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But he's not strictly talking about "bad employees"; he explicitly mentions firing people for "the basic reason that you don't need this role any more". That's

But he's not strictly talking about "bad employees"; he explicitly mentions firing people for "the basic reason that you don't need this role any more". That's not invalid by itself as long as everyone knows that the game is purely transactional. But it isn't fair to expect employee "passion" when their own continued employment is contingent on whether management thinks they're still necessary.

tinyhouse 6y ago
I agree. Not sure he meant that. People are much more important than roles. If you have someone who is good but in a role that is not needed anymore, you'll find another role for them. Esp in big tech.
theptip 6y ago
The OP is 100% right here. Sometimes the needs of the company change as the company grows, and people can’t keep up. Or people change and they can’t give what the company needs from them any more. This is one of the hard aspects of being a manager in a startup that’s growing quickly. The easiest example to grok would be if you had hired a VP of sales who is an expert in B2C selling, then you pivot your product to a B2B offering. Or say you pivot into being a data-heavy product and your CTO has no idea how to build a data pipeline. In these cases you could say “they will figure it out”, and sometimes that works. But sometimes you need to recognize that through no fault of their own, your employee now does not have the skill set they need to do their job, and find someone that does have those skills. This is most pronounced in hyper-growth startups because bigger companies seldom pivot dramatically or change their scale rapidly enough that a motivated and smart employee can’t grow with the role.
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  > That's not invalid by itself as long as everyone knows that the game is purely transactional. But it isn't fair to expect employee "passion" when their own continued employment is contingent on whether management thinks they're still necessary. This still seems to hold no?
  - theptip 6y ago
    Maybe to some extent, but I’m not certain. If you are passionate about what you do, then you are probably not enjoying the job which shifted into not being a fit for your skill set, so the need to find someone else can be a mutual/positive conversation. It’s also really fraught with ego and self-worth landmines so it doesn’t always go that way.
    - dwohnitmok 6y ago
      There's a significant difference between being passionate about what you do and being passionate about the company/mission. A software developer might care immensely about the craft of software and the intricacies of tooling, programming languages, etc. but none at all about the company or mission, or a developer might care only about the company and view the craft of software as just the thing that happens to be most helpful for the company at the moment. Most people probably fall somewhere in the middle. I suspect employers would like both, but would prefer to subordinate the former to the latter, because otherwise that employee is easily going to jump ship to a competitor or potentially not be an effective employee at all and get lost in the weeds of their craft rather than the mission. This sort of passion for the mission/company itself is also the impression I get from the article. And that's a pretty big ask if as an employer you also want the ability to discard people who are no longer good skill fits for the company. I mean you can ask it and you may well succeed, but I would expect quite a few burned bridges along the way.
      - theptip 6y ago
