8 ms·

Is there a good way to fire people? A nice severance package and some decency are desirable. The fired employee will likely never receive what's most valuable

Is there a good way to fire people? A nice severance package and some decency are desirable. The fired employee will likely never receive what's most valuable: a thorough and actionable analysis about what went wrong. In this case the company failed, and the laid off employees will probably never thoroughly understand why. In my own experience, I've seen several engineers fired because they were mis-hired into roles that were obviously bad matches (often intentionally to meet the VP's head count goals). Those engineers weren't really given enough info to reconstruct what happened to them. I guess the message of the article here is that Tim Armstrong dumped the full weight of failure on his team-- undesirable in the view of almost any philosophy of management. Furthermore, in light of Armstrong's experience, his acts were reckless as well.

Terr_ 12y ago
Very true, alas, the ways which are good for people are, regrettably, not the ways that are good for the company lawyers. In addition to the emotional/honesty difficulty of a good postmortem, there's the fear that somebody will say something to trigger a lawsuit, spurious or otherwise.
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  It's not just about lawyers. The lawyers don't get involved until someone comes along and suggests that there may be a complaint; i.e., the people involved get alienated and offended before the lawyers enter the picture. Most people do not take criticism well at all and in all honesty, most people don't want a big, honest list of their infractions, even if they claim they do. Consider also that many times employment decisions are entirely petty and done just because someone in the chain of command doesn't like the "laid off" individual. There are various terms that are corpo-speak for this. Employment in an organization is really professional likeability management, which is a tricky, fickle field.
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    >The lawyers don't get involved until someone comes along and suggests that there may be a complaint Lawyers are involved from the very beginning of a layoff. They make the template. >most people don't want a big, honest list of their infractions, even if they claim they do. If one's immediate supervisor is doing their job, the employee will already know what would be on the list.
    - bphogan 12y ago
      This. And if you check the credentials of people in HR, you'll probably find someone there with a JD.
    - cookiecaper 12y ago
      >Lawyers are involved from the very beginning of a layoff. They make the template. Right, I guess I meant that lawyers don't (or maybe, didn't) become a concern until someone was disgruntled enough to make spurious legal claims. They're involved now as a preventative measure, which I acknowledge in other comments, but what I'm saying is that if people were able to take a list of infractions in stride and improve on them, companies would be much less worried about the potential legal liability incurred by given honest feedback to employees.
- VLM 12y ago
  "somebody will say something to trigger a lawsuit" Two topics not discussed are leaks and rationalization. Say someone's getting fired for not being the right race, or being a woman in a mans field, or not being a bro, or not going out drinking with the boys enough after work, she wouldn't date the boss, or being too old, or too gay, or too jewish, or whatever. "Sorry its a budget thing combined with different direction of company and best of luck to you" is legally extremely safe. Happens ALL the time. But if the boss has some deep personal conversation and it leaks out that he doesn't like most black people but he hired you anyway so its clearly not race, he doth protest too much, or how it doesn't matter that she wouldn't date him despite him asking her a couple times it really was something else... Or the rationalization thing, where lets face it, he was fired because he is gay and the boss is a republican, if the boss is smart enough not to leak that topic, but sufficiently dumb enough, in a long personal conversation out will come ridiculous rationalizations about the guys LoC or bug report / fix rates or attendance as a distractor for the boss to avoid talking about homophobia, unfortunately the rationalized metrics can actually be measured and open the company to wrongful termination lawsuits. "Your honor he said the only reason was my attendance wasn't very good, but my documents prove it was the best in the office, note the only day I was gone was a scheduled vacation day for the pride parade and he's out of the office continually attending fund raisers for anti-gay marriage republican candidates" etc etc. Usually that kind of stuff is settled expensively out of court with non-disparagement clauses so future employees can't avoid predatory bosses, which is another problem. You can pretty much assume if "they" won't tell you why you're fired, and you can't obviously figure it out, then it was some illegal thing like above and they're smart enough not to provide lawsuit fodder on a platter. Ya gotta realize that half of management is by definition below median, and that half of the population can create very expensive lawsuits.
  - travisby 12y ago
    Ya gotta realize that half of employees are by definition below median. You missed the possibility that the employee is too prideful, or lacks the intelligence to 'obviously figure it out.' Please don't generalize about a group of people (either managers, or republicans). Employees can be bad, too.
tsotha 12y ago
