4 ms·

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. "Hire slowly, fire quickly" is an oft-repeated maxim for a good reason. As for the most humane way to fire someone in a startu

by portman 16y ago

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. "Hire slowly, fire quickly" is an oft-repeated maxim for a good reason. As for the most humane way to fire someone in a startup, I have a few thoughts (borne from several misfires earlier in life): 1. Sit down with your employee and give them a formal warning. "You're not performing up to our expectations, and if things don't improve within 14 days, we're going to have to replace you." Give them a list of specific items to work on. 2. On the day of the firing, always have two people from your company present in the room. This mitigates a surprising number of "he-said/he-said" type disputes, and also (surprisingly) leads to a less contentious conversation. If it's just the two of you, the odds of someone saying something they'll regret increase substantially. 3. Be generous with severance. I've never regretted giving an employee 4 full weeks of severance, no matter how junior. 4. Be direct. Resist the urge to treat it like a high-school breakup (i.e. "It's not you, it's me.") I have always been advised by HR professionals to never mention "cultural fit", as it's a gateway to wrongful termination suits. However, I have been ignoring this advice for about a decade. I believe an honest firing trumps a legally "safe" firing. 5. Most importantly: don't plan on doing anything else for the rest of the day. Take your team out and order drinks. If your other team members want to go home after lunch, by all means let them. In a small team, terminations can be very emotional for everyone, and nobody feels good about working right after their coworker got canned.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
petervandijck 16y ago
That's awesome advice. I've followed advice 2 and 3 before, but failed at advice 4 and 5. Will do that next time, especially 5.
alnayyir 16y ago
Younger dev here, I'm with portman even though I've not been in a hiring leadership position. (I've been at best, a point-man for getting the icky stuff done.) Here's why: You make it harder for other people to do their best at work and love their company when they have to work with mediocre people. I say this as someone who has had to work with some heart-achingly frustrating situations. Good luck with the hiring changes and the company. Cheers.
iuguy 16y ago
I find your fire quickly maxim terrifying, but then again I live in a different culture with different labour laws. Do you really think that OP's man management skills could be so infallible that he's already getting the absolute best from this guy? If he's not a cultural fit, then it's distinctly possible that the things that motivate the others don't motivate him. Surely it's better to make sure that the employee is as motivated as he can be, and is given an opportunity to improve before just throwing him out of the door. I would never again work in the types of places that follows the maxim you describe. I've worked in those types of places before, they're horrible, hollow experiences where everyone chants about how awesome they all are and pulls all-nighters instead of being with their families, just to hide the deep seated job insecurities underneath.
- portman 16y ago
  Where are you from? You're absolutely correct that hiring and firing, like all management, is highly dependent on culture. In North America, the overwhelming majority of research has shown that organizations that "hire slow, fire fast" have more positive work environments, with happier employees and lower job insecurity. You could literally fill a small library with the books and papers that have been written on this topic. I would love to know more about your culture and the "hollow experiences" you're referencing.
  - iuguy 16y ago
    I'm from the UK, and have worked for American companies before. My experience with working for American tech firms (and I'm not saying that they were like this because they were American, my sample is way too small to draw any conclusions) is that compared to the UK they tend to overwork people, focus heavily on building a culture with an overly (for UK culture at least) gung ho spirit a la 'yeah, go team foo!' - which in my experience (and again, not saying this is all American firms, just the ones I've worked for) means people working crazy unpaid hours, pressure to go out after work (if you're not out drinking after work you're not part of the team - I've seen two ex-colleagues' marriages break up because of this) and a corporate kick-off culture that seems to be more about a Ballmer-esque 'Ric Flair impressions contest'[1] than achieving real results. For me personally, this doesn't line up with my culture and as such feels forced rather than based on genuine bonds - hence the hollow sensation you've quoted. By contrast, British companies tend to focus more on getting the job done, going home and spending time with the family. Sometimes you pull late ones, but you're not expected to be in the office at 9am the next day. In some places there's beer after work, but you're not expected to go (at the risk of being denounced as a 'non-team player'). To provide a comparison, working in France is completely different. In France the work-life balance is shifted further towards the life end, in the Middle East (if you're a local) even more so. [1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc - ok, that's an extreme example, but tone it down about 97%, crank the alcohol levels up by 40% and you're roughly where ISS was in 2001.

by portman 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

petervandijck 16y ago

That's awesome advice. I've followed advice 2 and 3 before, but failed at advice 4 and 5. Will do that next time, especially 5.

alnayyir 16y ago

Younger dev here, I'm with portman even though I've not been in a hiring leadership position. (I've been at best, a point-man for getting the icky stuff done.) Here's why: You make it harder for other people to do their best at work and love their company when they have to work with mediocre people. I say this as someone who has had to work with some heart-achingly frustrating situations. Good luck with the hiring changes and the company. Cheers.

iuguy 16y ago

I find your fire quickly maxim terrifying, but then again I live in a different culture with different labour laws. Do you really think that OP's man management skills could be so infallible that he's already getting the absolute best from this guy? If he's not a cultural fit, then it's distinctly possible that the things that motivate the others don't motivate him. Surely it's better to make sure that the employee is as motivated as he can be, and is given an opportunity to improve before just throwing him out of the door. I would never again work in the types of places that follows the maxim you describe. I've worked in those types of places before, they're horrible, hollow experiences where everyone chants about how awesome they all are and pulls all-nighters instead of being with their families, just to hide the deep seated job insecurities underneath.

portman 16y ago
Where are you from? You're absolutely correct that hiring and firing, like all management, is highly dependent on culture. In North America, the overwhelming majority of research has shown that organizations that "hire slow, fire fast" have more positive work environments, with happier employees and lower job insecurity. You could literally fill a small library with the books and papers that have been written on this topic. I would love to know more about your culture and the "hollow experiences" you're referencing.
- iuguy 16y ago
  I'm from the UK, and have worked for American companies before. My experience with working for American tech firms (and I'm not saying that they were like this because they were American, my sample is way too small to draw any conclusions) is that compared to the UK they tend to overwork people, focus heavily on building a culture with an overly (for UK culture at least) gung ho spirit a la 'yeah, go team foo!' - which in my experience (and again, not saying this is all American firms, just the ones I've worked for) means people working crazy unpaid hours, pressure to go out after work (if you're not out drinking after work you're not part of the team - I've seen two ex-colleagues' marriages break up because of this) and a corporate kick-off culture that seems to be more about a Ballmer-esque 'Ric Flair impressions contest'[1] than achieving real results. For me personally, this doesn't line up with my culture and as such feels forced rather than based on genuine bonds - hence the hollow sensation you've quoted. By contrast, British companies tend to focus more on getting the job done, going home and spending time with the family. Sometimes you pull late ones, but you're not expected to be in the office at 9am the next day. In some places there's beer after work, but you're not expected to go (at the risk of being denounced as a 'non-team player'). To provide a comparison, working in France is completely different. In France the work-life balance is shifted further towards the life end, in the Middle East (if you're a local) even more so. [1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc - ok, that's an extreme example, but tone it down about 97%, crank the alcohol levels up by 40% and you're roughly where ISS was in 2001.