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Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

JohnFen 5y ago
My initial reaction was that's so obvious that surely it doesn't need to be said. Then I remembered the first two people I ever hired (who were friends) and that I made that joke within the first two weeks. Nothing bad came of it, but it does show how easy it is to do.
whoomp12342 5y ago
There is an old adage- there are hidden truths in humor. Do you want to plant that "truth" on someone?
bb123 5y ago
I love advice like this - it is clear, easy to remember, and simple to apply.
- amelius 5y ago
  And now we have a URL we can direct our managers to whenever they make these stupid jokes.
  - adolph 5y ago
    Gotta love those domains that can be read two ways.
- ccvannorman 5y ago
  You can also have new managers watch a season of The Office to learn what not to do ("fake /joke firings" happened a lot on that show!)
tomrod 5y ago
Extremely important advice. Add to that: push upper management for change details, keep timelines and punctuality, define delivery, be up front on status and results, go home at a reasonable hour, take people to lunch or otherwise spend time with them, make your team appointments your number one priority, and praise publicly/coach privately.
- perpetualpatzer 5y ago
  Can you elaborate more on what you mean by "define delivery"?
  - tomrod 5y ago
    If you're leading a software team, championing a clear definition of "done" for the team and business partners (usually collaboratively). Other teams have analogous targets. There are some teams where the "work" resists completion.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    If I tell a guy to make me a table, and he puts his heart and soul into making me a beautiful wooden dining table, then when he shows it to me I tell him I actually wanted a glass coffee table and would he please start over from scratch, throwing his work away will be very bad for his morale. That's not to say requirements can't change - of course they can. But they shouldn't change just because I forgot to make myself clear the first time.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  What do you mean by "change details"?
  - tomrod 5y ago
    Often policies get set in place and in motion before they filter down, and impact is not understood. Either communicating the course, or if upper management fails in their duties, charting the course and communicating, is essential. For example, "we will deprecate this technology by XX date, and we have cleared the path to enable this" is often essential to success. In a healthy org, telling people what you're doing, how you're doing it, and why you're doing it is as necessary as when you're doing it. Just like you don't want to release every feature all at once, you similarly don't want to muck up your infrastructure (physical or business).
tailspin2019 5y ago
No one told me this prior to becoming a manager, and I did make this mistake once and immediately regretted it. It seems like obvious advice, but the circumstances where this sort of thing could happen are described very well in the article. I revert to humour in awkward situations, like a lot of people, but I quickly realised that there are some things that you can’t joke about when in this position. Thankfully I don’t think the team member took any offence by it (although how would I know) - we had a good rapport and relationship, but I immediately realised my “joke” could be taken so many different (wrong) ways that I made a conscious decision to be much more careful after that. Like many things in life, it seems blindingly obvious in retrospect but not necessarily when you’re caught up in the moment.
- jagtesh 5y ago
  Apologize, move on and hope for the best. Management is an art and mistakes (in hindsight) are bound to be committed. Never stop learning and don’t be hard on yourself.
- ipnon 5y ago
  You should be all business at work. It is your job after all. Work parties then become hilarious because all the humor is saved for special occasions.
  - WitCanStain 5y ago
    Disagree. Working at a place where you are or can be genuine friends with coworkers is much more pleasant, and you can't be friends with someone if the only time you escape the sterile confines of the 'all business' relationship is at work parties.
  - johnsimer 5y ago
    Check out Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how Anyone Can Harness It. Even You.) by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas
    - 5y ago
simias 5y ago
That's excellent advice that many have learned the hard way... Honestly even as a non-manager it's a very bad idea. When I was a junior one of my colleagues was called to the manager's office. I assumed it would be for some mundane project scheduling or whatever, so I jokingly said "you're getting fired" as he was going there. And he was. This is one of these memories that come back to haunt you late at night when you're trying to sleep...
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  Ouch!
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  I remember the doctor called and wanted to speak to my ex wife and I jokingly talled her she got cancer. She didn't though, it was Aids. To this day I think my joke softened the blow for her a bit.
- mrosett 5y ago
  I once had a friend uncharacteristically not respond to a couple texts confirming plans we'd made. I eventually sent "Are you alive?" and got a call back from the hiking companion who had watched her fall to her death two days earlier. That one gives me nightmares.
  - 3pt14159 5y ago
    Yikes I'm sorry. In my early twenties I'd jokingly do the "finger gun to the head" thing when I got a task I wasn't pleased about. Then my cousin died by suicide and, being my first encounter with suicide in the real world, it dawned on me that doing that in front of people was super, super not cool. I'll never know if I did that in front of someone that had lost a loved one to suicide via firearm.
    - spoonjim 5y ago
      I saw someone do that to a man who I knew (but he didn’t) had lost his teenage son to a suicide by firearm two days earlier. They hadn’t even had the funeral yet.
arthur_sav 5y ago
What about quitting? I always joke about quitting
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Depends on company morale. I wouldn’t make that joke if people are on edge and worried that you might quit.
- lincolnq 5y ago
  If one of my reports were joking about quitting, I would at least consider whether they were in a ha-ha-only-serious mode, and probably bring it up at our next 1:1. I don't think there's as much risk of hurting someone personally if you joke about quitting, but i do think it's an easy way to attract potentially unwanted attention/conversations with your manager!
- roflc0ptic 5y ago
  not a lot of upside to jokes like that. it's not wildly funny, and it might freak someone out.
  - mk89 5y ago
    How is it funny that your manager tells you as a joke that he is gonna fire you? The truth it: neither of them is a joke. It's just pure BS that comes either out of sheer and innocent incompetence or stupidity.
    - roflc0ptic 5y ago
      I didn't say it was funny. I also think joking about firing people 1. isn't funny, and 2. risks freaking people out. A good rule of thumb is "don't make gambles where the best-case scenario is that nothing bad happens."
      - mk89 5y ago
        I think I misread your comment :) I think that another way to prevent it is by asking yourself if the other person will find it funny. That's a general advice not just specific to firing/leaving a company.
indymike 5y ago
The same advice applies to all managers, not just new ones.
terramex 5y ago
As a more general advice - person in position of power should not joke about causing harm. Whether is is manager joking about firing employee, stronger person joking about beating up weaker one or parent joking about throwing child out of house when they misbehave. This kind of humor works only when it is coming from weaker position and even then only in certain situations.
- jagtesh 5y ago
  Good general advice. Had a manager who would say to folks “you won’t get fired for xyz”. Even the mention of firing made the environment unpleasant. Now I fully appreciate how words can have a profound effect on morale.
  - dannyw 5y ago
    The inverse "we will support you for xyz" works just as well anyway.
  - anon7725 5y ago
    There is a person in my management chain who makes occasional references to being fired along the lines of “If someone did X they’d be instantly let go.” I find that it makes for an uncomfortable work environment - I’ve never heard managers speak this way before. To be clear, I am not speaking about some bright-line issue that comes up in required training. It makes me think that they are a weak “rules lawyer” type, who are more interested in always having plausible deniability/coverage of their own ass than actually leading their team.
    - gumby 5y ago
      As with everything there is a slight exception (doesn’t look like you were talking about this case): if someone jokes about doing something forbidden it’s proper for a manager to say “sorry, but I don’t like even joking about that because violating safety protocol/falsifying govt form X/paying a bribe even where it’s the country’s culture is grounds for immediate termination. Let’s just move on”. Sometimes we joke about things to reduce fear, but sometimes joking about things normalizes them.
stevage 5y ago
It's weird, I have worked at many organisations - and at almost none of them did my manager have the ability to fire me. Is this an American thing? In most of these orgs, getting rid of someone is kind of hard work, usually involving a lot of HR. A manager would have much more luck getting you moved to a different team.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  It depends on the organization whether or not it's hard internally, but technically it's very easy in America... most states are "at will" employment, which means you can be fired by an employer for no reason at any time. So if someone within the organization has enough power they can fire people on a whim. I lived paycheck to paycheck throughout my childhood (with a single parent) and into my 20s and I've got a deeply embedded fear of losing my job at any moment.
- michaelt 5y ago
  In medium/large companies, 99.9% of employees can be fired at the end of a HR process and that HR process is something only their line manager can start. And while transferring an inept employee to another manager might save you some paperwork, it'll make that manager an enemy (unless the employee's performance is much improved by the move). So many managers would do the paperwork.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    From the perspective of that HR process, they generally care about the employee as much (or as little) as about that manager. A manager may start some process, but HR might as well consider that it's better (or easier?) for the organization to replace that manager instead of replacing that individual contributor.
