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So does the author think that everyone is great at their job? What do you do when you have an employee that can't do the work and you are confident that they

So does the author think that everyone is great at their job? What do you do when you have an employee that can't do the work and you are confident that they won't improve? Pointing out the age difference in the manager and the employee, and their sexes, is just baiting. Unless he wants to make the case that there was sexism or agism from the manager, or that the company engaged in sexism or agism, it is just a red herring. In fact, it's quite cowardly, since it implies something the author isn't willing to actually say. Finally, the fact that the person who was fired was with the company for 4 years doesn't mean anything at all unless we also get the context. It may be that this person struggled from the beginning, and they hesitated and didn't fire her for four long years. Or it may be that they hired her to do some specific job, and that job went away, and despite repeated attempts she just could not manage to learn anything else. The thesis that she was 'disposable' is just ludicrous. If she was good at her job, then the manager is just an idiot who is cutting his and the companies own throat, and we can't make a moral argument against stupidity. If she couldn't do the job then there is no reason to be discussing this. If she was borderline, we still can't make a moral case, since borderline situations are at worst slightly wrong. So once you cut through the left handed implications, I don't think there is any argument left.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> If she was good at her job, then the manager is just an idiot who is cutting his and the companies own throat, and we can't make a moral argument against stupidity. We can't? Why not? Being stupid does not exempt you from responsibility for your actions.
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  When an investor puts money into a crappy company, and they lose their money, they have been held responsible. You can be responsible and face consequences without any moral failure.
supercanuck 11y ago
I came away with the impression that HubSpot's management was purposely divorced from reality, and so it is hard to take them at face value that she was unable to perform her job. The issue appears that she was too costly to the company due to biological reasons(1. being old and 2. being a woman). The other issue from the article was that there didn't seem to be an objective way of measuring performance so "graduations" become rather arbitrary, and when they are arbitrary with the appearance of objective, there isn't any reason not to cut out the more "costly Employees" This is the argument you seem to be missing in the article and maybe just too young to understand.
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  Too young? I wish! I went through your comments and figured out who you are in real life, and I found that I basically agree with most of the things you say, so I won't give you a hard time. I think Kirkland Signature makes good stuff too! Edit: That sounded really stalker-ish, I did it to see if you are actually even older than I am.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - dvanduzer 11y ago
    I'm approaching 35 years old, and HubSpot is a publicly traded company, ergo, a grown-ass company. If they need to cut labor costs, they do a layoff. When I was 17 years old, I got fired without any warning from a mom-and-pop computer repair shop ($10 an hour, I think?) because I "talked too much" at the bench. Coincidentally, they had just hired a 15 year old to do the same job. I had also recently asked how i might go about getting a pay raise. This is the kind of thing that a small business (which is constantly in crisis) does all the time. It's legal in "at will" states, but it isn't particularly fair. Larger, publicly traded companies that aren't in crisis have no business acting like high school lunch tables.
    - supercanuck 11y ago
      If they do layoffs, they must publically announce them. Replacing 36 yr old women with 23 year old men requires no such disclosure
z6 11y ago
Yeah, I personally didn't really get the point of this article. You could view it as a very good thing that the company isn't keeping around potentially low performers purely because of tenure. Also, I highly doubt the person that got fired didn't know why, even if it wasn't explicitly stated.
anonymousab 11y ago
> If she couldn't do the job then there is no reason to be discussing this The creepy thought processes that go into calling it "graduation" (and throwing a party...) don't rely on any judgement about that employee's performance.
- greenyoda 11y ago
  Who would even attend a party that their boss threw for them after firing them?
  - wcummings 11y ago
    No one, because that doesn't happen.
    - greenyoda 11y ago
      From the first paragraph of the article: "She was 35, had been with the company for four years, and was told without explanation by her 28-year-old manager that she had two weeks to get out. On her last day, that manager organized a farewell party for her."
      - okaramian 11y ago
        Guessing there are various holes in the narrative the writer is trying to flesh out. Not particularly surprising.
  - justin_vanw 11y ago
    I'm sure they don't announce "hey, Bev just got fired for incompetence, lets all eat cake". It is probably more like Bev announces she is leaving, and then they gather around to say goodbye because even though it didn't work out, she is still a person and worthy of being treated with respect and telling her peers that she decided to move on rather than the truth.
ryanSrich 11y ago
> What do you do when you have an employee that can't do the work and you are confident that they won't improve? Be an adult and make a tough decision without masking it as a great "thing" (aka: graduation)?
- sremani 11y ago
  Yes putting the lipstick on the pig, and ritualizing it, makes this an emotionally sadistic exercise.
  - justin_vanw 11y ago
    Oh, I get it, like when you go to a funeral and people try to focus on the the memories that make them happy, or find comfort in religious fairy tales about 'living forever'. Or when people who are fired are allowed to 'resign' to save face. I think this isn't as nefarious as the internet hive mind seems to think: Imagine that someone quits to go onto better things, more money, etc. Of course you throw them a going away party. Then someone else is fired, but you want to let them save face. Do you throw them a party? You've established that people leaving on their own get a party already... You guys seem to think that the answer is obvious, you tell everyone "so and so was just fired for poor performance, they are bad at their job and that is why they are unemployed now." and have the person do a walk of shame out the door and never feel like they can put it behind them or face any of their former coworkers again without overcoming a massive amount of shame.
    - sremani 11y ago
      Firing is rejection, it does not necessarily mean that the person being fired has anything to do with it. Whole unit moving to a different city, moving to a different tech stack. Brining in pals of the New Director, etc. etc. There are 1000 reasons, but Firing is REJECTION. At a human level, only the vexed are relieved that they are fired, most even after understanding the big picture are not in a rejoicing state of mind, because they have to find some other way to find lost Pay. So, no celebrating loss of Income is only fitting for few and in most cases a Sadistic ritual. Its a different thing that co-workers take initiative to send off a good bye, but the company doing it looks dubious and the whole "Graduate" ritual is sadistic.
wwweston 11y ago
The author is poking at several questions that are deeper than the simple question of whether or not someone is good at their job. Take this paragraph, for example: "The Netflix code has been emulated by countless other companies, including HubSpot, which employed a metric called VORP, or value over replacement player. This brutal idea comes from the world of baseball, where it is used to set prices on players. At HubSpot we got a VORP score in our annual reviews. It was supposed to feel scientific, part of being a `data-driven organization,` as management called it." There's at least two issues that I see raised immediately by this. We are no longer talking about whether someone is adequate or even good at their job. We are talking about a culture where there is the ongoing of question of whether or not someone can be replaced more affordably by someone who provides greater or equal value. This is not a surprise exactly, given that every business in a competitive market is going to have some degree of incentive to minimize costs. But it is a very distinct thing from the issue of whether an employee can do the work, and it lays bare a philosophy that looks a lot like people are entirely reduced to fungible inputs. That has its own moral problems; trying to cover it with positive spin like “graduation” exacerbates them. But on top of that, we have the question of whether HubSpot really has any idea how to make accurate VORP assessments... or whether they're lifting a model that probably is effective in a game context like Baseball where key performance metrics are in fact what you are trying to optimize and trying to import it into a setting where most metrics are often only indicators at best. You could reduce this to the problem of whether a given manager is "just an idiot" -- but it's not that simple, because we're talking about a management philosophy that is likely to be wielded by any number of managers. Now, you might think the market will weed out such philosophies if they're not actually effective. But then we're up against the principal-agent problem. The philosophy doesn't have to be optimal, it just has to not be bad and have a good story to sell. If it wreaks havoc with employees who may be more adequate than the management philosophy along the way, that's not going to matter much. There's plenty of argument and conversation left in this.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

