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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 r
by 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.