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In my decades experience hiring, there are only three archetypes you want to avoid: - Someone who has no clue. This is rare but it does happen. I have seen som

In my decades experience hiring, there are only three archetypes you want to avoid: - Someone who has no clue. This is rare but it does happen. I have seen some fly through interviews and then literally do nothing until they leave for another company as we are set to fire them. - Assholes. Everyone is nice in the interviews. Not everyone is nice during code review. There is a sub-archetype of asshole called The Complainer. They can live in pairs, but if there is no Assholes, a true Complainer will find a way to turn someone into one. They are two sides of the same coin. - My way or the highway types. Your team uses Design Patterns and Unit Testing. Bob says that is overengineering and refuses to be a team player. Interviews focus on the first one, which is honestly simple for a relatively experienced interviewer to weed out. I don't believe in 10X rockstar ninja programmers. Either someone has the ability or they don't. The real keys to great hiring are good managers and cheap firing. Good managers are hard to come by, but they can be built fairly easily. Cheap firing is usually easy, if that is your goal. Some locales restrict this legally, but there is always a loophole.

snovv_crash 5y ago
Firing is dangerous, it can demoralize the team extremely quickly. My rough rule of thumb is that for anybody who was even marginally liked who gets fired, expect one of your best people to leave. On the other hand, if there is someone who people don't like, who visibly avoids work, and the rest of the team resents them, then firing is actually a really positive thing.
- GiorgioG 5y ago
  > Firing is dangerous, it can demoralize the team extremely quickly. Conversely, keeping clueless people around is demoralizing and insulting to the people actually doing the work. I don't mean junior folks who get it but are building experience. A company I worked for hired a junior against the advice of the team (red flag anyone?). We spent 6-8 months with this individual spinning their wheels. They just did not get it. It created more work for the rest of the team to help them, redo the work correctly, etc. Did they fire him? Nope...they transferred him to another group within the company. And of course he's not doing well in that group either. Why should people work their butts off if it seemingly makes no difference? I've since left that company - this wasn't the primary driver, there were lots of other supporting reasons, but ultimately it came down to my loss of faith in management's ability to steer us in the right direction.
  - ddek 5y ago
    The obviously clueless are rarely controversial fires. The problem is when leadership have a different opinion of the employee than workers. I'm on my notice right now. I started hunting a new job after the company fired their recently hired well-liked VP Product. Most of the organisation believed this guy had made a substantial positive impact, and the firing reasons were concocted. They weren't entirely unjustified (he was too expensive, and focus wasn't aligned), but I still disagreed. I've heard both sides independently, and nowhere near enough effort was made to find a better way. When people see good people fired for weak reasons, they become concerned for their own role. As a senior engineer, this is particularly worrisome. A huge part of my job is to disagree with people. Junior engineers want to reinvent wheels, project managers want to impose pointless deadlines, the (barely) technical co-founder just read an article about grpc; I have tools to constructively push back in all these cases. If I see people getting fired like this, then my career becomes a factor in my decision making. Ultimately, this firing has cost a small engineering team both it's senior engineers. I'm gone, so is the other senior (for the same reason). The CTO is management focused. There are a few other reasons I won't go into, but this team is in a very difficult position.
    - layoric 5y ago
