I agree that it's related to firing, but I don't think it's fear of interpersonal drama.
The simple explanation is that it's really expensive to fire someone without cause. It takes months because the company has to produce a paper trail proving they fired the person for a valid reason to protect themselves from litigation. That's months of paying an individual who may be incompetent or toxic, months of paying people who put together the paper trail, all the morale damage the individual causes, the damage that might arise from firing someone, even if it's someone no one really liked.
All of those things are costly, probably much more costly than not hiring the right candidate. At least so the reasoning goes.
As much as I hate it as an employee, "at will" employment means that cost simply does not exist for 48 of the 50 US states (including all states where FAANG have employees).
The cost is also not that high in non-at-will states, since there's typically a 3-6 month "evaluation" period where no paper trail is required.
Not entirely true. Just because you're in an "at will" state doesn't mean that someone can't allege that they've been fired for belonging to a protected class. That's why companies have HR departments, PIPs, and all that other nonsense -- to protect the company when someone tries to turn a justifiable firing into a payday.
The courts are really not that friendly to the protected class in cases like that.
There’s a lot of political bodies focused on playing up the idea that women and minorities are this big bad wolf suing legitimate businesses left and right over nothing, and winning. But it’s a largely fabricated narrative created by people trying to turn the leftist identitity politics arguments into a quagmire by “both sides!”ing the situation.
In reality there’s a substantial burden of proof for someone to win a wrongful termination suit.
The simple explanation is that it's really expensive to fire someone without cause. It takes months because the company has to produce a paper trail proving they fired the person for a valid reason to protect themselves from litigation. That's months of paying an individual who may be incompetent or toxic, months of paying people who put together the paper trail, all the morale damage the individual causes, the damage that might arise from firing someone, even if it's someone no one really liked.
All of those things are costly, probably much more costly than not hiring the right candidate. At least so the reasoning goes.