was communicated during the window, the company's account of the decision doesn't hold up. Left uncorrected, this assumption produces two months with no criteria and a dispute at the end of them.

The other frequent mistake is assuming conditions differ during probation — that insurance or leave starts later because employment isn't permanent yet. The person is an employee from the first day, so they don't. Where a salary reduction applies, it applies only within the range written into the contract. Miss this and you accumulate items that have to be settled retroactively later.