9 ms·

I never understood the attitude of some companies to fire an employee immediately if they make a mistake such as accidentally deleting some files. If you keep t

by lokedhs 10y ago

I never understood the attitude of some companies to fire an employee immediately if they make a mistake such as accidentally deleting some files. If you keep this employee, then you can e pretty sure he'll never made that mistake again. If you fire him and hire someone else, that person might not have had the learning experience of completely screwing up a system. I think that employees actually makes less mistakes and are more productive if they don't have be worried about being fired for making a mistake.

gech 10y ago
Just like how a new executive is brought into a failing company, the company still fails but the executive is awarded a nice severance package.
- SEJeff 10y ago
  Sounds like the life story of Yahoo.
knicholes 10y ago
"Why would I fire you? I just paid $10M to train you to not that make mistake again!"
- modfodder 10y ago
  I had a great boss (founder of the company) who said, after I just screwed up, "There is not a mistake you can make, that I haven't already made. Just don't make the same mistake twice."
  - dingaling 10y ago
    Reminds me of the boot-camp story of the nervous recruit inquiring of his sergeant: "Sir beg my pardon for asking but why did you give Smith 50 press-ups for asking a question? You said that there were no stupid questions. Sir." "I gave him the press-ups the SECOND time he asked. Will you need to ask again?"
    - gohrt 10y ago
      That's awful. So they train people to never ask for clarification or refresh if they misunderstand or forget, so instead they go on to make a far worse mistake acting on incorrect information.
      - mulmen 10y ago
        A clarification question is not asking the same question twice. The point seems to be that you should pay attention.
        arebus 10y ago
        I believe that is the lesson from the story, but I don't believe the lesson from the story == the lesson irl. The IRL takeaway is that if you don't open your mouth, you don't get punished. If you do open your mouth, you might get punished.
gumby 10y ago
> I never understood the attitude of some companies to fire an employee immediately if they make a mistake such as accidentally deleting some files. If you keep this employee, then you can e pretty sure he'll never made that mistake again. I did fire an employee who deleted the entire CVS repository. Actually, as you say, I didn't fire him for deleting the repo. I fired him the second time he deleted the entire repo. However there's a silver lining: this is what led us (actually Ian Taylor IIRC) to write the CVS remote protocol (client / server source control). before that it was all over NFS, though the perp in question had actually logged into the machine and done rm -rf on it directly(!). (Nowadays we have better approaches than CVS but this was the mid 90s)
- stale2002 10y ago
  What the hell. How do people just go around throwing rm -rf s so willy nilly.
  - amenod 10y ago
    When disk space is limited and you are working with large files, you need to clean up after yourself. And human make mistakes. I am not sure if this still does anything in newer rm, but it used to be a common mistake: $ rm -rf / home/myusername/mylargedir/ (note the extra space after slash) The real solution is comprised of: * backups (which are restored periodically to ensure they contain everything) * proper process which makes accidental removal harder (DCVS & co.)
    - Joeri 10y ago
      Yup, I did something like that command once, to a project developed over 3 months by 5 people without a backup policy (university group project). Luckily, this was in the days when most of the work was done on non-networked computers, so we cobbled everything together from partial source trees on floppies, hunkered down for a week to hammer out code and got back to where we were before. It's amazing how fast you can write a piece of code when you've already written it once before. That was the day I started backing up everything.
libria 10y ago
Surely you've heard of at least these arguments: - Employee was error prone and this mistake was just the biggest one to make headlines. Could be from incompetence or apathy. - Impacted clients demanded the employee at-fault be terminated. - Deterrence: fire one guy, everyone else knows to take that issue seriously. Doesn't Google do this? If you leak something to press, you're fired, then a company email goes out "Hey we canned dude for running his mouth..." It's better to engage the known and perhaps questionable justifications than to "never understand".
- gefh 10y ago
  Leaking something to the press is an entirely different class of failure than a technical screw up.
- Griffinsauce 10y ago
  If you're going to let your clients decide when you fire someone you're having some enormous issues. Take the person off their account, sure, but how in hell does a client make your HR decisions?
- morkalot 10y ago
  Case 1: It's fine to fire individuals for ongoing performance issues. (though you must make clear to those who remain that the number and types issues the individual already had, and the steps that had been taken to help the individual rectify their performance issue.) Case 2: no competent manager would fire an employee who made a mistake to satisfy clients. They may move the employee to a role away from that client, but it would be insanity to allow the most unreasonable clients to dictate who gets fired. Any manager who does what you suggest should expect to have lost all credibility in the eyes of their team. Case 3a: A leak to the press is a purposeful action. Firing for cause is perfectly reasonable. Making a mistake is not a purposeful action. Case 3b: If you want to convey that a particular type of mistake is serious, don't do so by firing people. Do so with investments in education, process, and other tools that reduce the risk of the mistake occurring, and the harm when the mistake occurs. Firing somebody will backfire badly, as many of your best employees will self-select away from your most important projects, and away from your company, as they won't want to be in a situation where years of excellent performance can be erased with a single error.
ProAm 10y ago
There is a great quote from Tom Watson Jr (IBM CEO): > A young executive had made some bad decisions that cost the company several million dollars. He was summoned to Watson’s office, fully expecting to be dismissed. As he entered the office, the young executive said, “I suppose after that set of mistakes you will want to fire me.” Watson was said to have replied, > “Not at all, young man, we have just spent a couple of million dollars educating you.” [1] All depends on how leadership views employee growth [1] http://the-happy-manager.com/articles/characteristic-of-leadership/ http://the-happy-manager.com/articles/characteristic-of-lead...
- donarb 10y ago
  There's s story about Bill Clinton's early years that is similar. He became governor at 32 and had ambitious plans, increasing the gas tax to fix the roads was one of them. The tax passed and subsequently Clinton lost re-election. He was stung at his loss since he was a fairly popular governor despite the gas tax hike. A few years later he decided to run again and went all over the state to talk to voters. In one small town he came across a man and introduced himself. The man said "I know who you are, you're the sumbitch that raised the gas tax!" Clinton replied "I guess I can't count on your vote then." The man said "Oh, I'll still vote for you." Shocked, Clinton asked why? The man grinned and said, "Cause I know you'll never do that again!"
  - 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
    That's not really the same though. Did Clinton actually manage to fix the roads? If he did, that wasn't a mistake and voters were simply retaliating for a tax increase.
    - ProAm 10y ago
      > Did Clinton actually manage to fix the roads? ... and voters were simply retaliating for a tax increase. Not a great argument because many people view one of the primary responsibilities of local government is to maintain the roads (in USA). If they cannot properly budget and allocate money, regardless if the tax increase worked, it was the wrong way to fix the problem. With this mindset government can fix every problem by raising taxes.... Not acceptable to most people.
sopooneo 10y ago
It's incentives. The true benefit to the company comes when people can make mistakes and learn from them. But often, the forces on management are not in alignment. Imagine Manager Mark has a direct report, Ryan, commit a big and public error. And then 1.5 years later Ryan commits another public error. "What kind of Mickey Mouse show is Manager Mark running over there?" asks colleague Claire, "Isn't that guy Ryan the same one that screwed up the TPS reports last year?" On the other hand, if Mark fires Ryan, then mark is a decisive manager. Even if the total number of major errors is higher, then still there will not be a risk of letting being known as a manager that let's people screw up multiple times.
Latty 10y ago
"From the Earth to the Moon" - a great series about the space race (Tom Hanks made it after Apollo 13) - has a scene about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuL-_yOOJck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuL-_yOOJck

