> I've seen a terrible hire cause more than $1M of damage in the year it took for him to get fired.
As I have said in these discussions before, that sounds like a process problem. What does it say about the competency of management and the maturity of processes if it took a year to figure this out? I don't think you can lay most, let alone all, of the blame on the engineer and the hiring decision.
It took a year for management to figure it out. It took much less time for his coworkers to figure it out. You're definitely right. "Blame" for the damage done falls mainly on management inaction.
As I have said in these discussions before, that sounds like a process problem. What does it say about the competency of management and the maturity of processes if it took a year to figure this out? I don't think you can lay most, let alone all, of the blame on the engineer and the hiring decision.