        > There's a significant difference between being passionate about what you do and being passionate about the company/mission. Absolutely. > I suspect employers would like both, but would prefer to subordinate the former to the latter I think this depends on the company - size in particular seems very relevant. A lot of startups want their hires to be "mission driven", i.e. passionate about the company's objectives. This is more important if (like most startups) you're hoping for your hires to be generalists, and figure things out as they go along. In this scenario you can have meta-level "passionate about what you do" regardless of what the object-level task is (or more realistically, within a broad range of tasks that fall within your area of competence-but-not-expertise). But that's not as important as passion for the mission, and I do wonder if "passionate for whatever thing you're working on" is an oxymoron. In this situation I think your point is correct, the small companies want passion about the mission. One of the complaints in the OP was that Google employees are _not_ (as) mission-driven. My model here would be that at a big company, you're looking for a bunch of highly-specialized individuals that are effectively PhD-level experts in their field (not saying you completely discard/devalue generalists, but the trend is towards more specialists as you get bigger since you have more tasks that can actually keep a specialist busy full-time). For hiring/motivating specialists, you need to select for people that are passionate about the craft, not necessarily the mission. Not to mention if I understand correctly at the lower levels at least you tend to apply to a broad "Software engineer" role and get slotted in to a team, rather than applying specifically for a role in a specific subject area. I'm guessing the median Googler is substantially less mission-oriented than the median 10-person-startup engineer. Indeed to the extent that your mission is "boring" (I don't know many people that are excited by selling ads, for example) I suspect you want to actively select for people that are passionate about the craft, not the mission; these people will be happy with any mission, as long as they get to craft well. So for large companies I think I disagree with your theory about preferences between the two passions. Note with all of this -- you can still be a primarily mission-based small/growth startup, and have a situation where a skill mismatch emerges, and you need to replace someone. I don't think it's hypocritical to want your employees to be passionate about the mission, while also having the skills required to do the job, and recognize that sometimes your passionate and mission-driven employee is just not the right person for the role they are currently in. > And that's a pretty big ask if as an employer you also want the ability to discard people who are no longer good skill fits for the company. Perhaps there is some hypocrisy if you are really encouraging passion about _the company_, and selling the "we are a family" story, and then turn around and terminate someone because you pivoted and no longer need them. I know some startups do this and it's a bit awkward. Your company may be close, but you're not a family. But I don't think "hires mission driven people" and "fires fast if there's a lack of fit" are mutually incompatible asks/expectations in general.
- munificent 6y ago
  I don't see the consistency here. So the claim is that employees should be so passionate that they are willing to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the company. But if things aren't working out the company is in its rights to immediately cut them lose. Shouldn't the company be willing to make some sacrifices for the employee?
- ska 6y ago
  You know what that VP probably has that your midlevel engineer doesn't? A comfortable severance agreement. I don't think the point is that you shouldn't get rid of a role that isn't needed anymore, that absolutely should be done. If you are expecting a level of commitment from an employee far beyond what you are willing to commit to them, something is broken.
- nitwit005 6y ago
  Every company I've joined has been in a new field that I have never had experience with previously, and that doesn't seem all that rare. People are fairly adaptive. That VP of sales and CTO will almost certainly do fine. The jobs need to be radically different for it to be worth the morale hit of firing people, and the cost of hiring and onboarding new staff.
- valdiorn 6y ago
  That seems like a deal that's slanted extremely in favour of the company. Don't expect passion and dedication if the company doesn't offer the same guarantee back when the going gets tough or they change direction. You treat your staff like mercenaries, that's what you'll get.
Viliam1234 6y ago
Exactly. It is natural when "human resources" treat their company as a "salary resource".

