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> 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 just

by 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).
- j_baker 13y ago
  I don't think that should be controversial. The key is figuring out what you want from your employees and verify that you're getting that. That saves you from having to guess as to whether or not they're working out. You shouldn't have to resort to tactics like trumping up vague charges.
WalterBright 13y ago
> Wait, so you fire half of your staff and they're happier afterwords? I've known people who were laid off or fired, and of course they were pretty unhappy about it at the time. But I know some who took it as the kick-in-the-pants they needed to fix their lives for the better, and find a better job, start the business they'd been talking about, etc. A year or two later, and they'll freely agree that being laid off was good for them.
- j_baker 13y ago
  I've been there before too. In the end, I was happy to get fired because it was a crap place to work. Shortly afterwords, the guy who fired me and the rest of the founders got fired themselves. I can only assume they were happier afterwords as well.
- nilkn 13y ago
  > A year or two later, and they'll freely agree that being laid off was good for them. It strikes me as dangerous to conclude too much from this. In fact, I worry that this particular sort of statistic could be completely meaningless. People often try to find positive interpretations of events which are too painful for them to accept. It's a very powerful form of cognitive dissonance. Being fired from a job you enjoy can be a nearly traumatic hit to your perception of yourself, and it is necessary to reconstruct your self-image in some way. Most likely the person will exercise some creative freedom in this reconstruction process.
  - tkellogg 13y ago
    You won't necessarily find yourself happier - it's a choice. If you go right back and make the same mistakes at a new job, you'll hate that one too. I got fired a few months ago and it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Until then, I'd changed jobs every so often because I never liked where I worked. But when I got fired, I thought long and hard about what I needed in a job. Only after acting on some well thought-out conclusions did I find an excellent job that's absolutely a perfect fit for me. I probably wouldn't have thought that hard about my next step if I wasn't fired. So while that comment is true for me, I can't imagine that it's always true. If I was a dumbass and took a job exactly like the previous one, I'd hate that one too. I might not get fired - I might quit before they fired me. Honestly it doesn't matter which happens first. If you don't put in the introspection to find a place that fits you and vice versa, you'll hate it in no time. Figure out what you need, figure out what you can do well, and find a job that matches that.
Cyranix 13y ago
> 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? I agree with a lot of what you've said, but that bit struck me as unfair. It's natural for employees to be fired, and for those fired employees to reflect on the past in order to find jobs that make them happier -- what a depressing world it would be if that weren't the case! -- so I'm not sure I'd conclude that their personal growth necessarily implies a systemic problem in the company (especially at n=6). And it's entirely possible that someone might get fired from a different company and end up happier at the OP's company, no?
- j_baker 13y ago
  More likely is that the company simply hasn't figured out the whole hiring and firing bit yet and is making all the wrong mistakes. And that's fine, you should expect to make a few mistakes before getting it right. But that's the thing. You never read blog posts like these that are about "How I fired someone and then learned from that firing" or "How I saved someone from being fired by examining the results of my actions". Crap employers never seem to consider the possibility that they're doing something wrong. So instead they make up some narcissistic BS about "cultural fit" and use it to expel people who don't conform to their narrow ideas of what their company should be.
enraged_camel 13y ago
>>Not a good cultural fit" is such a passive-aggressive way to justify firing someone. It's a way of saying that they couldn't find anything specific to use against the employee, and are invoking the much more vague (and impossible to act upon) excuse of not being a good "cultural fit." Think about it. Why aren't they being specific? They could give a hundred different reasons. Maybe you come in late everyday. Maybe your code has too many bugs. Maybe you dress inappropriately to work. Maybe you made a sexist/racist remark to someone and they reported you. Maybe you failed to deliver a project on time. Etc. etc. But the reason they aren't giving these as reasons is because they aren't true. You are actually a stellar employee, but they don't like you, for whatever reason. So you're being let go. That's what it means to not be a good "cultural fit."
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  In many US states, at least, there is no recourse if you are fired without cause. But if you are fired with cause, that cause can be legal or illegal, and you can sue based on that.
Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
"Not a good cultural fit" always strikes me as similar to "gut feel". It's an itch that something isn't quite right without saying (or often knowing) what it is. To me if you think that someone isn't a good cultural fit you need to dig around and work out what you mean by that. In most cases there's something there and it's not something you can realistically change, but in some cases you'll find something worth working on. Not all problems can be solved, not all problems should be solved (companies often "stop people from doing the job" for good reasons - a company can't be all things to all people and what is right for person X may not be right for everyone else) but "not a good cultural fit" is a bad because it's not a specific problem anyone can address. At the very least if you're going to get rid of someone (or not employ someone) it seems fair to let them know why. As an aside in the UK "not a good cultural fit" is also potentially going to get you into legal trouble because of the possibility that it's hiding racial or other discrimination (for instance if "not a good cultural fit" means "we all like to go drinking, you don't drink because of your faith so we're worried you won't fit" that could well be considered discrimination).
mcv 13y ago
Cultural fit is a real thing. I've never been in a position to fire anyone, but I've often recognized the lack of cultural fit. I've worked at great companies with great co-workers and great CEOs, where I noticed I simply wasn't accomplishing as much as I should be able to, because of the way work was organized there. I saw others thrive in that environment, while I didn't thrive. At other companies, I noticed some others who were technically great at their job, not thrive due to the way the company worked, while I and others did thrive. I've left some companies because of that lack of cultural fit. But if an employee doesn't recognize the lack of cultural fit or is too afraid to leave of his own accord, it makes sense that at some point the employer fires him. And of course it sucks to be fired, and it makes you question all sorts of stuff. And the article addresses that. But it can still mean that you eventually end up at a better position where you do thrive. That doesn't mean every case of firing someone is justified, I'm just saying that "cultural fit" can absolutely be a real and valid thing.
deleted 13y ago
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rwallace 13y ago
You seem to be very interested in the notion of fault, and the assumption that blame must be assigned to someone. Sometimes someone is indeed at fault and sometimes not; in the former cases, sometimes arguing about who is a useful thing to do and sometimes it's not. "Not a good cultural fit" really means "this isn't working out, but let's not waste resources arguing about whose fault it is, when we could both be spending our time looking for better matches instead".
- j_baker 13y ago
  Fair enough, but if you're firing someone, something is clearly wrong, right? And your point only reinforces mine: firing for cultural fit is a passive-aggressive way to fire someone without confrontation.
mathattack 13y ago
If someone isn't working out, whether it's their fault or yours, you are doing them a favor by terminating them so long as you give them appropriate severance that will cover them long enough to find a new job. Most people don't want to settle for slightly below average, and it takes a shock to get out of complacency. It's happened to me in the past. The only regret is not getting better severance, but even there it lights a fire.