> If she was good at her job, then the manager is just an idiot who is cutting his and the companies own throat, and we can't make a moral argument against stupidity. We can't? Why not? Being stupid does not exempt you from responsibility for your actions.

justin_vanw 11y ago
When an investor puts money into a crappy company, and they lose their money, they have been held responsible. You can be responsible and face consequences without any moral failure.

supercanuck 11y ago

I came away with the impression that HubSpot's management was purposely divorced from reality, and so it is hard to take them at face value that she was unable to perform her job. The issue appears that she was too costly to the company due to biological reasons(1. being old and 2. being a woman). The other issue from the article was that there didn't seem to be an objective way of measuring performance so "graduations" become rather arbitrary, and when they are arbitrary with the appearance of objective, there isn't any reason not to cut out the more "costly Employees" This is the argument you seem to be missing in the article and maybe just too young to understand.

justin_vanw 11y ago
Too young? I wish! I went through your comments and figured out who you are in real life, and I found that I basically agree with most of the things you say, so I won't give you a hard time. I think Kirkland Signature makes good stuff too! Edit: That sounded really stalker-ish, I did it to see if you are actually even older than I am.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dvanduzer 11y ago
  I'm approaching 35 years old, and HubSpot is a publicly traded company, ergo, a grown-ass company. If they need to cut labor costs, they do a layoff. When I was 17 years old, I got fired without any warning from a mom-and-pop computer repair shop ($10 an hour, I think?) because I "talked too much" at the bench. Coincidentally, they had just hired a 15 year old to do the same job. I had also recently asked how i might go about getting a pay raise. This is the kind of thing that a small business (which is constantly in crisis) does all the time. It's legal in "at will" states, but it isn't particularly fair. Larger, publicly traded companies that aren't in crisis have no business acting like high school lunch tables.
  - supercanuck 11y ago
    If they do layoffs, they must publically announce them. Replacing 36 yr old women with 23 year old men requires no such disclosure

z6 11y ago

Yeah, I personally didn't really get the point of this article. You could view it as a very good thing that the company isn't keeping around potentially low performers purely because of tenure. Also, I highly doubt the person that got fired didn't know why, even if it wasn't explicitly stated.