tinyhouse 6y ago

I agree. Not sure he meant that. People are much more important than roles. If you have someone who is good but in a role that is not needed anymore, you'll find another role for them. Esp in big tech.

theptip 6y ago

The OP is 100% right here. Sometimes the needs of the company change as the company grows, and people can’t keep up. Or people change and they can’t give what the company needs from them any more. This is one of the hard aspects of being a manager in a startup that’s growing quickly. The easiest example to grok would be if you had hired a VP of sales who is an expert in B2C selling, then you pivot your product to a B2B offering. Or say you pivot into being a data-heavy product and your CTO has no idea how to build a data pipeline. In these cases you could say “they will figure it out”, and sometimes that works. But sometimes you need to recognize that through no fault of their own, your employee now does not have the skill set they need to do their job, and find someone that does have those skills. This is most pronounced in hyper-growth startups because bigger companies seldom pivot dramatically or change their scale rapidly enough that a motivated and smart employee can’t grow with the role.

dwohnitmok 6y ago
> That's not invalid by itself as long as everyone knows that the game is purely transactional. But it isn't fair to expect employee "passion" when their own continued employment is contingent on whether management thinks they're still necessary. This still seems to hold no?
- theptip 6y ago
  Maybe to some extent, but I’m not certain. If you are passionate about what you do, then you are probably not enjoying the job which shifted into not being a fit for your skill set, so the need to find someone else can be a mutual/positive conversation. It’s also really fraught with ego and self-worth landmines so it doesn’t always go that way.
  - dwohnitmok 6y ago
    There's a significant difference between being passionate about what you do and being passionate about the company/mission. A software developer might care immensely about the craft of software and the intricacies of tooling, programming languages, etc. but none at all about the company or mission, or a developer might care only about the company and view the craft of software as just the thing that happens to be most helpful for the company at the moment. Most people probably fall somewhere in the middle. I suspect employers would like both, but would prefer to subordinate the former to the latter, because otherwise that employee is easily going to jump ship to a competitor or potentially not be an effective employee at all and get lost in the weeds of their craft rather than the mission. This sort of passion for the mission/company itself is also the impression I get from the article. And that's a pretty big ask if as an employer you also want the ability to discard people who are no longer good skill fits for the company. I mean you can ask it and you may well succeed, but I would expect quite a few burned bridges along the way.
    - theptip 6y ago
      > There's a significant difference between being passionate about what you do and being passionate about the company/mission. Absolutely. > I suspect employers would like both, but would prefer to subordinate the former to the latter I think this depends on the company - size in particular seems very relevant. A lot of startups want their hires to be "mission driven", i.e. passionate about the company's objectives. This is more important if (like most startups) you're hoping for your hires to be generalists, and figure things out as they go along. In this scenario you can have meta-level "passionate about what you do" regardless of what the object-level task is (or more realistically, within a broad range of tasks that fall within your area of competence-but-not-expertise). But that's not as important as passion for the mission, and I do wonder if "passionate for whatever thing you're working on" is an oxymoron. In this situation I think your point is correct, the small companies want passion about the mission. One of the complaints in the OP was that Google employees are _not_ (as) mission-driven. My model here would be that at a big company, you're looking for a bunch of highly-specialized individuals that are effectively PhD-level experts in their field (not saying you completely discard/devalue generalists, but the trend is towards more specialists as you get bigger since you have more tasks that can actually keep a specialist busy full-time). For hiring/motivating specialists, you need to select for people that are passionate about the craft, not necessarily the mission. Not to mention if I understand correctly at the lower levels at least you tend to apply to a broad "Software engineer" role and get slotted in to a team, rather than applying specifically for a role in a specific subject area. I'm guessing the median Googler is substantially less mission-oriented than the median 10-person-startup engineer. Indeed to the extent that your mission is "boring" (I don't know many people that are excited by selling ads, for example) I suspect you want to actively select for people that are passionate about the craft, not the mission; these people will be happy with any mission, as long as they get to craft well. So for large companies I think I disagree with your theory about preferences between the two passions. Note with all of this -- you can still be a primarily mission-based small/growth startup, and have a situation where a skill mismatch emerges, and you need to replace someone. I don't think it's hypocritical to want your employees to be passionate about the mission, while also having the skills required to do the job, and recognize that sometimes your passionate and mission-driven employee is just not the right person for the role they are currently in. > And that's a pretty big ask if as an employer you also want the ability to discard people who are no longer good skill fits for the company. Perhaps there is some hypocrisy if you are really encouraging passion about _the company_, and selling the "we are a family" story, and then turn around and terminate someone because you pivoted and no longer need them. I know some startups do this and it's a bit awkward. Your company may be close, but you're not a family. But I don't think "hires mission driven people" and "fires fast if there's a lack of fit" are mutually incompatible asks/expectations in general.
munificent 6y ago
I don't see the consistency here. So the claim is that employees should be so passionate that they are willing to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the company. But if things aren't working out the company is in its rights to immediately cut them lose. Shouldn't the company be willing to make some sacrifices for the employee?
ska 6y ago
You know what that VP probably has that your midlevel engineer doesn't? A comfortable severance agreement. I don't think the point is that you shouldn't get rid of a role that isn't needed anymore, that absolutely should be done. If you are expecting a level of commitment from an employee far beyond what you are willing to commit to them, something is broken.
nitwit005 6y ago
Every company I've joined has been in a new field that I have never had experience with previously, and that doesn't seem all that rare. People are fairly adaptive. That VP of sales and CTO will almost certainly do fine. The jobs need to be radically different for it to be worth the morale hit of firing people, and the cost of hiring and onboarding new staff.
valdiorn 6y ago
That seems like a deal that's slanted extremely in favour of the company. Don't expect passion and dedication if the company doesn't offer the same guarantee back when the going gets tough or they change direction. You treat your staff like mercenaries, that's what you'll get.

Viliam1234 6y ago

Exactly. It is natural when "human resources" treat their company as a "salary resource".