by j_baker 13y ago

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).

j_baker 13y ago
I don't think that should be controversial. The key is figuring out what you want from your employees and verify that you're getting that. That saves you from having to guess as to whether or not they're working out. You shouldn't have to resort to tactics like trumping up vague charges.

WalterBright 13y ago

> Wait, so you fire half of your staff and they're happier afterwords? I've known people who were laid off or fired, and of course they were pretty unhappy about it at the time. But I know some who took it as the kick-in-the-pants they needed to fix their lives for the better, and find a better job, start the business they'd been talking about, etc. A year or two later, and they'll freely agree that being laid off was good for them.

j_baker 13y ago
I've been there before too. In the end, I was happy to get fired because it was a crap place to work. Shortly afterwords, the guy who fired me and the rest of the founders got fired themselves. I can only assume they were happier afterwords as well.
nilkn 13y ago
> A year or two later, and they'll freely agree that being laid off was good for them. It strikes me as dangerous to conclude too much from this. In fact, I worry that this particular sort of statistic could be completely meaningless. People often try to find positive interpretations of events which are too painful for them to accept. It's a very powerful form of cognitive dissonance. Being fired from a job you enjoy can be a nearly traumatic hit to your perception of yourself, and it is necessary to reconstruct your self-image in some way. Most likely the person will exercise some creative freedom in this reconstruction process.
- tkellogg 13y ago
  You won't necessarily find yourself happier - it's a choice. If you go right back and make the same mistakes at a new job, you'll hate that one too. I got fired a few months ago and it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Until then, I'd changed jobs every so often because I never liked where I worked. But when I got fired, I thought long and hard about what I needed in a job. Only after acting on some well thought-out conclusions did I find an excellent job that's absolutely a perfect fit for me. I probably wouldn't have thought that hard about my next step if I wasn't fired. So while that comment is true for me, I can't imagine that it's always true. If I was a dumbass and took a job exactly like the previous one, I'd hate that one too. I might not get fired - I might quit before they fired me. Honestly it doesn't matter which happens first. If you don't put in the introspection to find a place that fits you and vice versa, you'll hate it in no time. Figure out what you need, figure out what you can do well, and find a job that matches that.

