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I honestly think you're misreading. My reading (consistent with the one you replied to) is: a higher-level manager somewhat arbitrarily comes out of the blue a

• majormajor 8y ago
  Let's look at the original line again: "If you're a VP and suddenly someone asks, "Hey, can you promote or fire Person X?" What are you to go off of? Just a manager's recommendation? And you think perf reviews are biased?" So 'someone' isn't defined, but from context, my assumption is that 'someone' is their direct manager (who works for you), since it's mentioned that 'manager's recommendation' is all that's known. A situation where, say, the CTO is asking a VP to fire someone three or four levels below would be much stranger than a lower-level manager asking a VP to fire one of their reports, so between these two things I think it makes much more sense to resolve the ambiguity in that way. This reading also has the benefit of suddenly making perfect sense and fitting the rest of the context of the original comment, which was about >100 employee organizations needing a paper trail.
  • aassddffasdf 8y ago
    I agree that your interpretation has a lot of weight. However, you're forgetting a couple of things: -. could be a request from the VP's peer; i.e., another VP. Or from someone in a lateral org (such as HR). -. the manager himself in your interpretation of events should have the power at least to fire (if not to promote). The fact is: it was a very confusingly worded post and we've probably wasted more time on it than it warrants. :)