      “Weak reasons” obviously heavily dependent on priorities at the time, which can change quickly. On small companies it has a massive impact on others and that shouldn’t be taken lightly. I had a previous boss that hired someone senior to do X but their expectations of the role quickly changed and they were fired for not performing well enough. They jumped from a good job stable job and took a risk, asking all the right questions about the role but CEO/CTO never lived up to their side of what the role ended up being. This same CEO also admitted to me part of their management style was “push people to breaking point, and back off a little” to get the most out of people. I left soon after. I don’t know how to avoid working with this kind of leadership personality in the interview process but has definitely made me more cautious.
    - yobbo 5y ago
      > A huge part of my job is to disagree with people. Junior engineers want to reinvent wheels, project managers want to impose pointless deadlines, the (barely) technical co-founder just read an article about grpc; I have tools to constructively push back in all these cases. This paragraph should be a great frame for so many problems. Engineers are people whose identities are wrapped in the perception of their intelligence. But value is created when we disagree and "the right" person wins.
- gremloni 5y ago
  As a hiring manager, the hardest people to fire are the ones that try hard, always show up on time but still end up doing terrible work. The best way I’ve found to do this is 9 box them, unfortunately point out how they’re holding back the team to the other people on the team (ie talk shit) and then formal review followed by firing.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    What is 9 boxing?
    - gremloni 5y ago
      Basically a matrix between potential and performance. It’s easier to look up.
      - jaredsohn 5y ago
        https://www.aihr.com/blog/9-box-grid/ https://www.aihr.com/blog/9-box-grid/
  - Datenstrom 5y ago
    > point out how they’re holding back the team to the other people on the team (ie talk shit) It is terrifying to think that you are in any kind of leadership position. I instantly lose respect for anyone who "talks shit" about team members, especially leaders. If I found out anyone was talking shit, especially someone in a leadership position in my company I would fire them on the spot. Well, I would first ask to speak privately so that they could still have the dignity they were denying their former team. There are no bad teams, there are only bad leaders.
    - gremloni 5y ago
      There are team members that are beloved for characteristics besides what they’ve been hired for. It’s explicitly why I pointed out it’s a hard decision to make but ultimately the right one. Pointing out how they are bringing down the team is not easy but necessary and part of what makes the job hard. This is after several quarters of speaking with privately and many attempts at coaching and external training with no change, which is how we get to the 9 box rating in the first place.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Yep. My company seems to fire fairly regularly. Always a whole bunch of people who depart right after.
- cebert 5y ago
  I would argue not firing is dangerous and demoralizing. Who wants to work on teams full of dead weight?
  - User23 5y ago
    Oddly at many large organizations it's not the dead weight that's getting fired. In fact, the dead weights are usually the safest. Anyone that's managed to be dead weight at a Fortune 500 company for more than a couple years is very good at it. Think of Wally from Dilbert.
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago
  I have a guy in my team who hasn't produced anything meaningful. 3 months ago I told my manager and the product owner that I can not include him into our sprint plans since he can not deliver anything. He still shows up in the scrums and tells us he is "working on errors". No one has any clue what he is supposedly doing. We wish our manager would just fire him. Currently our suspicion is that he is related to some higher up.
WalterBright 5y ago
I've learned to run from anyone who blames everyone else for their problems. Sooner or later they'll blame me.
shrimpx 5y ago
There's a 4th type, the competent but lazy engineer. They do great in the interview, then it's rest and vest time. They thrive in remote positions where they spend most of their time at the doctor, dentist, and vet.
- bradlys 5y ago
  As long as they do the work they’re asked to do - I don’t see the issue?
fukmbas 5y ago
Yeah obviously you want to hire the guy that puts his head down and does whatever you tell him The rest can eat dirt