by lokedhs 10y ago

gech 10y ago

Just like how a new executive is brought into a failing company, the company still fails but the executive is awarded a nice severance package.

SEJeff 10y ago
Sounds like the life story of Yahoo.

knicholes 10y ago

"Why would I fire you? I just paid $10M to train you to not that make mistake again!"

modfodder 10y ago
I had a great boss (founder of the company) who said, after I just screwed up, "There is not a mistake you can make, that I haven't already made. Just don't make the same mistake twice."
- dingaling 10y ago
  Reminds me of the boot-camp story of the nervous recruit inquiring of his sergeant: "Sir beg my pardon for asking but why did you give Smith 50 press-ups for asking a question? You said that there were no stupid questions. Sir." "I gave him the press-ups the SECOND time he asked. Will you need to ask again?"
  - gohrt 10y ago
    That's awful. So they train people to never ask for clarification or refresh if they misunderstand or forget, so instead they go on to make a far worse mistake acting on incorrect information.
    - mulmen 10y ago
      A clarification question is not asking the same question twice. The point seems to be that you should pay attention.
      - arebus 10y ago
        I believe that is the lesson from the story, but I don't believe the lesson from the story == the lesson irl. The IRL takeaway is that if you don't open your mouth, you don't get punished. If you do open your mouth, you might get punished.

gumby 10y ago

> I never understood the attitude of some companies to fire an employee immediately if they make a mistake such as accidentally deleting some files. If you keep this employee, then you can e pretty sure he'll never made that mistake again. I did fire an employee who deleted the entire CVS repository. Actually, as you say, I didn't fire him for deleting the repo. I fired him the second time he deleted the entire repo. However there's a silver lining: this is what led us (actually Ian Taylor IIRC) to write the CVS remote protocol (client / server source control). before that it was all over NFS, though the perp in question had actually logged into the machine and done rm -rf on it directly(!). (Nowadays we have better approaches than CVS but this was the mid 90s)

stale2002 10y ago
What the hell. How do people just go around throwing rm -rf s so willy nilly.
- amenod 10y ago
  When disk space is limited and you are working with large files, you need to clean up after yourself. And human make mistakes. I am not sure if this still does anything in newer rm, but it used to be a common mistake: $ rm -rf / home/myusername/mylargedir/ (note the extra space after slash) The real solution is comprised of: * backups (which are restored periodically to ensure they contain everything) * proper process which makes accidental removal harder (DCVS & co.)
  - Joeri 10y ago
    Yup, I did something like that command once, to a project developed over 3 months by 5 people without a backup policy (university group project). Luckily, this was in the days when most of the work was done on non-networked computers, so we cobbled everything together from partial source trees on floppies, hunkered down for a week to hammer out code and got back to where we were before. It's amazing how fast you can write a piece of code when you've already written it once before. That was the day I started backing up everything.