    - FreezerburnV 5y ago
      I'm not sure I've ever heard a story where a manager attempts to fire someone, but HR decides to replace the manager instead. Is that something you've seen? I only hear stories about managers being protected as hard as possible by HR.
zcw100 5y ago
Ok, that's nice. I'm sure some people do it carelessly but lets at least be honest and acknowledge that many also do it deliberately. It's an easy and cowardly way to assert your dominance. If you get called out on it, and you won't, you'll just say you were joking. When you're not called out on it it's a easy way of reminding people that you can do it. Maybe not now but maybe in the future when you're not feeling so generous. I remember a job interview where the interviewer launched into a story, unprompted, about firing someone. Didn't express any regrets or sympathy for the person. That interview was over that second. Maybe that person was the most deserving person in the world to get fired but just the fact that he thought it was something to be discussed with an interviewee spoke volumes.
- giorgioz 5y ago
  I have been mentioning in interviews that I had to fire an employee. It was very hard for me to fire the person and I really do not wish to have to repeat that experience so I try to warn the candidates. Backstory: Our company is fully remote. One of the clause on the contract of each employee is no moonlighting. They are not allowed to work on anything else professionally. They can work on personal software project if they notify me in advance. This is because in a fully remote companies there are not office hours and it's very hard to define what's work and what's not. Employee Alice worked for us 3 months. She was not very responsive but her work was a 7/10. One day I found Alice was actually part of an agency and she was actually a Project Manager delegating all her work to other people. I noticed this because she had a MacBook but screenshots of her work were on Windows. When confronted she straight out denied the whole thing. After finding many more evidence she finally admitted she had delegated work to some "friend". I fired her with her pleading it was all a big misurderstanding. It was terrible, I felt so bad because even though I had found a lot of physical proof of her deception she was still playing the card of "please no really it's a misunderstanding". I doubted myself a lot fearing I had indeed fired an innocent person just being paranoid. Now when I hire new employees I underline the NO MOONLIGHT policy and tell them I had to fire an employee in the past. It was ugly and I wish to not have to redo that. I'm a single founder software engineer growing a team and having to deal with management for the first time. I'm unsure of most of my decisions. If you have some advice that you can give me in a kind fashion without making me feel even more inadequate that I already do it might help me become a better manager.
zxcvbn4038 5y ago
Better advice - rent The Office and do the exact opposite of everything Michael Scott does. (No throwing stars or nunchucks either.)
bootlooped 5y ago
I have made this mistake, I think the damage was between none and low but I still regretted it.
- pantulis 5y ago
  This is truly a mistake. I did adopt the pose of the bastard boss in a tongue-in-cheek fashion (for example breaking a printed vacation request) and never got nothing but a good laugh in response. But this is toxic behaviour an in a multicultural environment can be damaging to the team and personally devastating. Just don't.
  - ludamad 5y ago
    It's awkward to LARP that it is all at your whim - because at some point someone will ask too much in a vacation request and you do suddenly need to explain the factors very not much in your control (before proceeding to then rip up their request, of course ;))
    - andrewaylett 5y ago
      I've only ever once been denied a request for annual leave, and I don't recall anyone I've told the story of that to ever having had a similar experience. One place I worked had spelled out explicitly in the employee handbook that "if you want to take more than three weeks off consecutively, please give us at least two weeks' notice". They also discouraged people from scheduling holidays to accommodate deadlines on the basis that the deadline was probably going to shift, so it wouldn't help.
thrawn0r 5y ago
sorry for folks working under this at-will employment where managers can just fire someone. In Germany, it involves consultations with HR, workers council etc. before you can fire someone. Most tech companies use packages to get rid of people.
- M2Ys4U 5y ago
  Even for those of us lucky to have a proper processes protecting us, it can still be anxiety inducing. After all, you're still likely to have to spend time and energy to defend yourself in some capacity, and you now think your manager isn't going to (or might not) have your back, either now or if something is going to happen in the future.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477400
notjustanymike 5y ago
Watch Band of Brothers for more solid leadership advice. My favorite: "Never put yourself in a position where you can take something from these men."
- mgkimsal 5y ago
  Funny you bring that up. Rewatching this with my wife - haven't seen it in... 18 years? That's one of those lines that has stuck with me the last couple days (midway through so far). Really, much of the last 5 episodes are a blur - I can't digest all the violence. But that line just sticks out. Any others that have stuck with you?
  - notjustanymike 5y ago
    None specifically, but since I've been managing a team of 9 engineers during the pandemic I certainly sympathize with Nixon becoming an alcoholic. It's also an interesting show to watch as you progress in your career. Winters always wants to be part of the action, but is told to hold back and trust his men as he advances in rank. There's lessons there for anyone transitioning from individual contributor to leader.
option_greek 5y ago
Don't Joke <about most things> is a good advice in general for management and leadership. You have to assume people will read into most of the stuff you say as you are their primary information conduit for anything related to workplace.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  While I certainly agree that jokes are dangerous, they're also a key way humans form social connections! I do think a sense of humor is important for building a rapport with colleagues.
  - ludamad 5y ago
    As management especially, joke clearly. There is far more weight on you to not mislead than for the "keep a serious atmosphere" that some might take it as
    - q1w2 5y ago
      You have to be careful. Relationships sour, and nothing is funny when read in court. One thing is for certain, NEVER put jokes or sarcasm in writing. I've read way too many of those in court.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - AmericanChopper 5y ago
    Many ordinary social interactions have become sins recently. Saying anything that could be interpreted as offensive poses a very real risk to your career, the list of potentially offensive things is incredibly long, and gets longer with each passing moment as novel outrages pop up in all corners of the world. You can still be kind, empathetic and polite to everybody you work with. But avoiding authentic personal relationships at work is very sensible, along with having very clear personal boundaries. Normal colleagues can form cliques of people they trust, but it’s not a great outcome for management to be participating in that, even though that’s what usually happens.
makach 5y ago
It is a very good advice. The general advice is really to be professional in the workplace. Don't make a joke, unless it is during lunch and you are trying to tell a real joke. Don't use silly variable names, or add jokes or profanity into your code or documentation. Sooner or later it will surface and there is NOTHING quite as embarrasing as showing a unknown third party or a manager something on the screen that screams immaturity. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to have fun at the workplace, because you should. Also it makes life at work much easier if everyone has fun- just be professional and respectful. Also, sometimes you do slip up. Don't be afraid to apologize. It is ok. It is human to make errors, but learn from your mistakes and move on.
gjvc 5y ago
This is excellent advice. I have witnessed this on several occasions, and it's always cringe-worthy to witness and harmful, if not to the recipient, then to one or more observers, who more often than not have to suffer in silence. My most benevolent interpretation is that this is just a low-effort attempt at humour, poorly judged and which has gone wrong. It doesn't take much thought, really, to consider that the office may provide employees a welcome change of scene from their own swirling domestic situation, and to have one leak into the other like this may be quite upsetting. I have promised myself that if/when I witness this again, I will take the opportunity to tell the manager in question that his/her remarks were damaging to their own standing, and that they would do well to apologise ASAP, be that in private or in public. Be a leader of people and times [1], not simply a manager of issues and tasks. [1] as in, "experiences"
nmstoker 5y ago
Important advice. Often a red flag about other potential problems too.
wccrawford 5y ago
Likewise, don't attempt to comfort people about their position when you don't actually know how likely they are to get fired. I knew someone who had done this and the person was fired that day. I'm sure he believed it, too, or he wouldn't have said it. But he apparently didn't have all the facts. He regrets saying it and told the story a few times while I worked with him. On the flip side, I worked with someone who was doing poorly in their job (after having done better in the past) and tried to help them keep their job. The longer it stretched on, the worse they did. In the end, they lost their job and I found out afterwards that they thought we were attempting to gather enough data to fire them, when in reality there were a few of us that were actively trying to help them keep it, and even management didn't want them gone, they just wanted them to perform adequately again. I often wonder if I should have been clear about the risk to their job, or if that would just have been seen as a threat instead. At this point, I don't think I'd do anything different.