anonymousab 11y ago

> If she couldn't do the job then there is no reason to be discussing this The creepy thought processes that go into calling it "graduation" (and throwing a party...) don't rely on any judgement about that employee's performance.

greenyoda 11y ago
Who would even attend a party that their boss threw for them after firing them?
- wcummings 11y ago
  No one, because that doesn't happen.
  - greenyoda 11y ago
    From the first paragraph of the article: "She was 35, had been with the company for four years, and was told without explanation by her 28-year-old manager that she had two weeks to get out. On her last day, that manager organized a farewell party for her."
    - okaramian 11y ago
      Guessing there are various holes in the narrative the writer is trying to flesh out. Not particularly surprising.
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  I'm sure they don't announce "hey, Bev just got fired for incompetence, lets all eat cake". It is probably more like Bev announces she is leaving, and then they gather around to say goodbye because even though it didn't work out, she is still a person and worthy of being treated with respect and telling her peers that she decided to move on rather than the truth.

ryanSrich 11y ago

> What do you do when you have an employee that can't do the work and you are confident that they won't improve? Be an adult and make a tough decision without masking it as a great "thing" (aka: graduation)?

sremani 11y ago
Yes putting the lipstick on the pig, and ritualizing it, makes this an emotionally sadistic exercise.
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  Oh, I get it, like when you go to a funeral and people try to focus on the the memories that make them happy, or find comfort in religious fairy tales about 'living forever'. Or when people who are fired are allowed to 'resign' to save face. I think this isn't as nefarious as the internet hive mind seems to think: Imagine that someone quits to go onto better things, more money, etc. Of course you throw them a going away party. Then someone else is fired, but you want to let them save face. Do you throw them a party? You've established that people leaving on their own get a party already... You guys seem to think that the answer is obvious, you tell everyone "so and so was just fired for poor performance, they are bad at their job and that is why they are unemployed now." and have the person do a walk of shame out the door and never feel like they can put it behind them or face any of their former coworkers again without overcoming a massive amount of shame.
  - sremani 11y ago
    Firing is rejection, it does not necessarily mean that the person being fired has anything to do with it. Whole unit moving to a different city, moving to a different tech stack. Brining in pals of the New Director, etc. etc. There are 1000 reasons, but Firing is REJECTION. At a human level, only the vexed are relieved that they are fired, most even after understanding the big picture are not in a rejoicing state of mind, because they have to find some other way to find lost Pay. So, no celebrating loss of Income is only fitting for few and in most cases a Sadistic ritual. Its a different thing that co-workers take initiative to send off a good bye, but the company doing it looks dubious and the whole "Graduate" ritual is sadistic.

wwweston 11y ago

The author is poking at several questions that are deeper than the simple question of whether or not someone is good at their job. Take this paragraph, for example: "The Netflix code has been emulated by countless other companies, including HubSpot, which employed a metric called VORP, or value over replacement player. This brutal idea comes from the world of baseball, where it is used to set prices on players. At HubSpot we got a VORP score in our annual reviews. It was supposed to feel scientific, part of being a `data-driven organization,` as management called it." There's at least two issues that I see raised immediately by this. We are no longer talking about whether someone is adequate or even good at their job. We are talking about a culture where there is the ongoing of question of whether or not someone can be replaced more affordably by someone who provides greater or equal value. This is not a surprise exactly, given that every business in a competitive market is going to have some degree of incentive to minimize costs. But it is a very distinct thing from the issue of whether an employee can do the work, and it lays bare a philosophy that looks a lot like people are entirely reduced to fungible inputs. That has its own moral problems; trying to cover it with positive spin like “graduation” exacerbates them. But on top of that, we have the question of whether HubSpot really has any idea how to make accurate VORP assessments... or whether they're lifting a model that probably is effective in a game context like Baseball where key performance metrics are in fact what you are trying to optimize and trying to import it into a setting where most metrics are often only indicators at best. You could reduce this to the problem of whether a given manager is "just an idiot" -- but it's not that simple, because we're talking about a management philosophy that is likely to be wielded by any number of managers. Now, you might think the market will weed out such philosophies if they're not actually effective. But then we're up against the principal-agent problem. The philosophy doesn't have to be optimal, it just has to not be bad and have a good story to sell. If it wreaks havoc with employees who may be more adequate than the management philosophy along the way, that's not going to matter much. There's plenty of argument and conversation left in this.