4 ms·

I don’t understand how this is an issue that needs anxiety. Fire them. I’ve been this person early in my life, and deserved to be fired. Incompetent but nice

by milar 4y ago

I don’t understand how this is an issue that needs anxiety. Fire them. I’ve been this person early in my life, and deserved to be fired. Incompetent but nice is still, literally, incompetent. Incompetent people get dismissed.

manfre 4y ago
> I don’t understand how this is an issue that needs anxiety. Empathy. Some people have more of it than others.
- milar 4y ago
  Sure. But how does worry help you or the person who is going to get fired? The manager goes through months of stress avoiding the thing they need to do (bad for their health), while the bad fit engineer gets strung along.
  - js8 4y ago
    Empathy is not worry. It's actually the other way around - you seem to worry that underperforming person is going to bring down the business, empathic people do not care.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > how does worry help you or the person who is going to get fired? That is the point. By the point you know you need to fire them it is easy. Getting to that point is the hard bit. Maybe they just need a different style of assignments? Maybe there are interpersonal issues in the team you as the manager should address. Maybe they have a health issue they can address with time. Maybe they are burnt out and you should reconsider how you are running your team, or even worse how the whole company. Depending on the situation you have many more things you can do to address an underperforming employee than just firing or not firing them. Whether or not it will be successful depends on multiple factors some in the control of the manager, some not so. A sane manager should not stress or worry over the ones they can't control, but easy to imagine them stressing over the ones they can.
- flappyeagle 4y ago
  Often it’s extremely misguided. It’s better for people to work at a job they don’t struggle with. Fire them and move on so they can too
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    If people didn't need jobs to have food and shelter you might have a point, but as it is our society is constructed such that even the time it takes to find a new job will have significant impact on most people's ability to pay for basic necessities. Maybe we should fix that? Nah, let's just treat people like expendable resources so we don't have to increase taxes on the wealth elite who never need be concerned with such things.
    - flappyeagle 4y ago
      That’s what severance is for
weinzierl 4y ago
The article has a clickbait title: It uses the word "incompetent" when it should have said "underperforming". There are may reasons an employee is not performing and the article discusses a few of them. Sometimes it is right to fire the person, sometimes another approach might be better. It's as nuanced as the reasons.
- indymike 4y ago
  This article, and the one it was written in response to are both about the scenario where someone is under-performing because they are incompetent, not capable of becoming competent and really nice and likable. What both articles missed is that in many organizations nice, incompetent people often get promoted to leadership positions and become the subject of business books and bad memes... and unfortunately go on to hire lots of other nice but incompetent people.
  - weinzierl 4y ago
    Maybe this is a language thing, but if someone underperforms because of health issues or burnout (like discussed in the article) I would not call them incompetent.
    - indymike 4y ago
      I agree with you - health and burnout aren't incompetence.
wun0ne 4y ago
Firing someone in the case of underperformance (particularly outside of the US) is rarely a straightforward process. You typically need to give the under-performing employee at least a chance to improve and meet the required standard - otherwise the hiring company will be leaving themselves open to a wrongful dismissal suit.
- jasode 4y ago
  >You typically need to give the under-performing employee at least a chance to improve and meet the required standard - otherwise the hiring company will be leaving themselves open to a wrongful dismissal suit. In the USA where most states are "at will" employment, a "PIP" (Performance Improvement Plan) or providing multiple chances for an employee to become better isn't required by law: https://www.google.com/search?q=employee+%22performance+improvement+plan%22+not+required+by+law https://www.google.com/search?q=employee+%22performance+impr... That said, some companies in some industries add a PIP as a social norm rather than a requirement of law. E.g., An underperforming programmer might be put on a PIP. However, in more cutthroat industries... a new car salesman who isn't selling the expected quota of cars or a hedge fund associate who lost several million on a bad stock pick are often fired immediately without any PIP.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    "some industries add a PIP as a social norm" I suspect they often do the PIP as legal protection, documentation they can produce later if needed. Even in an "at-will" environment, employees can sue for wrongful termination.
    - tbrake 4y ago
      I think this is broadly the case. A few companies might be genuinely invested in improving performance with such a plan but for the majority it's a way of managing someone out. Over the years I've seen over 30 devs put on PiPs. 1 survived.
- danielrpa 4y ago
  Everything you said is correct. And just to be clear, in the US it is technically very straightforward in most states and you can fire people for any (non-protected) reason or for no reason whatsoever without any notice. However, there is always a risk that people will sue the employer by claiming that they were fired for reasons other than underperformance (gender, race, religion etc). Employers in the US don't care about giving people the opportunity to improve, it's more about documenting the underperformance so there is an airtight case against the employee - nobody can claim a protected reason if the underperformance is very well documented. All of this said, and this applies to smaller companies more than bigger companies due to the risks involved, if the employer is very confident the employee won't be able to argue that they were fired due to a protected reason, in most states they can just fire them in the middle of the day with no justification: "I don't like you, out of here".
dunno7456 4y ago
> Incompetent but nice is still, literally, incompetent. Incompetent people get dismissed. Unless management is also an enabler/part of such incompetence.
danjac 4y ago
As Kaplan-Moss pointed out in the original article, "incompetent" depends on the context and circumstances, and you may be able to remedy these in order to turn an incompetent employee into a competent one. To take a very straw-mannish example, suppose you hired a Python developer but due to some admin fuckup they were added to the Android team. The easiest remedy is to move them to the Python team. The second easiest is to ask if they are interested in learning Android, and if so give them the time and support to get up to speed. The worst option here is to just fire them: you lose a potentially valuable employee you spent time and money bringing on board, possibly damage their career as a result, and hurt team morale overall.
michaelrpeskin 4y ago
It’s not that easy in real life. A couple of years ago we had a guy who was really nice, someone who you really connect with when you first meet him. But he never produced any working code. We have a set of “onboarding tasks” that are well defined and have definite definitions of “done”. He didn’t complete them. His team lead gave him a series of “easy” bugs (think, change this error message to that error message). He couldn’t figure that out. He required lots of pair programming and oversight. We tried to do a PIP and gave him unlimited access to our top devs for help. We really tried everything. We should have cut it off much earlier than we did, but he was just so nice. It was hard. Near the end when we were justifying fire him, we went through all his records. It turned out that I did his technical interview and failed him (I had forgotten by the time I got involved with his PIP) But the rest of staff loved him and thought he has lots of potential. He didn’t. We really tried. It was gut wrenching firing him. He was a real person who we all liked. But he was just too much of a drag and we are a small company and don’t have the buffer to pay people to do negative work.

