6 ms·

Preparing To Fire an Executive

104 points by jayliew 15y ago

staunch 15y ago
All this makes me think is that I never want to run a really large head-count organization. The kinds of thinking and "work" he had to do at Opsware are exhausting just to read about.
civilian 15y ago
My takeaway: Executives get fired, but N*&$!s get capped & bagged.
- 9999 15y ago
  The contrast between his super-PC usage of she/her instead of he/him (or even they/them) and the Dre song makes for some lovely cognitive dissonance.
  - temphn 15y ago
    This particular contradiction runs deep. The last bastion of unapologetic masculinity today is gangsta rap. A CEO is nothing if not competitive, a traditionally masculine trait. Yet a modern CEO must also be uber-PC. Thus the contrast.
    - zackattack 15y ago
      my email is zackster@gmail.com - feel free to contact any time
  - roel_v 15y ago
    It's funny in a screwed up way because he uses the 'she' form for a person to be fired. So in a weird PC way I thought 'man, why is this guy harping on this poor woman being fired - as if guys can't screw up and be fired'. So to be really PC he needs to step it up a notch - prefer to 'he/him' when somebody is doing something wrong, and 'she/her' when doing something good :)
- cpr 15y ago
  His attempt to be PC and make the firee a "she" backfired--it sounds sexist to have the failing executive be female. Give it up, folks--just use "he" as a generic pronoun. No one thinks it means you think one gender is better than the other.
  - orangecat 15y ago
    There's nothing wrong with "they" as third person singular.
    - Willwhatley 15y ago
      Except that it sounds terrible if one was brought up according to a different light. English already has a third person personal singular.
      - Todd 15y ago
        Many languages have unexpected pronoun usage that newcomers must get used to. Many Indo-European languages have a formal 'you', for example. With French, it's the same as 2nd person plural (you). With German, it's the same as 3rd person plural (they). French also has the odd case of 'on' which, although it's a 3rd person singular (e.g., one goes = on va), is very frequently used as 1st person plural (we go = nous allons). Where there is a missing component in language, there will be a cognitive need to fill it somehow. It can be done with formations like y'all or with more acceptable usage such as they. I think we English speakers worry too much about this sort of thing.
        Luyt 15y ago
        In Dutch, there is 'jij' (colloquial 'you') and 'u' (formal 'you'). There is a trend to replace both 'jij' and 'u' by 'joe' (pronounced as the english 'you'). This eliminates the dilemma whether to address someone formally or not. The word 'joe' was popularized by Wim T. Schippers both on the radio and in his plays and TV series.
      - gruseom 15y ago
d2 15y ago
This is right on - particularly the part about you screwing up the hiring process, not the exec being at fault. I made assumptions about a level of professionalism that I never assessed properly. I went through this a year+ ago and I hired the wrong guy. Unfortunately he took the legal language in emails during the termination process personally - another symptom of the root cause for which he was fired.
- lsc 15y ago
  >This is right on - particularly the part about you screwing up the hiring process really, I think this attitude is the best way to look at it when you have to fire anyone, executive or not.
  - davidw 15y ago
    Yes and no - it's a case of asymmetric information, and while you can do your best to obtain more information (hiring process), you can't know exactly how a person will perform until they're actually there.
    - lsc 15y ago
      I said it was the best attitude for an employer to take, not that it was 100% the employers fault.
tedsuo 15y ago
I'm not sure why the exec is less at fault than another class of employee. If you hire a programmer or designer who can't deliver, how is that any different?
- JamesBlair 15y ago
  Because the executive's performance depends on the team he's working with. If there's mismatch between the executive's leadership and the team, that will result in difficulties regardless of his skill.
  - mkramlich 15y ago
    so if his performance is bad, it's the fault of his team. but if his performance is good, it justifies the huge bucks they make. i sense a discrepancy. in my world, with greater reward should come greater responsibility.
    - JamesBlair 15y ago
      Severance packages are often quite generous too. :-) But the important point is that it's not about blaming people for things they can't be expected to control. Firing incompetent executives is, as the article pointed out, hopefully rare. But if they can't meet performance goals they should still be let go: if a company was in this position with regard to firing their employees, I'd be equally concerned if they were disparaging.
  - civilian 15y ago
    I totally agree, but how do you find a match between an executive & the team during the interview process?
    - harryh 15y ago
      Conveniently, Ben has also written on how to hire executives: http://bhorowitz.com/2010/10/14/hiring-executives-if-you%E2%80%99ve-never-done-the-job-how-do-you-hire-somebody-good/ http://bhorowitz.com/2010/10/14/hiring-executives-if-you%E2%...
JamesBlair 15y ago
Why is the rationale for preserving the reputation of the fired executive first making yourself look good and only incidentally that it's the fair and decent thing to do. The fair and decent thing to do should be reason #1.
mathattack 15y ago
Very interesting. One point on firing senior executives - in many cases it's the first time the executive ever failed. Silicon Valley is perhaps the only exception, but this is precisely because exits are handled well. Being good at separations increases a company's ability to take risks on hiring.
ethank 15y ago
At some point when the statute ends I have to do a post about firing yourself. I did that in January (in a sense).
roel_v 15y ago
Very informative post. I (and I suspect many others reading this) regularly have to fire executives at multinationals with several thousands in staff and 100's of millions in turnover. I'm going to bookmark this and the next time I need to, I'll be sure to re-read this blog post - because every time I do something like this, I rely on blog posts to instruct me on how to do it. (yes yes I'm a snarky asshole - I liked to read it too, I guess in the same way women like to read in Cosmopolitan about cocktail parties where super models wear designer dresses and party all night every night drinking 1000$ / bottle champagne and have affairs with billionaires, but really, when you look at it critically, what is the value of this to anyone but the top 1/1000th percentile of the population?)
- count 15y ago
  Where does he imply that this is only for huge companies? Even small start-ups have executives, staff, and a board. The lesson is the same no matter the scale. If you hire a CTO and then have to fire that CTO, it's most likely your screw up.