- macksd 5y ago
  Yep - a guy I shared an office with walked in and told me he had been wondering if he was going to get laid off. I comforted him and told him that I couldn't see why there would be lay-offs - we had tons of work to do. He picked up everything off his desk and walked out. Turned out he had just been fired, but he had been told it was a lay off to soften the blow. I actually thought he should be fired but the problem had been going on so long and it was the kind of place that just never fired people, so I didn't even consider that possibility. 11 years ago, I think - I still wish I hadn't said anything. But I also wish he had been given candid feedback by his manager much earlier.
  - ziml77 5y ago
    If he told you that he was worried about being fired, then you made the right choice of what to say. Imagine if you'd just shrugged. The only reason you'd respond that way instead of in a comforting way is if you thought there actually was a chance he'd be fired. He'd certainly realize after getting fired that you expected it and that because of that you must not think highly of him.
HumblyTossed 5y ago
> When people get promoted to manager their former peers become direct reports. It’s awkward. Don't do this. Promote and put them over another team.
- ludamad 5y ago
  Generally this blog has a startup slant - can't always
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Only works if you have multiple teams with similar specializations. Often even in quite reasonably sized companies you have many teams that are the only ones doing that thing in the organization and you need a team lead who knows the exact thing the team is doing, so you either promote from within the team or hire from outside (which has its own problem of communicating to the team that they have no possibilities for advancement unless they go to work for a competitor).
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I feel that it's sad this even needs to be advice. I'd think it should be obvious, but we miss "obvious" things, every day. Management is, way too often, treated as a "privilege," and a "reward." I was a manager for 25 years. I never felt "privileged," and I considered it a "curse." I hated every damn minute of it, but I kept doing it, because I am a control freak, and couldn't trust anyone else to do a better job. I also avoided getting promoted, because I didn't want to leave my team in the hands of the other managers I knew. Most of my peers and superiors provided object examples in what not to do.
- Danieru 5y ago
  In my experience the issue arises not because managers are treating the position as a privilege. Rather the opposite. A regular person one day becomes a manager. They feel the same today as the day before. They feel the new power is fake, or theoretical. It becomes easy to joke about this power. In their head the joke is funny because of irony. "How could I have power? I'm just a regular person." A further issue is the mismatch in weight given to their words over their intention. Even I hit this, once my employee told me he gave strong weight to a point I had casually mentioned. For once in my life someone remembered what I said better than me. It was a bit worrying, as my exact comment had been meant to be a minor point. Thankfully I knew prior to "getting power" to, as I word it, "never make jokes which imply a power structure". As the listener can never truly know if the joke was speaking to an unsaid idea.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    Good point.
- LanceH 5y ago
  Anyone who doesn't see how this might happen to a newly promoted manager lacks imagination. It's the same thing that manager might have said the day before as a peer as a sort of grim humor, but is now suddenly off limits. Hell, there is the possibility the relationship is good enough that it is still funny.
mberning 5y ago
I don’t think it’s good for employees to joke about either. I worked with a guy that was constantly half joking about getting fired, layoffs, etc. It’s a real drag to hear about all the time.
rahulpadalkar 5y ago
The title reminds me of the office episode.
- irateswami 5y ago
  It takes someone with a Michael Scott-level of self-awareness to ever think it would be a good idea.
VBprogrammer 5y ago
My advice for new programmers: Don't use expletives in any log message, debugging alert, or even code comments. The chance of this coming back to haunt you is not worth the momentary satisfaction it gives you.
- dgfitz 5y ago
  You ever grep the linux codebase for expletives? Give it a shot some time. I wouldn't make it at a company that frowns upon a 'God Damnit' in a log message.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    "I wrote this under duress" is my favourite comment I've personally left, mostly so the poor bastard who maintains that code after me doesn't hate me quite as much.
  - VBprogrammer 5y ago
    I probably wouldn't either. It's not that I wouldn't like to write those things, or enjoy reading them in the tribulations of those who'd been there before me. The problem is more when it reaches a customer via some error prompt which you modified for debugging or some logging output which ends up in their console.
  - aeternum 5y ago
    It's still not a good practice. Customers do sometimes see log files and when they do it's because things are broken and they're typically not in a good mood. Perhaps you have a highly orthodox individual as a user, should they be forced to read or even repeat a 'God Damnit' in a log or error message while on the phone with support? Should an atomic-bomb survivor be told that their files were nuked?
- JTbane 5y ago
  This is good advice, I was in an interview and was asked why "add the X shit" appeared in one of my commit messages in my personal github repo.
dncornholio 5y ago
I think you should be able to joke about literally anything. Context matters though so you should not be doing it all the time or to everyone. But for me personally, almost no joke is too far.
- depaya 5y ago
  That's great for you, but it gives you no excuse to make other people uncomfortable just because you don't think a joke is too far. And no, saying "it's just a joke" isn't an apology.
  - dncornholio 5y ago
    And that's where context matters! Know when to and when to not joke is key. But the subject doesn't matter IMO. Also bullying 'jokingly' is not joking. It's bullying. But true jokes can be applied on every subject.
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  > But for me personally, almost no joke is too far. That is very rare, unfortunately.
srevenant 5y ago
Then there are those bosses who do it on purpose, to just screw with you. I had one boss who was upset because we both submitted to present at a conference (VMworld) and I was selected, but he wasn't. He then declined the business paying for the trip, so I paid my own way, then he arrived at the conference, slipped past the guard the day I was presenting (I was first panel of the day and did a dry-run) and stepped up to a group of us talking after I had just finished and said, casually, "whew, what a long call I just got off, we were talking about your replacement." I remember looking at the VMware guys I was with and their eyes were bugging out like WTF, did he really just say that. By this point I was used to his crap and kindof let it roll off me. After we got away one of them asked if I was okay and said screw the presentation--he'd go introduce me to some people :D I talked him through it and did the presentation anyway. This boss was definitely toxic--he relished psych games, and at one point handed out copies of "The art of War" so we could all "brush up"--and as much fun as I was having working there (not because of this stuff), I finally did leave within a few months on my own terms. Never have I worked with anybody as toxic as that. (After I returned I asked the CTO about the call the boss was on where they "talked about my replacement." The CTO scoffed at it, and said that call had no such conversation. In followups my boss backpedalled and said he just meant because I was going away for a few weeks and who would cover me during that time--of course that's what he meant).
mherdeg 5y ago
Something I learned the hard way at the student newspaper is that the word "Fired" has some very strong psychological implications in US English -- it implies someone no longer has a job because of something bad they did. We got some strong negative feedback about a headline saying that people had been "fired" when the story was that a kind of lab technology had become obsolete and a number of lab technicians had been laid off. I had signed off on the headline, was responsible, and have never forgotten. People take their jobs very seriously; it's the thing we choose to do -- or have to do -- instead of being with our families and friends. And "fired" is one of the strongest words in our language. We need to be sure we understand what we are doing when we use it.
gargs 5y ago
At one of my previous jobs, managers would leak information about potentially not renewing contracts as 'person X has decided to quit'. It used to be quite awkward to meet person X at a bar and ask them why they were changing their job when this was the first time they heard about it. Turns out that toxification of workplace is better at getting rid of people than going about it legally.
Arrath 5y ago
Joke about being fired yourself, never about canning lower level folks unless you get to that sort of banter relationship with them. I trend more for the joking line of "hey once you move onward and upward be sure to send me your consulting rate cause we'll still need you"
meerita 5y ago
My experience is, never state your powers. People already know your reach, but sometimes, they don't. It happened to me in a multinational ecommerce giant where employees started to feel they were bosses. The relationship with the managers started to scalate badly, there was no respect at all. The feeling back then was "what, are you gonna fire me?" and so on. Projects went crazily bad and devs blamed management, when management was totally crippled. Instead joking or stating my power, I went to my boss and asked the head of the guys causing problems. My boss asked me if I could just let it pass, and I did it, 4 times. Until I said it was me or them. Then my boss asked me to do what i wanted. What I did, instead of firing them, I moved them out of the team to a newly created useless team. They were shocked, because I didn't fired them. They bragged about they now have their own special team, lmao, i remember how they've believe they gonna change the company, until 2 months of nothing todo from their side, no other teams wanted them, no other teams wanted even to share projects with them. They came back to my teams begging to join again, they will do everything is asked for, no more nagging, etc. I think it was better than fired them, to be honest.