by milar 4y ago

manfre 4y ago

> I don’t understand how this is an issue that needs anxiety. Empathy. Some people have more of it than others.

milar 4y ago
Sure. But how does worry help you or the person who is going to get fired? The manager goes through months of stress avoiding the thing they need to do (bad for their health), while the bad fit engineer gets strung along.
- js8 4y ago
  Empathy is not worry. It's actually the other way around - you seem to worry that underperforming person is going to bring down the business, empathic people do not care.
- krisoft 4y ago
  > how does worry help you or the person who is going to get fired? That is the point. By the point you know you need to fire them it is easy. Getting to that point is the hard bit. Maybe they just need a different style of assignments? Maybe there are interpersonal issues in the team you as the manager should address. Maybe they have a health issue they can address with time. Maybe they are burnt out and you should reconsider how you are running your team, or even worse how the whole company. Depending on the situation you have many more things you can do to address an underperforming employee than just firing or not firing them. Whether or not it will be successful depends on multiple factors some in the control of the manager, some not so. A sane manager should not stress or worry over the ones they can't control, but easy to imagine them stressing over the ones they can.
flappyeagle 4y ago
Often it’s extremely misguided. It’s better for people to work at a job they don’t struggle with. Fire them and move on so they can too
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  If people didn't need jobs to have food and shelter you might have a point, but as it is our society is constructed such that even the time it takes to find a new job will have significant impact on most people's ability to pay for basic necessities. Maybe we should fix that? Nah, let's just treat people like expendable resources so we don't have to increase taxes on the wealth elite who never need be concerned with such things.
  - flappyeagle 4y ago
    That’s what severance is for

weinzierl 4y ago

The article has a clickbait title: It uses the word "incompetent" when it should have said "underperforming". There are may reasons an employee is not performing and the article discusses a few of them. Sometimes it is right to fire the person, sometimes another approach might be better. It's as nuanced as the reasons.