libria 10y ago

Surely you've heard of at least these arguments: - Employee was error prone and this mistake was just the biggest one to make headlines. Could be from incompetence or apathy. - Impacted clients demanded the employee at-fault be terminated. - Deterrence: fire one guy, everyone else knows to take that issue seriously. Doesn't Google do this? If you leak something to press, you're fired, then a company email goes out "Hey we canned dude for running his mouth..." It's better to engage the known and perhaps questionable justifications than to "never understand".

gefh 10y ago
Leaking something to the press is an entirely different class of failure than a technical screw up.
Griffinsauce 10y ago
If you're going to let your clients decide when you fire someone you're having some enormous issues. Take the person off their account, sure, but how in hell does a client make your HR decisions?
morkalot 10y ago
Case 1: It's fine to fire individuals for ongoing performance issues. (though you must make clear to those who remain that the number and types issues the individual already had, and the steps that had been taken to help the individual rectify their performance issue.) Case 2: no competent manager would fire an employee who made a mistake to satisfy clients. They may move the employee to a role away from that client, but it would be insanity to allow the most unreasonable clients to dictate who gets fired. Any manager who does what you suggest should expect to have lost all credibility in the eyes of their team. Case 3a: A leak to the press is a purposeful action. Firing for cause is perfectly reasonable. Making a mistake is not a purposeful action. Case 3b: If you want to convey that a particular type of mistake is serious, don't do so by firing people. Do so with investments in education, process, and other tools that reduce the risk of the mistake occurring, and the harm when the mistake occurs. Firing somebody will backfire badly, as many of your best employees will self-select away from your most important projects, and away from your company, as they won't want to be in a situation where years of excellent performance can be erased with a single error.

ProAm 10y ago

There is a great quote from Tom Watson Jr (IBM CEO): > A young executive had made some bad decisions that cost the company several million dollars. He was summoned to Watson’s office, fully expecting to be dismissed. As he entered the office, the young executive said, “I suppose after that set of mistakes you will want to fire me.” Watson was said to have replied, > “Not at all, young man, we have just spent a couple of million dollars educating you.” [1] All depends on how leadership views employee growth [1] http://the-happy-manager.com/articles/characteristic-of-leadership/ http://the-happy-manager.com/articles/characteristic-of-lead...

donarb 10y ago
There's s story about Bill Clinton's early years that is similar. He became governor at 32 and had ambitious plans, increasing the gas tax to fix the roads was one of them. The tax passed and subsequently Clinton lost re-election. He was stung at his loss since he was a fairly popular governor despite the gas tax hike. A few years later he decided to run again and went all over the state to talk to voters. In one small town he came across a man and introduced himself. The man said "I know who you are, you're the sumbitch that raised the gas tax!" Clinton replied "I guess I can't count on your vote then." The man said "Oh, I'll still vote for you." Shocked, Clinton asked why? The man grinned and said, "Cause I know you'll never do that again!"
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
  That's not really the same though. Did Clinton actually manage to fix the roads? If he did, that wasn't a mistake and voters were simply retaliating for a tax increase.
  - ProAm 10y ago
    > Did Clinton actually manage to fix the roads? ... and voters were simply retaliating for a tax increase. Not a great argument because many people view one of the primary responsibilities of local government is to maintain the roads (in USA). If they cannot properly budget and allocate money, regardless if the tax increase worked, it was the wrong way to fix the problem. With this mindset government can fix every problem by raising taxes.... Not acceptable to most people.

sopooneo 10y ago

It's incentives. The true benefit to the company comes when people can make mistakes and learn from them. But often, the forces on management are not in alignment. Imagine Manager Mark has a direct report, Ryan, commit a big and public error. And then 1.5 years later Ryan commits another public error. "What kind of Mickey Mouse show is Manager Mark running over there?" asks colleague Claire, "Isn't that guy Ryan the same one that screwed up the TPS reports last year?" On the other hand, if Mark fires Ryan, then mark is a decisive manager. Even if the total number of major errors is higher, then still there will not be a risk of letting being known as a manager that let's people screw up multiple times.

Latty 10y ago

"From the Earth to the Moon" - a great series about the space race (Tom Hanks made it after Apollo 13) - has a scene about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuL-_yOOJck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuL-_yOOJck