- deleted 5y ago
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egypturnash 5y ago
I run a Mastodon instance and every time one of my users posts a really, really terrible pun there is such a strong temptation to say "oh god that was terrible, you're banned forever". And then I stop and think about how a few of the people on there have some really bad social anxiety, and I find some other way to say "holy shit that was a terrible pun, well done". It's a similar thing, I think. I'm unexpectedly in a position of power over my friends and I want to efuse it with jokes.
- deleted 5y ago
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some_random 5y ago
Here's another one that's a bit less obvious: anytime you're scheduling a 1x1 with a report, ALWAYS mention the reason for the meeting. You might think it's obvious or that it's just a normal meeting, but you have no idea how the other person will take it.
- binarytox1n 5y ago
  To expand - every meeting should have a clear agenda that is communicated beforehand. How can anyone expect to be prepared for a meeting if they don't even know what it's about? Spend the 60 seconds it takes to put a description on your meeting request. Signed, someone who works at a company with a culture of sending blank meeting invites
- ReactiveJelly 5y ago
  Yeah. At least twice I got called into a higher-up's office, shut the door, and then they talked about something totally normal that didn't need to be private because the rest of the team was also working on it.
- danjc 5y ago
  Yeah, I have a close family member who was a manager. Got called in to a meeting expecting to present a monthly report and basically got fired. Traumatised to this day.
- sequoia 5y ago
  "Come to my office for a 1:1 at 3:30. You're getting fired." The problem with always mentioning the reason is that it then stands out when you don't. Sometimes there is something unpleasant to discuss that you can't put in a meeting invite.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    One could argue that the firing decision should be communicated in a meeting intended to discuss either some incident that causes the firing or a previously scheduled meeting on the progress (i.e. lack of it) a performance improvement plan or some equivalent. Firing should not be arbitrary, there's some reason for it that the person would/should know, so that reason (whatever it may be) is a reasonable topic to mention in the meeting invite.
softwaredoug 5y ago
People in positions of authority often don't realize how outsized the impact of their words are. As peers, things people would take as jokes now are taken much more seriously. Employees will read between the lines on anything said, body language, etc from their management. It's important to reinforce team security and trust, and be very self aware about how you sound.
duxup 5y ago
When I had my first stint as a manager (way too young to be one IMO) I learned quickly that jokes from manager guy had to be VERY innocuous. Puns are fun, but nothing about work that someone might be sensitive to. Keep the jokes themselves postive-ish. Know the room very well before you tread anywhere else. It's just way too easy to send the wrong message. As a manager your words have a great deal of WEIGHT regardless of your intention.
standardUser 5y ago
The few times I have heard a manager joke about firing someone, my immediate though was "oh, this person is completely unqualified to be in charge of anyone and I should start looking elsewhere".
sieste 5y ago
I usually do the opposite. Sometimes when someone I manage asks me how things are going, I jokingly tell them I'm trying my best not to get fired. I find it helps break the ice, and shows them that other people are struggling with that same insecurities. Reading some of the comments on here I'm now concerned that such comments might also amplify a general latent fear of getting fired, so I'll probably stop doing this.
- ickelbawd 5y ago
  Yeah probably best to not make it about being fired—since your boss is ultimately their boss—makes them wonder when the axe might come for them next… That said I’m definitely a fan of some self-depreciating humor to help others relax and build rapport. Humor can be a wonderful tool really.
asamiam 5y ago
I think this falls under the general "don't threaten the relationship." Whether it's joking about firing, saying "maybe we should just get divorced", joking a child was an accident etc. When things get stressful people often reevaluate comments in their new emotional state and what might have felt like a joke could become a threat. Subsequently instead of working to solve a problem for a situation they trust, people often work for self preservation.
jldugger 5y ago
At my last job there was a chatbot with a !fire command. That would track how many times it had been used on a given subject. 'chatbot fires printers for the fifth time!' It was incredibly toxic when applied to humans.
notdonspaulding 5y ago
Along the lines of this advice, I've been trying to find an article I read at some point in the past with advice that sounded like: > On day 1 of a new hire's employment, I explain what it will look like if and when I come to fire them. I explain that I will be negotiating their severance and here's how it will look... Does this ring any bells with anyone? I have this article lodged in my brain as being a great conversation to have with someone on day 1, but have since never been able to find the article again.
_moof 5y ago
Oof, I feel this. I've made so many dumb mistakes in management gigs, which is normal and just a part of learning any skill, but it's so much more painful when your dumb mistakes are with other people and their jobs. It's not like leaving out a comma where you just feel silly for a second, recompile, and immediately triumph and move on. No, now your mistakes hurt other people's feelings, create awkwardness, diminish morale... although the upside is that if you can deal with your mistakes skillfully, you (somewhat paradoxically) end up strengthening relationships and your team. But jeez, becoming a new manager is an act of serious courage and humility. (And if it doesn't feel that way at first, it will soon whether you like it or not!)
AdrianB1 5y ago
As a manager you are never allowed to forget that: - different cultures have different meanings for the same things, so you will be misinterpreted lots of times - most people have no sense of humor, so joking with them is a waste of time - anything you way will eventually be used against you It is a very sad world.
emodendroket 5y ago
I always laugh when I remember my old manager calling a meeting where he talked about our product not being profitable and us needing to pull out all the stops to fix that, including reducing the headcount, and then being shocked and angry that someone had started a "rumor" about layoffs. He had meant through attrition, but it was a misinterpretation that I think should have been predictable in context. If you're in a position of authority you have to be careful about what messages you send.
thewebcount 5y ago
Oh man, I had to sit through something like this one time. I was at a resort in the Pacific with my spouse. It was on a tiny island, and there were 2 restaurants that were the only places you could eat. One was a moderately priced restaurant you'd go on most nights, and the other was a very fancy restaurant that only sat 8 people at one large table, so you had to book it the day you got to the resort as it always filled up. The chef made the food right in front of you and you got to meet and interact with a few other couples at the resort. The chef was a young woman of color, and the resort manager, and older white woman who was everyone's boss was from the country that had colonized the island. The boss decided to insert herself into the dinner because some friends of hers were staying at the resort and were at the restaurant that night. She dominated the conversation the entire night, and repeatedly made jokes about firing the chef. It was incredibly awkward and made an otherwise fantastic meal horrible. We wrote a letter to the resort about how awful the experience was. I don't know what eventually became of it, but I hope it made some sort of difference.
sebastianconcpt 5y ago
I think the advice is good but too narrow. The problem is calibration of jokes. I saw managers joke in very bold ways and it was totally fine but also saw managers using humor as passive-agressive initiative of an attempt to downplay someone's work.
sempron64 5y ago
Related marriage advice: don't joke about divorce.
nceasy 5y ago
the cofounder did a joke like that to me and I must say it was one of those shit moments of being an employee. I hate everytime i need to engage with him since then.
lrvick 5y ago
One of my favorite bosses joked about everything and was totally irreverent, even on topics of firing. Everyone loved them because they did it with a candor that was always very obviously not serious it was disarming. Given the nature of the work we did was very high risk, the disarming was welcome. Being fired was nowhere near the worst case outcome if we didn't do our jobs well, so joking about anything was fair game if it helped relieve some tension. Be careful not to create environments where people have to add walking on eggshells to their already long list of difficult responsibilities.
musicale 5y ago
Isn't joking about firing people (not to mention actually firing people) one of the most common ways that managers assert and reinforce their dominance in the social status hierarchy? In most companies, managers' greatest power (besides controlling subordinates' movement, actions, privacy, and access to amenities such as light, heating/cooling, quiet environments, restrooms, etc.) is their largely unlimited power to simultaneously deprive subordinates of their livelihood, health insurance, social relationships, and social status. Ed Zitron suggests that maintaining this social dominance and control over subordinates is typically the underlying (and primary) reason why managers want employees "back in the office": https://ez.substack.com/p/the-work-from-home-future-is-destroying https://ez.substack.com/p/the-work-from-home-future-is-destr...
xtat 5y ago
Weird thing is I worked at a few places and we all used this joke on each other managers, etc and I never felt burned by it- didn't seem to bother peers either.
anotherevan 5y ago
More generally, never make jokes to colleagues about things that directly effect their income or job security.

