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Is it just me, or does anyone else think the term "fired" is improper in cases like this? I think the more appropriate term for when a company is changing direc

by jbuzbee 13y ago

Is it just me, or does anyone else think the term "fired" is improper in cases like this? I think the more appropriate term for when a company is changing direction, leaving a market, etc. is "laid-off". To me, "fired" denotes wrongdoing on the part of the employee. Of course, when you're trying to get page-views, Fired is likely to get more readers at the expense of the terminated employees.

rhizome 13y ago
It's at the expense of credibility, but it's CNet. These terms have actual meanings, "laid off" when the position is being eliminated, "fired" when it's not.
- dingaling 13y ago
  Having a US head-office I'm frequently bemused / confused as to why companies in that country so readily lay-off the staff of canceled projects, instead of redeploying them internally to fill other vacancies. Particularly in large corps there's nearly always some other division crying-out for staff with hands-on knowledge of their industry and product, instead of spending $50,000 to hire someone out of college and then train them.
  - Philadelphia 13y ago
    Because American companies don't do any training.
  - osteele 13y ago
    I don't know the particulars of the Nike position. In general it can be because of geography (if the cancelled project was run out of a different region, which can be especially true for skunkworks or acquihired teams), or job specificity (it's not clear how many sensor engineers, low-power engineers, or even hardware and software engineers Nike needs if it's not dong projects like this).
  - krschultz 12y ago
    My guess is because the decision is made at a high level that a whole project is to be killed, and in order to keep that decision compartmentalized the decision is made to lay off the entire staff rather than bringing in mid-level managers to make decisions on who should stay and who should go, which would probably cause the news to leak early. It also makes it a bit better for the laid-off employees. If you keep 50% and fire 50%, the ones that got let go have a much harder sell to their next employer. If you can shrug it off and say 'the whole project got canceled', no negativity is cast on that particular employee. There is also some HR/legal things related to the difference between eliminating positions and firing people. It is easier to claim that the positions are eliminated if you axe the whole project. Then what typically happens swiftly after the lay off is the company offers to re-hire the best performers from that team immediately. I have seen that in 20 person startups and 100,000 person companies. The whole thing is always ugly. In my mind the worst part is when a company heavily recruits a top performer from elsewhere in the company or externally to come work on this project when it is 80% of the way to the cliff, generally by mis-representing the situation, and then axes the whole thing 3 months later. I have seen many people burned by that scenario.
  - gress 12y ago
    What other projects do Nike have that they need a staff of computer software and hardware engineers to work on?
- walshemj 12y ago
  Laid off is sligly diferent from being made redundant. Being laid off means that your job still exists but there is no work for it to do at present; they expect that work will pick up shortly and you will thus be taken back to do it. Redundant means the job is gone and not coming back.

by jbuzbee 13y ago

rhizome 13y ago

It's at the expense of credibility, but it's CNet. These terms have actual meanings, "laid off" when the position is being eliminated, "fired" when it's not.

dingaling 13y ago
Having a US head-office I'm frequently bemused / confused as to why companies in that country so readily lay-off the staff of canceled projects, instead of redeploying them internally to fill other vacancies. Particularly in large corps there's nearly always some other division crying-out for staff with hands-on knowledge of their industry and product, instead of spending $50,000 to hire someone out of college and then train them.
- Philadelphia 13y ago
  Because American companies don't do any training.
- osteele 13y ago
  I don't know the particulars of the Nike position. In general it can be because of geography (if the cancelled project was run out of a different region, which can be especially true for skunkworks or acquihired teams), or job specificity (it's not clear how many sensor engineers, low-power engineers, or even hardware and software engineers Nike needs if it's not dong projects like this).
- krschultz 12y ago
  My guess is because the decision is made at a high level that a whole project is to be killed, and in order to keep that decision compartmentalized the decision is made to lay off the entire staff rather than bringing in mid-level managers to make decisions on who should stay and who should go, which would probably cause the news to leak early. It also makes it a bit better for the laid-off employees. If you keep 50% and fire 50%, the ones that got let go have a much harder sell to their next employer. If you can shrug it off and say 'the whole project got canceled', no negativity is cast on that particular employee. There is also some HR/legal things related to the difference between eliminating positions and firing people. It is easier to claim that the positions are eliminated if you axe the whole project. Then what typically happens swiftly after the lay off is the company offers to re-hire the best performers from that team immediately. I have seen that in 20 person startups and 100,000 person companies. The whole thing is always ugly. In my mind the worst part is when a company heavily recruits a top performer from elsewhere in the company or externally to come work on this project when it is 80% of the way to the cliff, generally by mis-representing the situation, and then axes the whole thing 3 months later. I have seen many people burned by that scenario.
- gress 12y ago
  What other projects do Nike have that they need a staff of computer software and hardware engineers to work on?
walshemj 12y ago
Laid off is sligly diferent from being made redundant. Being laid off means that your job still exists but there is no work for it to do at present; they expect that work will pick up shortly and you will thus be taken back to do it. Redundant means the job is gone and not coming back.