19 ms·

Firing and being fired

• YuriNiyazov 13y ago
  To paraphrase Hanns Johst, "whenever I hear 'culture fit', I remove the safety from my Browning." Whenever I hear that someone has been fired due to culture fit issues, when I really try to question the motivations behind it, it almost always comes down to a politically correct version of "we didn't like hanging out with him/her". It is such BS.
  • Swizec 13y ago
    It could also be that they were simply difficult to work with. Not because they were lazy or incompetent, but just because their style didn't fit with the team. For instance, somebody who is only productive in absolute silence and prefers working from 6am to 2pm, will have a very difficult time working with somebody who needs to listen to heavy metal at full blast and likes working from 1pm to 9pm. Especially if they have to work on the same team and need to closely collaborate to get their work done.
    • YuriNiyazov 13y ago
      So then which one gets fired?
      • Swizec 13y ago
        Depends. Which one fits better with the rest of the company? Is either of them so good you are willing to make everyone else put up with them?
    • lmartel 13y ago
      Buy the metal guy some headphones, and schedule scrum meetings at 1:30pm. Easy!
  • aegiso 13y ago
    > it almost always comes down to a politically correct version of "we didn't like hanging out with him/her" Startups run on morale. This is a pretty important feature of a startup employee. Even if that's what "culture fit" means that doesn't invalidate it as a reason to fire.
    • greenyoda 13y ago
      Startups live or die based on their ability to quickly deliver product, and morale alone won't get your product delivered. An employee's ability to deliver results is more important than their desire to have a beer with his coworkers. I'd much sooner hire someone with competence and experience than someone who was fun to work with.
  • gruseom 13y ago
    I don't think it's BS at all. There's no objectively correct way to build software, or a team, or a company. Personal inclination and temperament play a large role; people can be more or less compatible in those respects, and when they're less compatible and it's making the work worse, that's a poor fit.
    • YuriNiyazov 13y ago
      Yes, there is. It's called "professionalism".
      • deleted 13y ago
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  • ardit33 13y ago
    There are times that people don't get along well and something must be done. Jelling together is very important to performance of the team in the long run. No matter how strong team members are individually, if they don't get along their output will never be great. The product will suffer the results. A bit of team members competitiveness is ok, and perhaps good. But when it ends up divulging into fighting, back stabbing and lack of communication, the atmosphere turns toxic, and it hampers the whole team. Also, when you have engineers trying to user work time to play with their favorite framework/tool/whatever else that might not actually help other team members to get their stuff done. (usually a trait of more junior devs). But this is easily fixable. People issue are harder to fix. Few things to do: 1. Set up straight rules, and expectations for the people that are having problem fitting in. 2. Allow them to express their point of view, but also let them know that what the team expects of them. Try to see if you can accommodate their requests. Often they are ways/desires to do something in a different way, which might not be compatible with company's way of doing things. Sometimes you can learn from it, sometimes the employee's request and point of view are unrealistic or just don't fit with the company's goal. 3. Move them to a different team or setting, and see if they get along/fit better with different team dynamics. 4. Firing them is a last resort only, if nothing else works. If you let go somebody too quickly it sends a bad message to the rest of the team as well (the company looks too cut-throat). Also letting people not getting along well for too long hampers the productivity of everybody else.
  • dxhdr 13y ago
    I agree that often "culture fit" is intended to mean "we didn't like hanging out with him/her," and yes this is complete nonsense. However I do think the phrase is valid. Culture fit encompasses all of the intangibles outside of skill and experience. Team cohesion is a very real concept and not everyone works harmoniously together. Especially in startups and small companies, one overly "negative" influence (however that's defined for your particular team) can bring down morale and productivity across the board.
  • enneff 13y ago
    "We didn't like hanging out with them," is a perfectly valid reason to get rid of someone. You spend the majority of your life at work. As an employer it is your prerogative to employ people you want to be around. It's nobody's right to be employed at a private company. We're social creatures. When it comes to an interaction between people, do not underestimate the social angle. If it's not working on that level it's going to be hard to make it work in other ways, too.