indymike 4y ago
This article, and the one it was written in response to are both about the scenario where someone is under-performing because they are incompetent, not capable of becoming competent and really nice and likable. What both articles missed is that in many organizations nice, incompetent people often get promoted to leadership positions and become the subject of business books and bad memes... and unfortunately go on to hire lots of other nice but incompetent people.
- weinzierl 4y ago
  Maybe this is a language thing, but if someone underperforms because of health issues or burnout (like discussed in the article) I would not call them incompetent.
  - indymike 4y ago
    I agree with you - health and burnout aren't incompetence.

wun0ne 4y ago

Firing someone in the case of underperformance (particularly outside of the US) is rarely a straightforward process. You typically need to give the under-performing employee at least a chance to improve and meet the required standard - otherwise the hiring company will be leaving themselves open to a wrongful dismissal suit.

jasode 4y ago
>You typically need to give the under-performing employee at least a chance to improve and meet the required standard - otherwise the hiring company will be leaving themselves open to a wrongful dismissal suit. In the USA where most states are "at will" employment, a "PIP" (Performance Improvement Plan) or providing multiple chances for an employee to become better isn't required by law: https://www.google.com/search?q=employee+%22performance+improvement+plan%22+not+required+by+law https://www.google.com/search?q=employee+%22performance+impr... That said, some companies in some industries add a PIP as a social norm rather than a requirement of law. E.g., An underperforming programmer might be put on a PIP. However, in more cutthroat industries... a new car salesman who isn't selling the expected quota of cars or a hedge fund associate who lost several million on a bad stock pick are often fired immediately without any PIP.
- tyingq 4y ago
  "some industries add a PIP as a social norm" I suspect they often do the PIP as legal protection, documentation they can produce later if needed. Even in an "at-will" environment, employees can sue for wrongful termination.
  - tbrake 4y ago
    I think this is broadly the case. A few companies might be genuinely invested in improving performance with such a plan but for the majority it's a way of managing someone out. Over the years I've seen over 30 devs put on PiPs. 1 survived.
danielrpa 4y ago
Everything you said is correct. And just to be clear, in the US it is technically very straightforward in most states and you can fire people for any (non-protected) reason or for no reason whatsoever without any notice. However, there is always a risk that people will sue the employer by claiming that they were fired for reasons other than underperformance (gender, race, religion etc). Employers in the US don't care about giving people the opportunity to improve, it's more about documenting the underperformance so there is an airtight case against the employee - nobody can claim a protected reason if the underperformance is very well documented. All of this said, and this applies to smaller companies more than bigger companies due to the risks involved, if the employer is very confident the employee won't be able to argue that they were fired due to a protected reason, in most states they can just fire them in the middle of the day with no justification: "I don't like you, out of here".

dunno7456 4y ago

> Incompetent but nice is still, literally, incompetent. Incompetent people get dismissed. Unless management is also an enabler/part of such incompetence.

danjac 4y ago

As Kaplan-Moss pointed out in the original article, "incompetent" depends on the context and circumstances, and you may be able to remedy these in order to turn an incompetent employee into a competent one. To take a very straw-mannish example, suppose you hired a Python developer but due to some admin fuckup they were added to the Android team. The easiest remedy is to move them to the Python team. The second easiest is to ask if they are interested in learning Android, and if so give them the time and support to get up to speed. The worst option here is to just fire them: you lose a potentially valuable employee you spent time and money bringing on board, possibly damage their career as a result, and hurt team morale overall.

michaelrpeskin 4y ago

It’s not that easy in real life. A couple of years ago we had a guy who was really nice, someone who you really connect with when you first meet him. But he never produced any working code. We have a set of “onboarding tasks” that are well defined and have definite definitions of “done”. He didn’t complete them. His team lead gave him a series of “easy” bugs (think, change this error message to that error message). He couldn’t figure that out. He required lots of pair programming and oversight. We tried to do a PIP and gave him unlimited access to our top devs for help. We really tried everything. We should have cut it off much earlier than we did, but he was just so nice. It was hard. Near the end when we were justifying fire him, we went through all his records. It turned out that I did his technical interview and failed him (I had forgotten by the time I got involved with his PIP) But the rest of staff loved him and thought he has lots of potential. He didn’t. We really tried. It was gut wrenching firing him. He was a real person who we all liked. But he was just too much of a drag and we are a small company and don’t have the buffer to pay people to do negative work.