My initial reaction was that's so obvious that surely it doesn't need to be said. Then I remembered the first two people I ever hired (who were friends) and that I made that joke within the first two weeks. Nothing bad came of it, but it does show how easy it is to do.

whoomp12342 5y ago

There is an old adage- there are hidden truths in humor. Do you want to plant that "truth" on someone?

bb123 5y ago

I love advice like this - it is clear, easy to remember, and simple to apply.

amelius 5y ago
And now we have a URL we can direct our managers to whenever they make these stupid jokes.
- adolph 5y ago
  Gotta love those domains that can be read two ways.
ccvannorman 5y ago
You can also have new managers watch a season of The Office to learn what not to do ("fake /joke firings" happened a lot on that show!)

tomrod 5y ago

Extremely important advice. Add to that: push upper management for change details, keep timelines and punctuality, define delivery, be up front on status and results, go home at a reasonable hour, take people to lunch or otherwise spend time with them, make your team appointments your number one priority, and praise publicly/coach privately.

perpetualpatzer 5y ago
Can you elaborate more on what you mean by "define delivery"?
- tomrod 5y ago
  If you're leading a software team, championing a clear definition of "done" for the team and business partners (usually collaboratively). Other teams have analogous targets. There are some teams where the "work" resists completion.
- michaelt 5y ago
  If I tell a guy to make me a table, and he puts his heart and soul into making me a beautiful wooden dining table, then when he shows it to me I tell him I actually wanted a glass coffee table and would he please start over from scratch, throwing his work away will be very bad for his morale. That's not to say requirements can't change - of course they can. But they shouldn't change just because I forgot to make myself clear the first time.
fighterpilot 5y ago
What do you mean by "change details"?
- tomrod 5y ago
  Often policies get set in place and in motion before they filter down, and impact is not understood. Either communicating the course, or if upper management fails in their duties, charting the course and communicating, is essential. For example, "we will deprecate this technology by XX date, and we have cleared the path to enable this" is often essential to success. In a healthy org, telling people what you're doing, how you're doing it, and why you're doing it is as necessary as when you're doing it. Just like you don't want to release every feature all at once, you similarly don't want to muck up your infrastructure (physical or business).

tailspin2019 5y ago

No one told me this prior to becoming a manager, and I did make this mistake once and immediately regretted it. It seems like obvious advice, but the circumstances where this sort of thing could happen are described very well in the article. I revert to humour in awkward situations, like a lot of people, but I quickly realised that there are some things that you can’t joke about when in this position. Thankfully I don’t think the team member took any offence by it (although how would I know) - we had a good rapport and relationship, but I immediately realised my “joke” could be taken so many different (wrong) ways that I made a conscious decision to be much more careful after that. Like many things in life, it seems blindingly obvious in retrospect but not necessarily when you’re caught up in the moment.

jagtesh 5y ago
Apologize, move on and hope for the best. Management is an art and mistakes (in hindsight) are bound to be committed. Never stop learning and don’t be hard on yourself.
ipnon 5y ago
You should be all business at work. It is your job after all. Work parties then become hilarious because all the humor is saved for special occasions.
- WitCanStain 5y ago
  Disagree. Working at a place where you are or can be genuine friends with coworkers is much more pleasant, and you can't be friends with someone if the only time you escape the sterile confines of the 'all business' relationship is at work parties.
- johnsimer 5y ago
  Check out Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how Anyone Can Harness It. Even You.) by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas
  - 5y ago

simias 5y ago

That's excellent advice that many have learned the hard way... Honestly even as a non-manager it's a very bad idea. When I was a junior one of my colleagues was called to the manager's office. I assumed it would be for some mundane project scheduling or whatever, so I jokingly said "you're getting fired" as he was going there. And he was. This is one of these memories that come back to haunt you late at night when you're trying to sleep...

tailspin2019 5y ago
Ouch!
joelbluminator 5y ago
I remember the doctor called and wanted to speak to my ex wife and I jokingly talled her she got cancer. She didn't though, it was Aids. To this day I think my joke softened the blow for her a bit.
mrosett 5y ago
I once had a friend uncharacteristically not respond to a couple texts confirming plans we'd made. I eventually sent "Are you alive?" and got a call back from the hiking companion who had watched her fall to her death two days earlier. That one gives me nightmares.
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  Yikes I'm sorry. In my early twenties I'd jokingly do the "finger gun to the head" thing when I got a task I wasn't pleased about. Then my cousin died by suicide and, being my first encounter with suicide in the real world, it dawned on me that doing that in front of people was super, super not cool. I'll never know if I did that in front of someone that had lost a loved one to suicide via firearm.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    I saw someone do that to a man who I knew (but he didn’t) had lost his teenage son to a suicide by firearm two days earlier. They hadn’t even had the funeral yet.

arthur_sav 5y ago

What about quitting? I always joke about quitting

ashtonkem 5y ago
Depends on company morale. I wouldn’t make that joke if people are on edge and worried that you might quit.
lincolnq 5y ago
If one of my reports were joking about quitting, I would at least consider whether they were in a ha-ha-only-serious mode, and probably bring it up at our next 1:1. I don't think there's as much risk of hurting someone personally if you joke about quitting, but i do think it's an easy way to attract potentially unwanted attention/conversations with your manager!
roflc0ptic 5y ago
not a lot of upside to jokes like that. it's not wildly funny, and it might freak someone out.
- mk89 5y ago
  How is it funny that your manager tells you as a joke that he is gonna fire you? The truth it: neither of them is a joke. It's just pure BS that comes either out of sheer and innocent incompetence or stupidity.
  - roflc0ptic 5y ago
    I didn't say it was funny. I also think joking about firing people 1. isn't funny, and 2. risks freaking people out. A good rule of thumb is "don't make gambles where the best-case scenario is that nothing bad happens."
    - mk89 5y ago
      I think I misread your comment :) I think that another way to prevent it is by asking yourself if the other person will find it funny. That's a general advice not just specific to firing/leaving a company.

indymike 5y ago

The same advice applies to all managers, not just new ones.

terramex 5y ago

As a more general advice - person in position of power should not joke about causing harm. Whether is is manager joking about firing employee, stronger person joking about beating up weaker one or parent joking about throwing child out of house when they misbehave. This kind of humor works only when it is coming from weaker position and even then only in certain situations.

jagtesh 5y ago
Good general advice. Had a manager who would say to folks “you won’t get fired for xyz”. Even the mention of firing made the environment unpleasant. Now I fully appreciate how words can have a profound effect on morale.
- dannyw 5y ago
  The inverse "we will support you for xyz" works just as well anyway.
- anon7725 5y ago
  There is a person in my management chain who makes occasional references to being fired along the lines of “If someone did X they’d be instantly let go.” I find that it makes for an uncomfortable work environment - I’ve never heard managers speak this way before. To be clear, I am not speaking about some bright-line issue that comes up in required training. It makes me think that they are a weak “rules lawyer” type, who are more interested in always having plausible deniability/coverage of their own ass than actually leading their team.
  - gumby 5y ago
    As with everything there is a slight exception (doesn’t look like you were talking about this case): if someone jokes about doing something forbidden it’s proper for a manager to say “sorry, but I don’t like even joking about that because violating safety protocol/falsifying govt form X/paying a bribe even where it’s the country’s culture is grounds for immediate termination. Let’s just move on”. Sometimes we joke about things to reduce fear, but sometimes joking about things normalizes them.

stevage 5y ago

It's weird, I have worked at many organisations - and at almost none of them did my manager have the ability to fire me. Is this an American thing? In most of these orgs, getting rid of someone is kind of hard work, usually involving a lot of HR. A manager would have much more luck getting you moved to a different team.

