4 ms·

> "The punch line: the employee flourished as soon as he was fired - his dream had been to join the ministry, but he'd worried about quitting a stable job to do

> "The punch line: the employee flourished as soon as he was fired - his dream had been to join the ministry, but he'd worried about quitting a stable job to do so." I'm generally in favor of firing underperforming employees, but this punchline feels uncomfortably close to ex post facto justification. Lots and lots and lots of people get fired and don't flourish, in fact they drop like a brick and hit rock bottom. While everything turned out for the best this time, I worry about the lesson being imparted here.

enraged_camel 10y ago
>>Lots and lots and lots of people get fired and don't flourish, in fact they drop like a brick and hit rock bottom. Sure, but speaking from the perspective of the company and everyone else in it, it's better if those low-performers hit rock bottom outside the company, rather than hit rock bottom while employed and bring the rest of the company down.
- outworlder 10y ago
  Usually, unless the company is really small, they won't drag it down. Unless they are CEOs, which are seldom fired. And get golden parachutes even when they do get fired.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    I disagree. Low-performers can make mistakes and cause a lot of damage, which then has to be cleaned up by someone. They are also bad for morale all around, especially if you have a team of high-performers.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    I've kept people on because they were going through a rough patch and I felt squeemish about kicking them when everything else was going wrong. Bad stuff happens to good people and I didn't want to make it worse. But it hurt group morale on every team they were shuffled to. Hard working teams quietly build up resentment against dead weight. In retrospect, I would have been better off getting the board's permission to institute 6~12 month severances for company initiated terminations instead of the 3 month one that we had. Or done an extended paid leave - or something. I think the reason I didn't (I don't even remember at this point) was one of my early employees - a star performer by every measure - said something like: "Hey! Why would you be paying them 12 months salary for being a loser?" (Not that he was incompassionate - he wasn't - but making the point the way that anyone from the Bronx might make that point.) I don't think I ever figured out what to do with that other than deciding that being the boss sucked and I never wanted to do it again.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      The reason being a boss sucked is because you are an empathetic person. Typical sociopathic management types have a "kill or be killed" mentality, and would not think twice about getting rid of people going through a "rough patch". Not saying that keeping dead wood on is good for anyone either, just that most management wouldn't put the feelings of an employee even in the same ballpark as the interests of the company. If it makes you feel any better, I'd rather work for you!
      - ci5er 10y ago
        > just that most management wouldn't I don't know if this is true. (It might be). Most manager types that I've have talked with struggle with how to do it it well. The "path to wisdom" in technical skills (which are more my forte) seem to be lots of practice around things that start out being practiced ... mechanically. And each and every Ubuntu 14.04 server in my cluster is pretty much like the others. I think that people are harder. Even with just two, who believe they love each other - there wouldn't be a career in marriage counseling if it was easy. Ignoring the traditional heirarchy looking bits that show up on org charts: coordinating and synchronizing the members of a team and teams with one another is certainly not anything that most coders want to spend their day doing. They don't even want to write documentation! So, it's an important function: conducting a group exercise, like a dance, made up of a bunch of talented and self-directed humans. Especially when something new is being created and no one brain has the whole picture. (Thinking about it now, it boggles me that we even try.) We (society) are going through a strange transitional time right now. Like the 1850s~1930s in the US when we were transitioning from Ag to Industrial and it had the civil war on one end, a bunch of crazy elections from 1890 or so in the middle, and the New Deal at the end. I think that managers aren't trained to be coordinators in this new world: who would train them? And beyond that, we take our best tech leads and promote them: losing a great technical contributor and gaining a badly skilled coordinator. Anyway: thanks for the kind words. Since I left BigCo as an engineer back in the day to start my NewCo, and got big (and crashed), I've been unemployable by BigCos and very hesitant to start anything again. I kind of "fell off the rails". But some things have gotten worse since then: employers are scared employees will sue them if managers have an empathetic conversation with an employee, and co-evol employees thinking that typical managers don't give a shit. (Mutual arising) It isn't healthy and I don't like the direction. But, not my problem any more! I just fix up people's patent portfolios for them. And sometimes make a widget prototype for them ("Here, have an invention") and they can make it, produce it, support it, sell it, etc...
hnal943 10y ago
...Really? Hitting rock bottom to me implies they lose everything. I don't think the majority of people that are fired lose everything; there's a reason they were hired in the first place and other companies can see that value. They will get hired by another company and have a chance to apply their experience in new ways. My father was fired after 26 years and it was the best thing that could have happened to his career. He wasn't happy with the management changes at his job and ultimately he was forced to look for work where he fit with the culture better.