    • YuriNiyazov 13y ago
      For a very long time, I've been a very anti-union, pro-pure-capitalism individual, but it is responses like yours that really make me think it might be time for professional unions for software engineers that defend the right of an engineer not to be fired if he's 1) capable and 2) professional, but happens to not share music tastes with his manager.
      • dxhdr 13y ago
        Just an anecdote -- I've known great engineers who slowly became angry, bitter, and defeated about their jobs, bosses and coworkers. They gradually turned sour, subtly poisoning the workplace over time. When confronted, they'd lash out with the defense of "professionalism," that they're more than capable employees who are contributing just as well as anyone. Attitude and enthusiasm nitpicks are irrelevant as long as you're writing code. In short, they deserved to keep the job and could hack it because they were still "professional." The truth is, those people had given up and became toxic to everyone around them. It was time that they move on. Anyhow, whenever I hear the defense of "professionalism" I become fairly suspicious of the circumstances.
        • YuriNiyazov 13y ago
          Actually, I think that saying "but I behave professionally" is equivalent to saying "I am a great lover" or "I am a very humble person" - making such a statement is an automatic disqualification for the quality you are claiming. The point I am trying to make is that if someone says "he/she is capable and behaves professionally, but the culture fit is just not there", that's when I become fairly suspicious of the circumstances.
  • halostatue 13y ago
    There’s one person who I’ve had as a manager before that I have told people that if this person ever comes into my management chain again, I will be leaving that company very soon (I’ve said this at more than one company). This isn’t to hold them hostage to me—I just won’t work with that person ever again. It’s also true that the wrong person can disrupt a team that was previously running smoothly. So, yes, “we didn’t like hanging out with her/him” is a perfectly legitimate reason to separate someone from a team.
  • jt2190 13y ago
    > To paraphrase Hanns Johst... You realize that you're paraphrasing a Nazi [1], right? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Johst#Role_in_Nazi_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Johst#Role_in_Nazi_German...
    • 001sky 13y ago
      Given the subject, it seems all the more authoritative. Or were you trying to make another point?
      • YuriNiyazov 13y ago
        I think his point is "you quoted a nazi. Nazis did bad things. Thus you agree with things they did. Thus you are a bad person, and your point is invalid, whatever it may be."
        • jt2190 13y ago
          No, I'm suggesting that the point could have been made without quoting Nazi doctrine. The concept that we should shoot those who hold ideas we don't agree with rather than engage in debate is exactly how we end up with horrible totalitarian regimes.
          • 001sky 13y ago
            The concept that we should shoot those who hold ideas we don't agree with rather than engage in debate And your form of argument is ad-hominem. Not exactly the moral high ground.
            • jt2190 13y ago
              My point is that he weakens his (valid) argument by quoting a nazi, and I'm suggesting he edit. You're actually accusing me of making an ad hominem attack, when in fact I'm simply trying to point out that he's opening himself up to such attacks by using the quote he's using. Clearly you must agree that he's inviting such attacks, as you seem to be jumping to his defense even before such an attack has taken place.
• lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  I wish I had learnt long ago that sometimes it's not me, it's not them, sometimes it is just us - sometimes people do not gel and all the HR friendly "no such thing as a bad student" is only so much horsecrap. if it is not working and cannot be fixed easily, quit trying and find other people to work with. in large companies which are really lots of small companies in same buildings this did not look like firing / hiring on the cv but generally was the same thing..
  • cpayne 13y ago
    I've always thought it odd that a CS Degree doesn't address this...
    • jaredsohn 13y ago
      As an undergrad, we'd often do programming projects as groups and a part of the value of such an exercise was to gain experience in working within teams. Although technically, CS degrees are for learning about computation rather than how to use a particular language or how to develop software.
• typpo 13y ago
  The last paragraph suggests that it is ideal to fire within the first two weeks or even the first day. I understand the importance of culture in a startup, but I'd be wary of a company that fires in such a short timespan. This may maximize efficiency, but hurts people who relocate families, give up other opportunities, etc. I don't see how an employee could pass interviews but be such a terrible fit that you'd fire on day one. It suggests that there is something wrong with the hiring process or the culture of the company.
  • outside1234 13y ago
    Exactly. I don't know why more companies don't do moonlighting to confirm that the person is a cultural fit first.