micromacrofoot 5y ago
It depends on the organization whether or not it's hard internally, but technically it's very easy in America... most states are "at will" employment, which means you can be fired by an employer for no reason at any time. So if someone within the organization has enough power they can fire people on a whim. I lived paycheck to paycheck throughout my childhood (with a single parent) and into my 20s and I've got a deeply embedded fear of losing my job at any moment.
michaelt 5y ago
In medium/large companies, 99.9% of employees can be fired at the end of a HR process and that HR process is something only their line manager can start. And while transferring an inept employee to another manager might save you some paperwork, it'll make that manager an enemy (unless the employee's performance is much improved by the move). So many managers would do the paperwork.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  From the perspective of that HR process, they generally care about the employee as much (or as little) as about that manager. A manager may start some process, but HR might as well consider that it's better (or easier?) for the organization to replace that manager instead of replacing that individual contributor.
  - FreezerburnV 5y ago
    I'm not sure I've ever heard a story where a manager attempts to fire someone, but HR decides to replace the manager instead. Is that something you've seen? I only hear stories about managers being protected as hard as possible by HR.

zcw100 5y ago

Ok, that's nice. I'm sure some people do it carelessly but lets at least be honest and acknowledge that many also do it deliberately. It's an easy and cowardly way to assert your dominance. If you get called out on it, and you won't, you'll just say you were joking. When you're not called out on it it's a easy way of reminding people that you can do it. Maybe not now but maybe in the future when you're not feeling so generous. I remember a job interview where the interviewer launched into a story, unprompted, about firing someone. Didn't express any regrets or sympathy for the person. That interview was over that second. Maybe that person was the most deserving person in the world to get fired but just the fact that he thought it was something to be discussed with an interviewee spoke volumes.

giorgioz 5y ago
I have been mentioning in interviews that I had to fire an employee. It was very hard for me to fire the person and I really do not wish to have to repeat that experience so I try to warn the candidates. Backstory: Our company is fully remote. One of the clause on the contract of each employee is no moonlighting. They are not allowed to work on anything else professionally. They can work on personal software project if they notify me in advance. This is because in a fully remote companies there are not office hours and it's very hard to define what's work and what's not. Employee Alice worked for us 3 months. She was not very responsive but her work was a 7/10. One day I found Alice was actually part of an agency and she was actually a Project Manager delegating all her work to other people. I noticed this because she had a MacBook but screenshots of her work were on Windows. When confronted she straight out denied the whole thing. After finding many more evidence she finally admitted she had delegated work to some "friend". I fired her with her pleading it was all a big misurderstanding. It was terrible, I felt so bad because even though I had found a lot of physical proof of her deception she was still playing the card of "please no really it's a misunderstanding". I doubted myself a lot fearing I had indeed fired an innocent person just being paranoid. Now when I hire new employees I underline the NO MOONLIGHT policy and tell them I had to fire an employee in the past. It was ugly and I wish to not have to redo that. I'm a single founder software engineer growing a team and having to deal with management for the first time. I'm unsure of most of my decisions. If you have some advice that you can give me in a kind fashion without making me feel even more inadequate that I already do it might help me become a better manager.

zxcvbn4038 5y ago

Better advice - rent The Office and do the exact opposite of everything Michael Scott does. (No throwing stars or nunchucks either.)

bootlooped 5y ago

I have made this mistake, I think the damage was between none and low but I still regretted it.

pantulis 5y ago
This is truly a mistake. I did adopt the pose of the bastard boss in a tongue-in-cheek fashion (for example breaking a printed vacation request) and never got nothing but a good laugh in response. But this is toxic behaviour an in a multicultural environment can be damaging to the team and personally devastating. Just don't.
- ludamad 5y ago
  It's awkward to LARP that it is all at your whim - because at some point someone will ask too much in a vacation request and you do suddenly need to explain the factors very not much in your control (before proceeding to then rip up their request, of course ;))
  - andrewaylett 5y ago
    I've only ever once been denied a request for annual leave, and I don't recall anyone I've told the story of that to ever having had a similar experience. One place I worked had spelled out explicitly in the employee handbook that "if you want to take more than three weeks off consecutively, please give us at least two weeks' notice". They also discouraged people from scheduling holidays to accommodate deadlines on the basis that the deadline was probably going to shift, so it wouldn't help.

thrawn0r 5y ago

sorry for folks working under this at-will employment where managers can just fire someone. In Germany, it involves consultations with HR, workers council etc. before you can fire someone. Most tech companies use packages to get rid of people.

M2Ys4U 5y ago
Even for those of us lucky to have a proper processes protecting us, it can still be anxiety inducing. After all, you're still likely to have to spend time and energy to defend yourself in some capacity, and you now think your manager isn't going to (or might not) have your back, either now or if something is going to happen in the future.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477400

notjustanymike 5y ago

Watch Band of Brothers for more solid leadership advice. My favorite: "Never put yourself in a position where you can take something from these men."

mgkimsal 5y ago
Funny you bring that up. Rewatching this with my wife - haven't seen it in... 18 years? That's one of those lines that has stuck with me the last couple days (midway through so far). Really, much of the last 5 episodes are a blur - I can't digest all the violence. But that line just sticks out. Any others that have stuck with you?
- notjustanymike 5y ago
  None specifically, but since I've been managing a team of 9 engineers during the pandemic I certainly sympathize with Nixon becoming an alcoholic. It's also an interesting show to watch as you progress in your career. Winters always wants to be part of the action, but is told to hold back and trust his men as he advances in rank. There's lessons there for anyone transitioning from individual contributor to leader.

option_greek 5y ago

Don't Joke <about most things> is a good advice in general for management and leadership. You have to assume people will read into most of the stuff you say as you are their primary information conduit for anything related to workplace.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
While I certainly agree that jokes are dangerous, they're also a key way humans form social connections! I do think a sense of humor is important for building a rapport with colleagues.
- ludamad 5y ago
  As management especially, joke clearly. There is far more weight on you to not mislead than for the "keep a serious atmosphere" that some might take it as
  - q1w2 5y ago
    You have to be careful. Relationships sour, and nothing is funny when read in court. One thing is for certain, NEVER put jokes or sarcasm in writing. I've read way too many of those in court.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  Many ordinary social interactions have become sins recently. Saying anything that could be interpreted as offensive poses a very real risk to your career, the list of potentially offensive things is incredibly long, and gets longer with each passing moment as novel outrages pop up in all corners of the world. You can still be kind, empathetic and polite to everybody you work with. But avoiding authentic personal relationships at work is very sensible, along with having very clear personal boundaries. Normal colleagues can form cliques of people they trust, but it’s not a great outcome for management to be participating in that, even though that’s what usually happens.

makach 5y ago

It is a very good advice. The general advice is really to be professional in the workplace. Don't make a joke, unless it is during lunch and you are trying to tell a real joke. Don't use silly variable names, or add jokes or profanity into your code or documentation. Sooner or later it will surface and there is NOTHING quite as embarrasing as showing a unknown third party or a manager something on the screen that screams immaturity. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to have fun at the workplace, because you should. Also it makes life at work much easier if everyone has fun- just be professional and respectful. Also, sometimes you do slip up. Don't be afraid to apologize. It is ok. It is human to make errors, but learn from your mistakes and move on.

gjvc 5y ago

This is excellent advice. I have witnessed this on several occasions, and it's always cringe-worthy to witness and harmful, if not to the recipient, then to one or more observers, who more often than not have to suffer in silence. My most benevolent interpretation is that this is just a low-effort attempt at humour, poorly judged and which has gone wrong. It doesn't take much thought, really, to consider that the office may provide employees a welcome change of scene from their own swirling domestic situation, and to have one leak into the other like this may be quite upsetting. I have promised myself that if/when I witness this again, I will take the opportunity to tell the manager in question that his/her remarks were damaging to their own standing, and that they would do well to apologise ASAP, be that in private or in public. Be a leader of people and times [1], not simply a manager of issues and tasks. [1] as in, "experiences"

nmstoker 5y ago

Important advice. Often a red flag about other potential problems too.

wccrawford 5y ago

Likewise, don't attempt to comfort people about their position when you don't actually know how likely they are to get fired. I knew someone who had done this and the person was fired that day. I'm sure he believed it, too, or he wouldn't have said it. But he apparently didn't have all the facts. He regrets saying it and told the story a few times while I worked with him. On the flip side, I worked with someone who was doing poorly in their job (after having done better in the past) and tried to help them keep their job. The longer it stretched on, the worse they did. In the end, they lost their job and I found out afterwards that they thought we were attempting to gather enough data to fire them, when in reality there were a few of us that were actively trying to help them keep it, and even management didn't want them gone, they just wanted them to perform adequately again. I often wonder if I should have been clear about the risk to their job, or if that would just have been seen as a threat instead. At this point, I don't think I'd do anything different.

macksd 5y ago
Yep - a guy I shared an office with walked in and told me he had been wondering if he was going to get laid off. I comforted him and told him that I couldn't see why there would be lay-offs - we had tons of work to do. He picked up everything off his desk and walked out. Turned out he had just been fired, but he had been told it was a lay off to soften the blow. I actually thought he should be fired but the problem had been going on so long and it was the kind of place that just never fired people, so I didn't even consider that possibility. 11 years ago, I think - I still wish I hadn't said anything. But I also wish he had been given candid feedback by his manager much earlier.
- ziml77 5y ago
  If he told you that he was worried about being fired, then you made the right choice of what to say. Imagine if you'd just shrugged. The only reason you'd respond that way instead of in a comforting way is if you thought there actually was a chance he'd be fired. He'd certainly realize after getting fired that you expected it and that because of that you must not think highly of him.