Cyranix 13y ago

> 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? I agree with a lot of what you've said, but that bit struck me as unfair. It's natural for employees to be fired, and for those fired employees to reflect on the past in order to find jobs that make them happier -- what a depressing world it would be if that weren't the case! -- so I'm not sure I'd conclude that their personal growth necessarily implies a systemic problem in the company (especially at n=6). And it's entirely possible that someone might get fired from a different company and end up happier at the OP's company, no?

j_baker 13y ago
More likely is that the company simply hasn't figured out the whole hiring and firing bit yet and is making all the wrong mistakes. And that's fine, you should expect to make a few mistakes before getting it right. But that's the thing. You never read blog posts like these that are about "How I fired someone and then learned from that firing" or "How I saved someone from being fired by examining the results of my actions". Crap employers never seem to consider the possibility that they're doing something wrong. So instead they make up some narcissistic BS about "cultural fit" and use it to expel people who don't conform to their narrow ideas of what their company should be.

enraged_camel 13y ago

>>Not a good cultural fit" is such a passive-aggressive way to justify firing someone. It's a way of saying that they couldn't find anything specific to use against the employee, and are invoking the much more vague (and impossible to act upon) excuse of not being a good "cultural fit." Think about it. Why aren't they being specific? They could give a hundred different reasons. Maybe you come in late everyday. Maybe your code has too many bugs. Maybe you dress inappropriately to work. Maybe you made a sexist/racist remark to someone and they reported you. Maybe you failed to deliver a project on time. Etc. etc. But the reason they aren't giving these as reasons is because they aren't true. You are actually a stellar employee, but they don't like you, for whatever reason. So you're being let go. That's what it means to not be a good "cultural fit."

jamesaguilar 13y ago
In many US states, at least, there is no recourse if you are fired without cause. But if you are fired with cause, that cause can be legal or illegal, and you can sue based on that.

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago

"Not a good cultural fit" always strikes me as similar to "gut feel". It's an itch that something isn't quite right without saying (or often knowing) what it is. To me if you think that someone isn't a good cultural fit you need to dig around and work out what you mean by that. In most cases there's something there and it's not something you can realistically change, but in some cases you'll find something worth working on. Not all problems can be solved, not all problems should be solved (companies often "stop people from doing the job" for good reasons - a company can't be all things to all people and what is right for person X may not be right for everyone else) but "not a good cultural fit" is a bad because it's not a specific problem anyone can address. At the very least if you're going to get rid of someone (or not employ someone) it seems fair to let them know why. As an aside in the UK "not a good cultural fit" is also potentially going to get you into legal trouble because of the possibility that it's hiding racial or other discrimination (for instance if "not a good cultural fit" means "we all like to go drinking, you don't drink because of your faith so we're worried you won't fit" that could well be considered discrimination).

mcv 13y ago

Cultural fit is a real thing. I've never been in a position to fire anyone, but I've often recognized the lack of cultural fit. I've worked at great companies with great co-workers and great CEOs, where I noticed I simply wasn't accomplishing as much as I should be able to, because of the way work was organized there. I saw others thrive in that environment, while I didn't thrive. At other companies, I noticed some others who were technically great at their job, not thrive due to the way the company worked, while I and others did thrive. I've left some companies because of that lack of cultural fit. But if an employee doesn't recognize the lack of cultural fit or is too afraid to leave of his own accord, it makes sense that at some point the employer fires him. And of course it sucks to be fired, and it makes you question all sorts of stuff. And the article addresses that. But it can still mean that you eventually end up at a better position where you do thrive. That doesn't mean every case of firing someone is justified, I'm just saying that "cultural fit" can absolutely be a real and valid thing.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rwallace 13y ago

You seem to be very interested in the notion of fault, and the assumption that blame must be assigned to someone. Sometimes someone is indeed at fault and sometimes not; in the former cases, sometimes arguing about who is a useful thing to do and sometimes it's not. "Not a good cultural fit" really means "this isn't working out, but let's not waste resources arguing about whose fault it is, when we could both be spending our time looking for better matches instead".

j_baker 13y ago
Fair enough, but if you're firing someone, something is clearly wrong, right? And your point only reinforces mine: firing for cultural fit is a passive-aggressive way to fire someone without confrontation.

mathattack 13y ago

If someone isn't working out, whether it's their fault or yours, you are doing them a favor by terminating them so long as you give them appropriate severance that will cover them long enough to find a new job. Most people don't want to settle for slightly below average, and it takes a shock to get out of complacency. It's happened to me in the past. The only regret is not getting better severance, but even there it lights a fire.