    • aetherson 13y ago
      Well, probably because it doesn't work. In our experience, the overwhelming majority of potential employees either have jobs already (and so don't have time to work on contact for you while you determine fit), are getting a job soon (and understandably don't want to turn down a full time position so they can contact for you and maybe get a job later (or not)), or just are offended that you won't commit to them and wasn't too try before you buy (which may be silly, but I admit I felt exactly that way when someone wanted me to do contract to hire).
      • deleted 13y ago
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• dxhdr 13y ago
  In theory firing fast is the way to go. Sometimes you really can tell within a few weeks that a person is just not working out. However, at least in my industry, doing this repeatedly will likely earn your company a bad reputation. Fired employees who don't agree with your decision will spread rumors and it'll earn you a black mark, reducing the flow of qualified candidates. The ideal situation is for both employer and employee to come to an agreement that it's not working out. An employee that understands why they are leaving and why it's a bad fit will often remain a vocal supporter. Unfortunately, in my experience, this takes time and energy far beyond the point of noticing the issue... I wish I knew of a solution!
  • eropple 13y ago
    > In theory firing fast is the way to go. Why? Why is this more "the way to go" than "hire with deliberation so you don't have to fire half your employees"? 'Cause from where I stand that hurts less people. Your "fire fast" hurts them inequitably, it hurts them much more than it does you or Your Important Business--it deprives them of their previous job, it magnifies the opportunity costs they incurred to trust you to come work for you. Firing for "culture fit" means you fucked up. Your judgment failed. It's on you and the hurt and pain you cause is your responsibility. So it strikes me that it's being a minimum-level human being to hire carefully and with deliberation to minimize the times you fuck up and the people you hurt. Because they're people, and in every case--even the asshole ones--they deserve better than to be hurt because of your poor judgment.
    • monkeyspaw 13y ago
      It seems to me that it is because the hiring process is a short-term one. The rationale for firing someone can happen over hundreds of hours. Sometimes you don't know that someone will be a bad coworker until they've been a bad coworker. Hiring processes optimize for people who are good at getting hired. Working with someone (if you're willing to prune the bad coworkers) optimizes for people who are good colleagues.
      • dxhdr 13y ago
• ballard 13y ago
  Knowing myself, I have my finger on the trapdoor button in my office. That said, it's better to find out if there's a fit based on casual (usually paid) work, contracts and eventually FTE. The goal being giving everyone an out, because the world's a small place.
• computerhead 13y ago
  I agree with some of the points in this. However, many are just a matter of poor management not selecting the right candidate. I have been on both sides of the fence many times over the past 20+ years. I can tell you if you are firing someone its because either "they" did not perform to expectations repeatedly or "they" are no longer engaged in the project or projects they are on. As for the "strange" boss behavior. That is "always going to happen" in smaller companies or companies where managers where promoted from within. This is mainly because those managers tend to have little to no experiencing managing people. Managers that have years of experience and have worked at a few companies should not have these behaviors. They tend to "curve" the ball a bit early in the process. Meaning, if they see a problem they address it immediately. It is on "you" the manager to make sure the person does a great job and succeed. If they fail, you failed to identify the person you need to complete the task at hand. On the otherhand, people who do not show for work, do not do what they are told repeatedly, are candidates that I believe fall in the "fired" category. Currently I have a boss that pretty much fits the description that would give me red-flags that maybe im not a good fit. However, I am very engaged in the projects, hitting all milestones, and well liked by all the people I interact with including my boss. Yet he is still "strange". And I believe this to be because he has no experience prior to being promoted within to be a manager.
• nilkn 13y ago
  There's an angle to this which never seems to be addressed in articles like this. If someone is fired purely for reasons of cultural fit, i.e., "we didn't like hanging out with him" as another poster puts it here, then surely the person being fired would have felt the lack of fit and would have themselves been looking for another job. It just seems to me that if an employer finds the cultural fit to be bad enough to let someone go, then surely the person being let go would find the cultural fit bad enough to be looking for another job in the background. But in the anecdotes that accompany these articles, the person is always caught completely off guard, as if they didn't see it coming at all. This poster even laments the great friendships with his coworkers which he felt were wasted upon his firing; how did he have such great friendships if his cultural fit were evidently so terrible as to be fired over it? It's for reasons like this that I always feel these articles are fishy and are leaving out important details.