HumblyTossed 5y ago

> When people get promoted to manager their former peers become direct reports. It’s awkward. Don't do this. Promote and put them over another team.

ludamad 5y ago
Generally this blog has a startup slant - can't always
PeterisP 5y ago
Only works if you have multiple teams with similar specializations. Often even in quite reasonably sized companies you have many teams that are the only ones doing that thing in the organization and you need a team lead who knows the exact thing the team is doing, so you either promote from within the team or hire from outside (which has its own problem of communicating to the team that they have no possibilities for advancement unless they go to work for a competitor).

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I feel that it's sad this even needs to be advice. I'd think it should be obvious, but we miss "obvious" things, every day. Management is, way too often, treated as a "privilege," and a "reward." I was a manager for 25 years. I never felt "privileged," and I considered it a "curse." I hated every damn minute of it, but I kept doing it, because I am a control freak, and couldn't trust anyone else to do a better job. I also avoided getting promoted, because I didn't want to leave my team in the hands of the other managers I knew. Most of my peers and superiors provided object examples in what not to do.

Danieru 5y ago
In my experience the issue arises not because managers are treating the position as a privilege. Rather the opposite. A regular person one day becomes a manager. They feel the same today as the day before. They feel the new power is fake, or theoretical. It becomes easy to joke about this power. In their head the joke is funny because of irony. "How could I have power? I'm just a regular person." A further issue is the mismatch in weight given to their words over their intention. Even I hit this, once my employee told me he gave strong weight to a point I had casually mentioned. For once in my life someone remembered what I said better than me. It was a bit worrying, as my exact comment had been meant to be a minor point. Thankfully I knew prior to "getting power" to, as I word it, "never make jokes which imply a power structure". As the listener can never truly know if the joke was speaking to an unsaid idea.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Good point.
LanceH 5y ago
Anyone who doesn't see how this might happen to a newly promoted manager lacks imagination. It's the same thing that manager might have said the day before as a peer as a sort of grim humor, but is now suddenly off limits. Hell, there is the possibility the relationship is good enough that it is still funny.

mberning 5y ago

I don’t think it’s good for employees to joke about either. I worked with a guy that was constantly half joking about getting fired, layoffs, etc. It’s a real drag to hear about all the time.

rahulpadalkar 5y ago

The title reminds me of the office episode.

irateswami 5y ago
It takes someone with a Michael Scott-level of self-awareness to ever think it would be a good idea.

VBprogrammer 5y ago

My advice for new programmers: Don't use expletives in any log message, debugging alert, or even code comments. The chance of this coming back to haunt you is not worth the momentary satisfaction it gives you.

dgfitz 5y ago
You ever grep the linux codebase for expletives? Give it a shot some time. I wouldn't make it at a company that frowns upon a 'God Damnit' in a log message.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  "I wrote this under duress" is my favourite comment I've personally left, mostly so the poor bastard who maintains that code after me doesn't hate me quite as much.
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  I probably wouldn't either. It's not that I wouldn't like to write those things, or enjoy reading them in the tribulations of those who'd been there before me. The problem is more when it reaches a customer via some error prompt which you modified for debugging or some logging output which ends up in their console.
- aeternum 5y ago
  It's still not a good practice. Customers do sometimes see log files and when they do it's because things are broken and they're typically not in a good mood. Perhaps you have a highly orthodox individual as a user, should they be forced to read or even repeat a 'God Damnit' in a log or error message while on the phone with support? Should an atomic-bomb survivor be told that their files were nuked?
JTbane 5y ago
This is good advice, I was in an interview and was asked why "add the X shit" appeared in one of my commit messages in my personal github repo.

dncornholio 5y ago

I think you should be able to joke about literally anything. Context matters though so you should not be doing it all the time or to everyone. But for me personally, almost no joke is too far.

depaya 5y ago
That's great for you, but it gives you no excuse to make other people uncomfortable just because you don't think a joke is too far. And no, saying "it's just a joke" isn't an apology.
- dncornholio 5y ago
  And that's where context matters! Know when to and when to not joke is key. But the subject doesn't matter IMO. Also bullying 'jokingly' is not joking. It's bullying. But true jokes can be applied on every subject.
AdrianB1 5y ago
> But for me personally, almost no joke is too far. That is very rare, unfortunately.

srevenant 5y ago

Then there are those bosses who do it on purpose, to just screw with you. I had one boss who was upset because we both submitted to present at a conference (VMworld) and I was selected, but he wasn't. He then declined the business paying for the trip, so I paid my own way, then he arrived at the conference, slipped past the guard the day I was presenting (I was first panel of the day and did a dry-run) and stepped up to a group of us talking after I had just finished and said, casually, "whew, what a long call I just got off, we were talking about your replacement." I remember looking at the VMware guys I was with and their eyes were bugging out like WTF, did he really just say that. By this point I was used to his crap and kindof let it roll off me. After we got away one of them asked if I was okay and said screw the presentation--he'd go introduce me to some people :D I talked him through it and did the presentation anyway. This boss was definitely toxic--he relished psych games, and at one point handed out copies of "The art of War" so we could all "brush up"--and as much fun as I was having working there (not because of this stuff), I finally did leave within a few months on my own terms. Never have I worked with anybody as toxic as that. (After I returned I asked the CTO about the call the boss was on where they "talked about my replacement." The CTO scoffed at it, and said that call had no such conversation. In followups my boss backpedalled and said he just meant because I was going away for a few weeks and who would cover me during that time--of course that's what he meant).

mherdeg 5y ago

Something I learned the hard way at the student newspaper is that the word "Fired" has some very strong psychological implications in US English -- it implies someone no longer has a job because of something bad they did. We got some strong negative feedback about a headline saying that people had been "fired" when the story was that a kind of lab technology had become obsolete and a number of lab technicians had been laid off. I had signed off on the headline, was responsible, and have never forgotten. People take their jobs very seriously; it's the thing we choose to do -- or have to do -- instead of being with our families and friends. And "fired" is one of the strongest words in our language. We need to be sure we understand what we are doing when we use it.

gargs 5y ago

At one of my previous jobs, managers would leak information about potentially not renewing contracts as 'person X has decided to quit'. It used to be quite awkward to meet person X at a bar and ask them why they were changing their job when this was the first time they heard about it. Turns out that toxification of workplace is better at getting rid of people than going about it legally.

Arrath 5y ago

Joke about being fired yourself, never about canning lower level folks unless you get to that sort of banter relationship with them. I trend more for the joking line of "hey once you move onward and upward be sure to send me your consulting rate cause we'll still need you"

meerita 5y ago

My experience is, never state your powers. People already know your reach, but sometimes, they don't. It happened to me in a multinational ecommerce giant where employees started to feel they were bosses. The relationship with the managers started to scalate badly, there was no respect at all. The feeling back then was "what, are you gonna fire me?" and so on. Projects went crazily bad and devs blamed management, when management was totally crippled. Instead joking or stating my power, I went to my boss and asked the head of the guys causing problems. My boss asked me if I could just let it pass, and I did it, 4 times. Until I said it was me or them. Then my boss asked me to do what i wanted. What I did, instead of firing them, I moved them out of the team to a newly created useless team. They were shocked, because I didn't fired them. They bragged about they now have their own special team, lmao, i remember how they've believe they gonna change the company, until 2 months of nothing todo from their side, no other teams wanted them, no other teams wanted even to share projects with them. They came back to my teams begging to join again, they will do everything is asked for, no more nagging, etc. I think it was better than fired them, to be honest.

