I was reading through an article with the byline Making good IT hires is critical to the success of the growing business, and came across the following comment:

When you bring in a new employee, you don’t get any value out of them for about 18 months, says [Robert] Berger

Yikes. That’s scary if it’s true.

I can see some cases, such as knowing some esoteric details of some system or another, but to provide no value is either BS, or the employee is an idiot. What does the guy do for a year and a half? Or is this just self serving commentary? (The person who made the comment runs a recruiting business)