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>Lots and lots and lots of people get fired and don't flourish, in fact they drop like a brick and hit rock bottom. Sure, but speaking from the perspective of the company and everyone else in it, it's better if those low-performers hit rock bottom outside the company, rather than hit rock bottom while employed and bring the rest of the company down.

outworlder 10y ago
Usually, unless the company is really small, they won't drag it down. Unless they are CEOs, which are seldom fired. And get golden parachutes even when they do get fired.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  I disagree. Low-performers can make mistakes and cause a lot of damage, which then has to be cleaned up by someone. They are also bad for morale all around, especially if you have a team of high-performers.
- ci5er 10y ago
  I've kept people on because they were going through a rough patch and I felt squeemish about kicking them when everything else was going wrong. Bad stuff happens to good people and I didn't want to make it worse. But it hurt group morale on every team they were shuffled to. Hard working teams quietly build up resentment against dead weight. In retrospect, I would have been better off getting the board's permission to institute 6~12 month severances for company initiated terminations instead of the 3 month one that we had. Or done an extended paid leave - or something. I think the reason I didn't (I don't even remember at this point) was one of my early employees - a star performer by every measure - said something like: "Hey! Why would you be paying them 12 months salary for being a loser?" (Not that he was incompassionate - he wasn't - but making the point the way that anyone from the Bronx might make that point.) I don't think I ever figured out what to do with that other than deciding that being the boss sucked and I never wanted to do it again.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    The reason being a boss sucked is because you are an empathetic person. Typical sociopathic management types have a "kill or be killed" mentality, and would not think twice about getting rid of people going through a "rough patch". Not saying that keeping dead wood on is good for anyone either, just that most management wouldn't put the feelings of an employee even in the same ballpark as the interests of the company. If it makes you feel any better, I'd rather work for you!
    - ci5er 10y ago
      > just that most management wouldn't I don't know if this is true. (It might be). Most manager types that I've have talked with struggle with how to do it it well. The "path to wisdom" in technical skills (which are more my forte) seem to be lots of practice around things that start out being practiced ... mechanically. And each and every Ubuntu 14.04 server in my cluster is pretty much like the others. I think that people are harder. Even with just two, who believe they love each other - there wouldn't be a career in marriage counseling if it was easy. Ignoring the traditional heirarchy looking bits that show up on org charts: coordinating and synchronizing the members of a team and teams with one another is certainly not anything that most coders want to spend their day doing. They don't even want to write documentation! So, it's an important function: conducting a group exercise, like a dance, made up of a bunch of talented and self-directed humans. Especially when something new is being created and no one brain has the whole picture. (Thinking about it now, it boggles me that we even try.) We (society) are going through a strange transitional time right now. Like the 1850s~1930s in the US when we were transitioning from Ag to Industrial and it had the civil war on one end, a bunch of crazy elections from 1890 or so in the middle, and the New Deal at the end. I think that managers aren't trained to be coordinators in this new world: who would train them? And beyond that, we take our best tech leads and promote them: losing a great technical contributor and gaining a badly skilled coordinator. Anyway: thanks for the kind words. Since I left BigCo as an engineer back in the day to start my NewCo, and got big (and crashed), I've been unemployable by BigCos and very hesitant to start anything again. I kind of "fell off the rails". But some things have gotten worse since then: employers are scared employees will sue them if managers have an empathetic conversation with an employee, and co-evol employees thinking that typical managers don't give a shit. (Mutual arising) It isn't healthy and I don't like the direction. But, not my problem any more! I just fix up people's patent portfolios for them. And sometimes make a widget prototype for them ("Here, have an invention") and they can make it, produce it, support it, sell it, etc...

hnal943 10y ago

...Really? Hitting rock bottom to me implies they lose everything. I don't think the majority of people that are fired lose everything; there's a reason they were hired in the first place and other companies can see that value. They will get hired by another company and have a chance to apply their experience in new ways. My father was fired after 26 years and it was the best thing that could have happened to his career. He wasn't happy with the management changes at his job and ultimately he was forced to look for work where he fit with the culture better.