  • asdfologist 13y ago
    Not everyone is self-aware.
    • RougeFemme 13y ago
      Or the individual is self-aware and feels that it is a good fit, but is unaware that others don't. Or they define cultural fit differently. Or they define it the same way but have different tolerances for a "good" fit. For example, the individual may be comfortable with say, an 80% cultural fit, while the team requires a 99% cultural fit.
      • eitally 13y ago
        Or, they're in a comfort zone and trying to fly under the radar as long as the paychecks keep coming. Not everyone is self-aware... neither is everyone passionate about putting their employer first.
    • deleted 13y ago
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  • deleted 13y ago
• j_baker 13y ago
  > From the start, it wasn’t a good cultural fit. It’s not that you aren’t a good programmer. "Not a good cultural fit" is such a passive-aggressive way to justify firing someone. It's basically saying "You can do the job, but we're stopping you from being able to do that job, and we're going to justify it to ourselves by invoking 'cultural fit'". > When you’re in a job that you’re not a good fit for, you’ll start feeling things like “nobody listens to me,” or you’ll notice that your manager doesn’t seem to appreciate your work or your work ethic. Sometimes your manager seems to be acting weird around you. Sometimes your manager asks you to change your attitude, and you do change, but it’s like they can’t see it. In such a situation, I have to question whether it's the employee who's doing something wrong or whether it's the company that's doing something wrong. I mean, if your manager gives you feedback, you take their feedback, and they don't notice the difference, it certainly sounds to me like the manager wants you to fail. I'd recommend the OP read about "Set Up to Fail syndrome": http://hbr.org/1998/03/the-set-up-to-fail-syndrome http://hbr.org/1998/03/the-set-up-to-fail-syndrome > We’ve let go of half a dozen employees and kept only as many, and in every case where we let someone go, that person has gone on to work on things that they are more passionate about and where they have excelled and been happier at. Wait, so you fire half of your staff and they're happier afterwords? Again, I have to question whether it's the employees' fault or the company's fault. If half of your staff is leaving to places where they're happier, what does that say about the company? > Sometimes you can detect a cultural mismatch within the first two months, sometimes in the first two weeks, and perhaps even on the first real day of work. It can be so easy to justify keeping the wrong employee on staff that a decision to fire an employee can drag on unresolved for months or years. It can be so easy to justify firing someone when all you have to do is throw around the words "bad cultural fit". How about giving concrete reasons why the employee wasn't working out? That way, you don't have to sit around and guess when you're actually going to "detect" a "bad cultural fit".
  • bo1024 13y ago
    I see what you're saying, but at the same time, a company (especially a small one) can't be "everything to everyone". But I agree that there should be concrete, identifiable problems (so you can check if they are fixable).
• Jare 13y ago
  Culture fit can be a perfectly valid explanation for low performance, for example: - You are cautious and methodical but the company needs to experiment and swing wildly. - You excel at focusing on a project but the position requires you to multitask frequently. - Your understanding of the company's goals has become more complete and it turns you don't find them as motivating as you expected. - You don't adapt to some general work practices re: hours, remoting, scheduling & tracking, deployment, meetings. - Personality clash with other team members due to age, personality, lifestyle or (dare I say) some demographic factor. However, 'culture fit' is a reason for low performance, but low performance should still be the reason why the employee is getting fired. If the company has not identified the problem and tried a recovery plan before actually firing the employee, that company has a serious HR problem.
  • deleted 13y ago
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  • RougeFemme 13y ago
    And if performance is the issue, why even mention cultural fit during the firing? Items 1,2 and 4 are perfectly justifiable reasons for firing without invoking the "cultural fit" clause. Why not simply stick with the observations of (non-)performance rather than offering your judgements of the cause(s) of the non-performance? I can understand quitting because of reason #3, but not being fired because of it, unless it leads to poor performance. So again, fire me for poor performance, not because you believe - rightly or wrongly - that I'm not as motivated by your goals as I used to be. As long as my performance does not taper off one iota, it should not matter to you. And yes, for some people, loss of passion for company goals would lead to decreased performance. But other people might have additional motivating factors that allow them to maintain enthusiasm and continue to perform at a high level. Why should that be a problem? Yes, I recognize that my refusal to accept that we must all have the identical motivating factors is a prime example of why I would be a poor cultural fit with many start-ups.
