4 ms·

This isn't about how to handle difficult employees, it's about how to polity guide them out the door. And once quit/fired you can tell yourself they were a lost

This isn't about how to handle difficult employees, it's about how to polity guide them out the door. And once quit/fired you can tell yourself they were a lost cause. Are there any good resources out there about how to actually mange teams, rather than the HR-coded ones? All I really see is either surface level, or buried in a doublespeak I'm not privy into.

debacle 2y ago
1. Treat people like adults. 2. Set clear expectations. 3. Train aggressively, and prune judiciously. #1 is very complex. You could probably write a whole book just on responsibility and accountability. In most (even very small ones) companies, it seems like personnel problems eventually become organizational problems and eventually technology problems.
habitue 2y ago
Uh, like managing people who are difficult out is part of managing a team. A company has no obligation to keep people on who are difficult.
- t43562 2y ago
  It often has practical problems with tossing people out like: I'm not going to get the money to be able to replace them. OR they know a hell of a lot and it will be years or never before someone can solve the brutal problems they can in a few minutes. Then you have the issue that the new people you hire might be worse AND a huge pain to train. Or you spend 3 months getting them to know your system and then they leave for another job. At some point people know if you don't care about them. If you cannot care about them why would they "follow you into battle?"
  - btasker 2y ago
    > At some point people know if you don't care about them. If you cannot care about them why would they "follow you into battle?" That's true, but it also works both ways. If the "problem" person is impacting others on your team, you owe it to them to address rather than ignore the issue. After all, why would _they_ follow you into the trenches if you've shown that you don't care enough to deal with an issue that they're saying is making their lives difficult. (Good) management is about striking a balance - between the business's needs (otherwise you're all out of a job anyway) and the welfare of everyone on the team (which IMO, should always benefit from a bit of priority over the other). Sometimes that does mean making a hard decision about someone who's very technically capable, but damages the wellbeing or efficiency of the rest of the team. As an extreme example - I once worked with someone who was a pretty good engineer and knew where a lot of the bodies were buried in the codebase (i.e. keeping him around would be beneficial), but one day he started regularly talking, quite inappropriately about schoolgirls in the team skype group (and even defended doing so). Good engineer or not, sometimes things have to change. All of that being said, I think the article is too hardline, at least if those are intended to be the opening gambit. There's a ton of people engineering that you can do before you need to reach the point of making it sound like a PIP.
    - t43562 2y ago
      I had to deal with a horrendous skilled person who made every meeting hell for those concerned. It's hard to fire people where I am but in the end we managed it. I am delighted to handle all the problems this caused because they are far less than the daily massive row. So I'm no stranger to the whole thing. There has to be something coming back from the team members and if they essentially don't give a stuff and treat the rest of the team like dirt then I don't care how great they are - I don't want them.
- croes 2y ago
  Difficult according to whom? Sometimes difficult is just a euphemism for not being a mindless drone that always does what it's told.
  - ljm 2y ago
    Sometimes it's a skill issue too, and it becomes not-difficult when you as a manager gain the necessary experience.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- finnthehuman 2y ago
  Yeah, just fire them outright. Very little of this article reads like an honest or grounded attempt at reconciliation-or-fire conversations.
tayo42 2y ago
I think it works that way because employers aren't therapists. These are all personality problems. If an employee is a problem they need to sort it out them selves
- croes 2y ago
  Sometimes the employer is the problem and just searches for a justification why they a right and the employee is wrong.

debacle 2y ago

1. Treat people like adults. 2. Set clear expectations. 3. Train aggressively, and prune judiciously. #1 is very complex. You could probably write a whole book just on responsibility and accountability. In most (even very small ones) companies, it seems like personnel problems eventually become organizational problems and eventually technology problems.

habitue 2y ago

Uh, like managing people who are difficult out is part of managing a team. A company has no obligation to keep people on who are difficult.

t43562 2y ago
It often has practical problems with tossing people out like: I'm not going to get the money to be able to replace them. OR they know a hell of a lot and it will be years or never before someone can solve the brutal problems they can in a few minutes. Then you have the issue that the new people you hire might be worse AND a huge pain to train. Or you spend 3 months getting them to know your system and then they leave for another job. At some point people know if you don't care about them. If you cannot care about them why would they "follow you into battle?"
- btasker 2y ago
  > At some point people know if you don't care about them. If you cannot care about them why would they "follow you into battle?" That's true, but it also works both ways. If the "problem" person is impacting others on your team, you owe it to them to address rather than ignore the issue. After all, why would _they_ follow you into the trenches if you've shown that you don't care enough to deal with an issue that they're saying is making their lives difficult. (Good) management is about striking a balance - between the business's needs (otherwise you're all out of a job anyway) and the welfare of everyone on the team (which IMO, should always benefit from a bit of priority over the other). Sometimes that does mean making a hard decision about someone who's very technically capable, but damages the wellbeing or efficiency of the rest of the team. As an extreme example - I once worked with someone who was a pretty good engineer and knew where a lot of the bodies were buried in the codebase (i.e. keeping him around would be beneficial), but one day he started regularly talking, quite inappropriately about schoolgirls in the team skype group (and even defended doing so). Good engineer or not, sometimes things have to change. All of that being said, I think the article is too hardline, at least if those are intended to be the opening gambit. There's a ton of people engineering that you can do before you need to reach the point of making it sound like a PIP.
  - t43562 2y ago
    I had to deal with a horrendous skilled person who made every meeting hell for those concerned. It's hard to fire people where I am but in the end we managed it. I am delighted to handle all the problems this caused because they are far less than the daily massive row. So I'm no stranger to the whole thing. There has to be something coming back from the team members and if they essentially don't give a stuff and treat the rest of the team like dirt then I don't care how great they are - I don't want them.
croes 2y ago
Difficult according to whom? Sometimes difficult is just a euphemism for not being a mindless drone that always does what it's told.
- ljm 2y ago
  Sometimes it's a skill issue too, and it becomes not-difficult when you as a manager gain the necessary experience.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
finnthehuman 2y ago
Yeah, just fire them outright. Very little of this article reads like an honest or grounded attempt at reconciliation-or-fire conversations.

tayo42 2y ago

I think it works that way because employers aren't therapists. These are all personality problems. If an employee is a problem they need to sort it out them selves

croes 2y ago
Sometimes the employer is the problem and just searches for a justification why they a right and the employee is wrong.