104 points by jayliew 15y ago

All this makes me think is that I never want to run a really large head-count organization. The kinds of thinking and "work" he had to do at Opsware are exhausting just to read about.

civilian 15y ago

My takeaway: Executives get fired, but N*&$!s get capped & bagged.

9999 15y ago
The contrast between his super-PC usage of she/her instead of he/him (or even they/them) and the Dre song makes for some lovely cognitive dissonance.
- temphn 15y ago
  This particular contradiction runs deep. The last bastion of unapologetic masculinity today is gangsta rap. A CEO is nothing if not competitive, a traditionally masculine trait. Yet a modern CEO must also be uber-PC. Thus the contrast.
  - zackattack 15y ago
    my email is zackster@gmail.com - feel free to contact any time
- roel_v 15y ago
  It's funny in a screwed up way because he uses the 'she' form for a person to be fired. So in a weird PC way I thought 'man, why is this guy harping on this poor woman being fired - as if guys can't screw up and be fired'. So to be really PC he needs to step it up a notch - prefer to 'he/him' when somebody is doing something wrong, and 'she/her' when doing something good :)
cpr 15y ago
His attempt to be PC and make the firee a "she" backfired--it sounds sexist to have the failing executive be female. Give it up, folks--just use "he" as a generic pronoun. No one thinks it means you think one gender is better than the other.
- orangecat 15y ago
  There's nothing wrong with "they" as third person singular.
  - Willwhatley 15y ago
    Except that it sounds terrible if one was brought up according to a different light. English already has a third person personal singular.
    - Todd 15y ago
      Many languages have unexpected pronoun usage that newcomers must get used to. Many Indo-European languages have a formal 'you', for example. With French, it's the same as 2nd person plural (you). With German, it's the same as 3rd person plural (they). French also has the odd case of 'on' which, although it's a 3rd person singular (e.g., one goes = on va), is very frequently used as 1st person plural (we go = nous allons). Where there is a missing component in language, there will be a cognitive need to fill it somehow. It can be done with formations like y'all or with more acceptable usage such as they. I think we English speakers worry too much about this sort of thing.
      - Luyt 15y ago
        In Dutch, there is 'jij' (colloquial 'you') and 'u' (formal 'you'). There is a trend to replace both 'jij' and 'u' by 'joe' (pronounced as the english 'you'). This eliminates the dilemma whether to address someone formally or not. The word 'joe' was popularized by Wim T. Schippers both on the radio and in his plays and TV series.
    - gruseom 15y ago