    • Jare 13y ago
      Exactly, that's what I mean when I say that "cultural fit" should never be considered or offered as the cause of firing. However, > Why not simply stick with the observations of (non-)performance rather than offering your judgements of the cause(s) of the non-performance? Because I expect any decent manager & company to at least try to (a) identify the reasons for low performance, and (b) discuss possible correction plans together with the employee. Actively identifying and correcting causes for low performance is in my opinion essential to maintain perspective on how and why your company works. This perspective is necessary to understand and strengthen the practices and pillars that increase your team's performance.
• neilk 13y ago
  Maybe this is a tangent, but isn't it strange that programmers accept that a competent person could, and should, be fired, if their personality doesn't gel with whoever happened to join the company earlier than they did? If we were digging ditches, how likely would it be that you would fire an above-average ditch-digger, for "cultural fit"? I mean, maybe it does happen (I've never worked that sort of job) but it seems to me there's a cleaner separation there between work product and the contents of one's mind or one's personal associations. It seems to me this is an unacknowledged downside of software jobs; despite our apparent autonomy, our minds have to be very open to being molded and harnessed.
  • jamesaguilar 13y ago
    Cultural fit tends to be code for the firee (or firer, one or the other) being an asshole. Nobody wants to work with assholes, no matter how above average they might be. I have never heard of a kind, well-liked person being fired for cultural fit issues. (Which is not to say it never happens. But it's pretty rare, I guess, that that is the actual reason a nice person is fired.)
    • ahk 13y ago
      It can also nicely hide ageism, racism, sexism, conservatism, liberalism etc. Basically any reason to not like a person.
      • ansgri 13y ago
        Whatever the people think of these -isms being bad, I am convinced that a person has a sort of right to not having to deal with people he doesn't like.
        • jamesaguilar 13y ago
          Not in the us, not as an employee of a corporation. If you don't like someone because they are in a protected class, you just have to deal with it.
    • 13y ago
• bluedino 13y ago
  I almost quit my last job because of culture fit. The other programmers were almost impossible to work with. Being new to all their products, business model, and source code, there are a lot of questions to be asked when things aren't document and done in very strange ways. The office had all the stereotypical 'bad' co-workers: the guy who turns every discussion into an hour-long argument, the guy who's never in the office, the guy who doesn't check or reply to emails, all backed by the boss who doesn't make anyone accountable. I got along with the rest of the staff great. Graphics, sales, customer service... But the developers were just un-socialble, bad at communicating, and full of bad habits. I felt so frustrated, there were a few times I almost walked out the door. It'd take me 2 days of chasing something around a product (that could have been answered by myself, a year later) to find a fix or answer a 'why?' But I stuck it out. When we hired our next developer, I was put in charge of getting him up to speed. The boss was impressed with how much information I had prepared from him and that he knew I started with 'nothing'. It may have backfired because he never really go to the point where he didn't need handholding, but at least he didn't feel as frustrated as I did for the first 6 months.
• 001sky 13y ago
  We’ve let go of half a dozen employees and kept only as many Wowzers. Firing every-other person you hire? Leaders should be ok to break big-problems down into simple ones, with the purpose of expanding the funnel of people who can be effective at solving the problems. This is the basis of leveraging resources. While it's legitimate to require a threshold tests of quality for building a team, a failure rate is this high with onboarding staff indicates something else is a problem. Imagine any sports team who mistakes talent at this percentage? While the players may get traded, the coach would be likely getting fired. There has to be more to the story? A true artist never complains about his tools.
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  • sfjailbird 13y ago
    Just the latest trend me-too startup founders are chasing, so they can be seen as 'elite' ("fire fast!"). I'm glad I don't have to work for some 20-something nerd without social graces or empathy.
• jbapple 13y ago
  I found this sentence surprising: > We’ve let go of half a dozen employees and kept only as many Of all the departures I know of from software companies, much fewer than half are firings. That is to say, the vast majority are employee-initiated.