snovv_crash 5y ago

Firing is dangerous, it can demoralize the team extremely quickly. My rough rule of thumb is that for anybody who was even marginally liked who gets fired, expect one of your best people to leave. On the other hand, if there is someone who people don't like, who visibly avoids work, and the rest of the team resents them, then firing is actually a really positive thing.

GiorgioG 5y ago
> Firing is dangerous, it can demoralize the team extremely quickly. Conversely, keeping clueless people around is demoralizing and insulting to the people actually doing the work. I don't mean junior folks who get it but are building experience. A company I worked for hired a junior against the advice of the team (red flag anyone?). We spent 6-8 months with this individual spinning their wheels. They just did not get it. It created more work for the rest of the team to help them, redo the work correctly, etc. Did they fire him? Nope...they transferred him to another group within the company. And of course he's not doing well in that group either. Why should people work their butts off if it seemingly makes no difference? I've since left that company - this wasn't the primary driver, there were lots of other supporting reasons, but ultimately it came down to my loss of faith in management's ability to steer us in the right direction.
- ddek 5y ago
  The obviously clueless are rarely controversial fires. The problem is when leadership have a different opinion of the employee than workers. I'm on my notice right now. I started hunting a new job after the company fired their recently hired well-liked VP Product. Most of the organisation believed this guy had made a substantial positive impact, and the firing reasons were concocted. They weren't entirely unjustified (he was too expensive, and focus wasn't aligned), but I still disagreed. I've heard both sides independently, and nowhere near enough effort was made to find a better way. When people see good people fired for weak reasons, they become concerned for their own role. As a senior engineer, this is particularly worrisome. A huge part of my job is to disagree with people. Junior engineers want to reinvent wheels, project managers want to impose pointless deadlines, the (barely) technical co-founder just read an article about grpc; I have tools to constructively push back in all these cases. If I see people getting fired like this, then my career becomes a factor in my decision making. Ultimately, this firing has cost a small engineering team both it's senior engineers. I'm gone, so is the other senior (for the same reason). The CTO is management focused. There are a few other reasons I won't go into, but this team is in a very difficult position.
  - layoric 5y ago
    “Weak reasons” obviously heavily dependent on priorities at the time, which can change quickly. On small companies it has a massive impact on others and that shouldn’t be taken lightly. I had a previous boss that hired someone senior to do X but their expectations of the role quickly changed and they were fired for not performing well enough. They jumped from a good job stable job and took a risk, asking all the right questions about the role but CEO/CTO never lived up to their side of what the role ended up being. This same CEO also admitted to me part of their management style was “push people to breaking point, and back off a little” to get the most out of people. I left soon after. I don’t know how to avoid working with this kind of leadership personality in the interview process but has definitely made me more cautious.
  - yobbo 5y ago
    > A huge part of my job is to disagree with people. Junior engineers want to reinvent wheels, project managers want to impose pointless deadlines, the (barely) technical co-founder just read an article about grpc; I have tools to constructively push back in all these cases. This paragraph should be a great frame for so many problems. Engineers are people whose identities are wrapped in the perception of their intelligence. But value is created when we disagree and "the right" person wins.
gremloni 5y ago
As a hiring manager, the hardest people to fire are the ones that try hard, always show up on time but still end up doing terrible work. The best way I’ve found to do this is 9 box them, unfortunately point out how they’re holding back the team to the other people on the team (ie talk shit) and then formal review followed by firing.
- azinman2 5y ago
  What is 9 boxing?
  - gremloni 5y ago
    Basically a matrix between potential and performance. It’s easier to look up.
    - jaredsohn 5y ago
      https://www.aihr.com/blog/9-box-grid/ https://www.aihr.com/blog/9-box-grid/
- Datenstrom 5y ago
  > point out how they’re holding back the team to the other people on the team (ie talk shit) It is terrifying to think that you are in any kind of leadership position. I instantly lose respect for anyone who "talks shit" about team members, especially leaders. If I found out anyone was talking shit, especially someone in a leadership position in my company I would fire them on the spot. Well, I would first ask to speak privately so that they could still have the dignity they were denying their former team. There are no bad teams, there are only bad leaders.
  - gremloni 5y ago
    There are team members that are beloved for characteristics besides what they’ve been hired for. It’s explicitly why I pointed out it’s a hard decision to make but ultimately the right one. Pointing out how they are bringing down the team is not easy but necessary and part of what makes the job hard. This is after several quarters of speaking with privately and many attempts at coaching and external training with no change, which is how we get to the 9 box rating in the first place.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Yep. My company seems to fire fairly regularly. Always a whole bunch of people who depart right after.
cebert 5y ago
I would argue not firing is dangerous and demoralizing. Who wants to work on teams full of dead weight?
- User23 5y ago
  Oddly at many large organizations it's not the dead weight that's getting fired. In fact, the dead weights are usually the safest. Anyone that's managed to be dead weight at a Fortune 500 company for more than a couple years is very good at it. Think of Wally from Dilbert.
nextlevelwizard 5y ago
I have a guy in my team who hasn't produced anything meaningful. 3 months ago I told my manager and the product owner that I can not include him into our sprint plans since he can not deliver anything. He still shows up in the scrums and tells us he is "working on errors". No one has any clue what he is supposedly doing. We wish our manager would just fire him. Currently our suspicion is that he is related to some higher up.

WalterBright 5y ago

I've learned to run from anyone who blames everyone else for their problems. Sooner or later they'll blame me.

shrimpx 5y ago

There's a 4th type, the competent but lazy engineer. They do great in the interview, then it's rest and vest time. They thrive in remote positions where they spend most of their time at the doctor, dentist, and vet.

bradlys 5y ago
As long as they do the work they’re asked to do - I don’t see the issue?

fukmbas 5y ago

Yeah obviously you want to hire the guy that puts his head down and does whatever you tell him The rest can eat dirt