d2 15y ago

This is right on - particularly the part about you screwing up the hiring process, not the exec being at fault. I made assumptions about a level of professionalism that I never assessed properly. I went through this a year+ ago and I hired the wrong guy. Unfortunately he took the legal language in emails during the termination process personally - another symptom of the root cause for which he was fired.

lsc 15y ago
>This is right on - particularly the part about you screwing up the hiring process really, I think this attitude is the best way to look at it when you have to fire anyone, executive or not.
- davidw 15y ago
  Yes and no - it's a case of asymmetric information, and while you can do your best to obtain more information (hiring process), you can't know exactly how a person will perform until they're actually there.
  - lsc 15y ago
    I said it was the best attitude for an employer to take, not that it was 100% the employers fault.

tedsuo 15y ago

I'm not sure why the exec is less at fault than another class of employee. If you hire a programmer or designer who can't deliver, how is that any different?

JamesBlair 15y ago
Because the executive's performance depends on the team he's working with. If there's mismatch between the executive's leadership and the team, that will result in difficulties regardless of his skill.
- mkramlich 15y ago
  so if his performance is bad, it's the fault of his team. but if his performance is good, it justifies the huge bucks they make. i sense a discrepancy. in my world, with greater reward should come greater responsibility.
  - JamesBlair 15y ago
    Severance packages are often quite generous too. :-) But the important point is that it's not about blaming people for things they can't be expected to control. Firing incompetent executives is, as the article pointed out, hopefully rare. But if they can't meet performance goals they should still be let go: if a company was in this position with regard to firing their employees, I'd be equally concerned if they were disparaging.
- civilian 15y ago
  I totally agree, but how do you find a match between an executive & the team during the interview process?
  - harryh 15y ago
    Conveniently, Ben has also written on how to hire executives: http://bhorowitz.com/2010/10/14/hiring-executives-if-you%E2%80%99ve-never-done-the-job-how-do-you-hire-somebody-good/ http://bhorowitz.com/2010/10/14/hiring-executives-if-you%E2%...

JamesBlair 15y ago

Why is the rationale for preserving the reputation of the fired executive first making yourself look good and only incidentally that it's the fair and decent thing to do. The fair and decent thing to do should be reason #1.

mathattack 15y ago

Very interesting. One point on firing senior executives - in many cases it's the first time the executive ever failed. Silicon Valley is perhaps the only exception, but this is precisely because exits are handled well. Being good at separations increases a company's ability to take risks on hiring.

ethank 15y ago

At some point when the statute ends I have to do a post about firing yourself. I did that in January (in a sense).

roel_v 15y ago

Very informative post. I (and I suspect many others reading this) regularly have to fire executives at multinationals with several thousands in staff and 100's of millions in turnover. I'm going to bookmark this and the next time I need to, I'll be sure to re-read this blog post - because every time I do something like this, I rely on blog posts to instruct me on how to do it. (yes yes I'm a snarky asshole - I liked to read it too, I guess in the same way women like to read in Cosmopolitan about cocktail parties where super models wear designer dresses and party all night every night drinking 1000$ / bottle champagne and have affairs with billionaires, but really, when you look at it critically, what is the value of this to anyone but the top 1/1000th percentile of the population?)

count 15y ago
Where does he imply that this is only for huge companies? Even small start-ups have executives, staff, and a board. The lesson is the same no matter the scale. If you hire a CTO and then have to fire that CTO, it's most likely your screw up.