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What does it matter? If they say they overhired, you have people in here asking why the CEO (or the board) doesn't get fired for that decision. If they say thei

• piva00 3y ago
  > So why even bother giving one? Decency? Honesty?
  • IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
    Knowning when to apply honesty is also important. If you tell an ex you left them because they are (fat?), is it honest or is it cruel ?
    • Arainach 3y ago
      Awful analogy. It's far more cruel to tell someone a layoff for non-performance reasons is their fault. It's particularly obnoxious with theoretically prestigious companies that "hire the smartest people" and then blatantly lie to us as if everyone inside and outside the company doesn't see right through them.
    • otherme123 3y ago
      In fact, they are saying that the relationship ends because she's fat, while the most probable cause is that they have more girlfriends than they can handle. I.e. they do the cruel thing when the honesty would be better.
      • occamsrazorwit 3y ago
        To continue the dubious analogy, having too many girlfriends isn't a sufficient cause by itself. There's a metric used to determine which girlfriend is dumped, and that's the real reason that specific relationship ends.
    • piva00 3y ago
      > Knowning when to apply honesty is also important. > If you tell an ex you left them because they are (fat?), is it honest or is it cruel ? It's cruel, just like it's cruel to lie to someone they are being fired due to "performance" when the real reason is just a blanket layoff scheme over a whole department. What would be more cruel: a lie "you are not performing so we are letting you go" vs the truth "the company has decided to layoff some business units we don't believe will be profitable in the foreseeable future". I believe it's a pretty good case for applying honesty instead of being another lying corporation.
  • yencabulator 3y ago
    What makes you think either of those mean anything to a corporation? Legal counsel and HR will explicitly avoid stating such things.
• aestetix 3y ago
  It matters because this is about trust, transparency, and honesty. If you were in her position, would you want to know if your termination was due to something you did badly, or because of a general company policy? I agree that being honest is not going to make everyone happy, but I don't understand why they can't at least give solid reasons.
  • pc86 3y ago
    > I don't understand why they can't at least give solid reasons Probably the liability around someone saying something not accurate, or something that could be construed as approaching, even indirectly, some protected class. They've already laid her off, she's not going to be singing their praises under any circumstances, anything they do at this point just increases their liability. In a perfect world I'd love for people laid off or fired to get detailed reasons why so they can adjust course if necessary or at least know that it was nothing they did and just budgetary, but there are too many people who will want to argue the point in court that the company not only has no incentive to do it, they're heavily incentivized not to.
    • aestetix 3y ago
      It sounds like the issue here is actually lawsuit culture. It's scary how laws that were designed to improve the lives of the working class actually wound up making life a lot worse.
      • yencabulator 3y ago
        I think you misspelled "gain votes" there. Laws that were designed to gain votes.
  • satisfice 3y ago
    this is not about any of those things this is about business and legalities about business
• infotainment 3y ago
  > If they say they overhired, you have people in here asking why the CEO (or the board) doesn't get fired for that decision As they should!
• el_benhameen 3y ago
  In the case of the video, the implication is that she was told she’s being fired for performance, which seems unreasonable as she appears to have just finished training. I think the days of HR giving references with any information are long gone, but I still wouldn’t want to chance having something in my “file” about being let go for performance if that wasn’t the real reason. That and it’s just common decency to not blame someone for their firing when they don’t deserve the blame, regardless of how it’ll play on some message board somewhere.
  • andsoitis 3y ago
    > having something in my “file” about being I would check your assumption here. What is this "my file" you imagine exists. What is it? Who is the custodian? Is there just one copy, if not, how are they kept in sync, etc.?
    • superb_dev 3y ago
      Presumably HR would keep some record of you after you're fired?
    • jachee 3y ago
      It’s in quotes because it’s not a literal file, per se. But HR will keep records of termination reasons. So, if a prospective employer contacts Cloudflare and asks why she was terminated and Cloudflare says “performance” when that’s not actually the case, it’s detrimental to the potential employer’s perception of her.
      • wdb 3y ago
        Never heard that a company tell the reason got dismissed. they will confirm they worked there. saying performance or similar things can cause legal issues. At least in Europe. in some countries even code sentences are not allowed.
        • robjan 3y ago
          Usually companies now ask the question "would this candidate be eligible for rehire in the future". If someone is fired for performance or other cause, the answer is more likely to be "no". This works around potential libel issues associated with giving specific reasons.