• a3voices 13y ago
  > We’ve let go of half a dozen employees and kept only as many This sounds like the worst employer I've ever heard of. A 50% chance of being fired? There's no way I'd take an offer if I knew that statistic.
  • pcwalton 13y ago
    Yeah, this set off alarm bells for me as well. That's far too much career risk for me, and I imagine for many others. IMHO firing, especially early on, should be viewed as a failure of the recruiting process; it's expensive and time-consuming to hire an employee and then fire them compared to just saying no before an offer is made. I find it strange that the author seems to think that a high firing rate is something to be proud of.
• sans-serif 13y ago
  Maybe startups find it more difficult to fire okay-but-not-great employees just because they don't have that much resource to focus on hiring in this super competitive job market.
• danbmil99 13y ago
  "Culture Fit" is just code for "You don't seem to care about what we care about, and you don't work as hard as us, and we're not sure but you may just not be as intelligent/creative/inspired/ambitious as us, or whatever, but we think your salary and the overhead of dealing with you could be spent more productively on someone else."
  • eropple 13y ago
    "You don't seem to work as hard as us." Agree with the overall point, but I think that's important to stress. My experience with people who embrace this "fire fast" thing has generally been people who don't understand the difference between their perceptions and objective reality; likewise I don't think that all (or most) understand the ramifications of their actions upon other people.
• superails 13y ago
  > in every case where we let someone go, that person has gone on to work on things that they are more passionate about and where they have excelled and been happier at. Ok, I believed it until then. B.S. No way he knows that. Plenty of unmotivated developers out there. It is not all roses when you get fired, even for a boss that "understands your pain and wants what's best for you". The fact is- if you fire someone, you want to feel like you are doing them a favor. Well, you aren't. You likely made a hiring mistake, and your mistake as a manager is going on that person's permanent record. It may be 80-90% their fault, but the employer shares in the blame for failure. Admit you fucked up, and try to help the person if you can. Then improve your hiring and early evaluation process.
• richforrester 13y ago
  Personal anecdote; At one of my previous jobs, where I had worked for a year or so, my employer had to let me go due to cutbacks. I was the first in a wave of about 20 that were made redundant in the following two months. This equaled about half the company. It was a pretty intense 30 minutes. He called me into his office, and told me he would have to let me go; today, without severance or pay for this month. By the time I got back to my desk 5 minutes later, my work email account had already been blocked, which rendered me unable to say goodbye to about half of my colleagues, since they weren't in that day. I was stumped. After cleaning up my computer I made a round in the office, saying goodbyes and telling everyone I was made redundant. As my employer showed me into the photo-studio next door, where I wanted to say goodbyes to the rest of our team, I told him I'd be having a long hard look at my contract, because I didn't believe he could just let me go without pay. 15 minutes later, still in the photo-studio talking to my colleagues/friends, I got a phone call. My employer had looked at my contract and found that he: - had to give me a months notice; - had to pay me my severance (a month's wage); - owed me my un-used leave; - already revoked all my access to all internal/external processes. That last one meant that I didn't have to come back in again. The other employers that were made redundant, were told they had the choice of leaving that day (and get paid for a month), or finishing the month of work, all receiving their severance normally. My bet, is that it was the first time he ever had to make someone redundant. He seemed genuinely upset too. I never blamed him on a personal level, even though I disagreed with many of his executive decisions. He did end up giving me a glowing recommendation when I applied for a new job, so there's that.
• thenerdfiles 13y ago
  What do you think the rationalizations' content were in Morocco before all those Acamdemics hit the streets ?
• moron4hire 13y ago
  "Good cultural fit" is code for "white, male, and willing to take a smaller salary than they would get anywhere else, and willing to work copious overtime without pay."
• freework 13y ago
  Culture is not a function of an individual, it is a function of the group. It is not valid for someone to say "you are not a cultural fit" ("you" referring to a human being). On the other hand, it is valid for a person to say a group is not a "cultural fit". For instance a company that is full of greasy nerds who work 10 houra a day and play video games the other 14. Thats not my bag so I'm not going to work at that company because its not my culture. For the company to say to me "you're not a cultural fit", is like Germany telling me I can't visit their country because I'm not "german enough".