Um, he's using this whole episode as an example of what not to do, not what to do. He says right out that hiring that person that way was a mistake. The whole point of the article is to help people avoid the mistakes the author made. How many articles that get to HN's front page are basically the same thing?
If I repeatedly get fucked up and crash Fords over the course of my life while having much better luck with other cars, I might start looking for a causal relationship.
Exactly: that's what the author of the piece is doing. He's had bad luck with a certain type of person while having much better luck with other types of people, and he's analyzing the reasons for that.