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egypturnash 5y ago

I run a Mastodon instance and every time one of my users posts a really, really terrible pun there is such a strong temptation to say "oh god that was terrible, you're banned forever". And then I stop and think about how a few of the people on there have some really bad social anxiety, and I find some other way to say "holy shit that was a terrible pun, well done". It's a similar thing, I think. I'm unexpectedly in a position of power over my friends and I want to efuse it with jokes.

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some_random 5y ago

Here's another one that's a bit less obvious: anytime you're scheduling a 1x1 with a report, ALWAYS mention the reason for the meeting. You might think it's obvious or that it's just a normal meeting, but you have no idea how the other person will take it.

binarytox1n 5y ago
To expand - every meeting should have a clear agenda that is communicated beforehand. How can anyone expect to be prepared for a meeting if they don't even know what it's about? Spend the 60 seconds it takes to put a description on your meeting request. Signed, someone who works at a company with a culture of sending blank meeting invites
ReactiveJelly 5y ago
Yeah. At least twice I got called into a higher-up's office, shut the door, and then they talked about something totally normal that didn't need to be private because the rest of the team was also working on it.
danjc 5y ago
Yeah, I have a close family member who was a manager. Got called in to a meeting expecting to present a monthly report and basically got fired. Traumatised to this day.
sequoia 5y ago
"Come to my office for a 1:1 at 3:30. You're getting fired." The problem with always mentioning the reason is that it then stands out when you don't. Sometimes there is something unpleasant to discuss that you can't put in a meeting invite.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  One could argue that the firing decision should be communicated in a meeting intended to discuss either some incident that causes the firing or a previously scheduled meeting on the progress (i.e. lack of it) a performance improvement plan or some equivalent. Firing should not be arbitrary, there's some reason for it that the person would/should know, so that reason (whatever it may be) is a reasonable topic to mention in the meeting invite.

softwaredoug 5y ago

People in positions of authority often don't realize how outsized the impact of their words are. As peers, things people would take as jokes now are taken much more seriously. Employees will read between the lines on anything said, body language, etc from their management. It's important to reinforce team security and trust, and be very self aware about how you sound.

duxup 5y ago

When I had my first stint as a manager (way too young to be one IMO) I learned quickly that jokes from manager guy had to be VERY innocuous. Puns are fun, but nothing about work that someone might be sensitive to. Keep the jokes themselves postive-ish. Know the room very well before you tread anywhere else. It's just way too easy to send the wrong message. As a manager your words have a great deal of WEIGHT regardless of your intention.

standardUser 5y ago

The few times I have heard a manager joke about firing someone, my immediate though was "oh, this person is completely unqualified to be in charge of anyone and I should start looking elsewhere".

sieste 5y ago

I usually do the opposite. Sometimes when someone I manage asks me how things are going, I jokingly tell them I'm trying my best not to get fired. I find it helps break the ice, and shows them that other people are struggling with that same insecurities. Reading some of the comments on here I'm now concerned that such comments might also amplify a general latent fear of getting fired, so I'll probably stop doing this.

ickelbawd 5y ago
Yeah probably best to not make it about being fired—since your boss is ultimately their boss—makes them wonder when the axe might come for them next… That said I’m definitely a fan of some self-depreciating humor to help others relax and build rapport. Humor can be a wonderful tool really.

asamiam 5y ago

I think this falls under the general "don't threaten the relationship." Whether it's joking about firing, saying "maybe we should just get divorced", joking a child was an accident etc. When things get stressful people often reevaluate comments in their new emotional state and what might have felt like a joke could become a threat. Subsequently instead of working to solve a problem for a situation they trust, people often work for self preservation.

jldugger 5y ago

At my last job there was a chatbot with a !fire command. That would track how many times it had been used on a given subject. 'chatbot fires printers for the fifth time!' It was incredibly toxic when applied to humans.

notdonspaulding 5y ago

Along the lines of this advice, I've been trying to find an article I read at some point in the past with advice that sounded like: > On day 1 of a new hire's employment, I explain what it will look like if and when I come to fire them. I explain that I will be negotiating their severance and here's how it will look... Does this ring any bells with anyone? I have this article lodged in my brain as being a great conversation to have with someone on day 1, but have since never been able to find the article again.

_moof 5y ago

Oof, I feel this. I've made so many dumb mistakes in management gigs, which is normal and just a part of learning any skill, but it's so much more painful when your dumb mistakes are with other people and their jobs. It's not like leaving out a comma where you just feel silly for a second, recompile, and immediately triumph and move on. No, now your mistakes hurt other people's feelings, create awkwardness, diminish morale... although the upside is that if you can deal with your mistakes skillfully, you (somewhat paradoxically) end up strengthening relationships and your team. But jeez, becoming a new manager is an act of serious courage and humility. (And if it doesn't feel that way at first, it will soon whether you like it or not!)

AdrianB1 5y ago

As a manager you are never allowed to forget that: - different cultures have different meanings for the same things, so you will be misinterpreted lots of times - most people have no sense of humor, so joking with them is a waste of time - anything you way will eventually be used against you It is a very sad world.

emodendroket 5y ago

I always laugh when I remember my old manager calling a meeting where he talked about our product not being profitable and us needing to pull out all the stops to fix that, including reducing the headcount, and then being shocked and angry that someone had started a "rumor" about layoffs. He had meant through attrition, but it was a misinterpretation that I think should have been predictable in context. If you're in a position of authority you have to be careful about what messages you send.

thewebcount 5y ago

Oh man, I had to sit through something like this one time. I was at a resort in the Pacific with my spouse. It was on a tiny island, and there were 2 restaurants that were the only places you could eat. One was a moderately priced restaurant you'd go on most nights, and the other was a very fancy restaurant that only sat 8 people at one large table, so you had to book it the day you got to the resort as it always filled up. The chef made the food right in front of you and you got to meet and interact with a few other couples at the resort. The chef was a young woman of color, and the resort manager, and older white woman who was everyone's boss was from the country that had colonized the island. The boss decided to insert herself into the dinner because some friends of hers were staying at the resort and were at the restaurant that night. She dominated the conversation the entire night, and repeatedly made jokes about firing the chef. It was incredibly awkward and made an otherwise fantastic meal horrible. We wrote a letter to the resort about how awful the experience was. I don't know what eventually became of it, but I hope it made some sort of difference.

sebastianconcpt 5y ago

I think the advice is good but too narrow. The problem is calibration of jokes. I saw managers joke in very bold ways and it was totally fine but also saw managers using humor as passive-agressive initiative of an attempt to downplay someone's work.

sempron64 5y ago

Related marriage advice: don't joke about divorce.

nceasy 5y ago

the cofounder did a joke like that to me and I must say it was one of those shit moments of being an employee. I hate everytime i need to engage with him since then.

lrvick 5y ago

One of my favorite bosses joked about everything and was totally irreverent, even on topics of firing. Everyone loved them because they did it with a candor that was always very obviously not serious it was disarming. Given the nature of the work we did was very high risk, the disarming was welcome. Being fired was nowhere near the worst case outcome if we didn't do our jobs well, so joking about anything was fair game if it helped relieve some tension. Be careful not to create environments where people have to add walking on eggshells to their already long list of difficult responsibilities.

musicale 5y ago

Isn't joking about firing people (not to mention actually firing people) one of the most common ways that managers assert and reinforce their dominance in the social status hierarchy? In most companies, managers' greatest power (besides controlling subordinates' movement, actions, privacy, and access to amenities such as light, heating/cooling, quiet environments, restrooms, etc.) is their largely unlimited power to simultaneously deprive subordinates of their livelihood, health insurance, social relationships, and social status. Ed Zitron suggests that maintaining this social dominance and control over subordinates is typically the underlying (and primary) reason why managers want employees "back in the office": https://ez.substack.com/p/the-work-from-home-future-is-destroying https://ez.substack.com/p/the-work-from-home-future-is-destr...

xtat 5y ago

Weird thing is I worked at a few places and we all used this joke on each other managers, etc and I never felt burned by it- didn't seem to bother peers either.

anotherevan 5y ago

More generally, never make jokes to colleagues about things that directly effect their income or job security.