>The fired employee will likely never receive what's most valuable: a thorough and actionable analysis about what went wrong. Your use of the word "actionable" is pretty appropriate here. When I was managing people my biggest frustration was not being able to sit someone down over a beer and discuss the situation honestly. Nobody gets "fired" any more. Unless you commit a felony or break one of the PC rules you get "laid off", as in "We had a good quarter, and yes we're buying lots of stuff and hiring people, but we ran out of money to pay you." As a manager I can't very well come along later and say "Here's the real reason we let you go." Because the lawsuits would start to fly. The over-litigious employment environment (at least in the US) prevents people from learning how to be better employees. I've had people call me up months after we let them go and essentially beg me to tell them the truth. But I couldn't take that risk. I don't manage people any more, and good riddance to that shit.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  That's so true, and it's not just the US. Also, and perhaps even more so, Western Europe.
- yuhong 12y ago
  I have been saying that the CA employee defamation laws has to be changed since Yishan Wong's comment on Reddit.
- njloof 12y ago
  What if they ask "Do you have any suggestions for how I could perform better at my next job?" That opens the door to nonspecific advice that could touch on those issues.
  - pja 12y ago
    Not really, if the fear is being sued for wrongful dismissal. If the advice is so non specific that it doesn't contain anything actionable, then it's probably not specific enough to be helpful. Essentially, if you give the ex-employee anything concrete to work on ("You could improve on skill X"), then the fear is that they'll demand clear evidence that they were deficient in that area at your workplace, which you probably don't have. Now you've weakened your case should the employee bring a wrongful dismissal lawsuit (under whatever laws apply in your state/country). Hence the reluctance to say anything at all. It's not right (morally), but it's understandable.
louischatriot 12y ago
It doesn't have to be the case, at least not from my experience managing startup teams. The most usual case I've seen is that you have to let the employee go for performance reasons but you still have a good relationship with him and it's pretty natural to help by a) telling what was wrong and what he could improve in his new job and b) offering help to find a new job/talk to his prospective employers about what he did do right. I would even argue that even the most selfish managers should still proceed that way, since ending a relationship on a (as much as possible) positive note decreases the risk of a lawsuit afterwards.
ptaipale 12y ago
I don't think there's a good way that would everywhere, in all cases, be perceived by the person in question as good. Everyone's an individual. But some managers have more charisma, or capability to reflect compassion, or whatever it is, so that when they do the firing, it does not feel as bad. Some managers are clumsy and behave among other people's emotions like an elephant in a porcelain shop. Some are just awkward. And then there is methodology. Corporations often have guidelines for how to do this. For instance, in the processes where I have been involved, there's been a training and emphasis on how things are done: deliver a paper of this format, do it in a personal discussion if possible, with some rehearsed phrases to get around the awkwardness. If you have to do it via mail or deliver the message otherwise, do this and that. The bottom line is, both the personalities and consistent professional ways to do things have an impact. Still, it's often horrible. There is no guaranteed good way.
bphogan 12y ago
The book Corporate Confidential talks about how this works in large companies. It states that, generally, people who get laid off are the ones who have clashes with the managers. They disagree too much, complain, gossip, etc. Has nothing to do with work performance. Always comes down to if your boss likes you. If your boss doesn't like you, you make a layoff list so the next time the company needs to downsize, you go away. Solves any issues of wrongful termination because many places are "at-will" anyway, and they can simply say "sorry, we have more people than we have work" and not ever tell you the reason why. I recommend that book highly. As I have seen the mistakes I've made over the years and have taken steps to correct that behavior. :)

Terr_ 12y ago

Very true, alas, the ways which are good for people are, regrettably, not the ways that are good for the company lawyers. In addition to the emotional/honesty difficulty of a good postmortem, there's the fear that somebody will say something to trigger a lawsuit, spurious or otherwise.

cookiecaper 12y ago
It's not just about lawyers. The lawyers don't get involved until someone comes along and suggests that there may be a complaint; i.e., the people involved get alienated and offended before the lawyers enter the picture. Most people do not take criticism well at all and in all honesty, most people don't want a big, honest list of their infractions, even if they claim they do. Consider also that many times employment decisions are entirely petty and done just because someone in the chain of command doesn't like the "laid off" individual. There are various terms that are corpo-speak for this. Employment in an organization is really professional likeability management, which is a tricky, fickle field.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  >The lawyers don't get involved until someone comes along and suggests that there may be a complaint Lawyers are involved from the very beginning of a layoff. They make the template. >most people don't want a big, honest list of their infractions, even if they claim they do. If one's immediate supervisor is doing their job, the employee will already know what would be on the list.
  - bphogan 12y ago
    This. And if you check the credentials of people in HR, you'll probably find someone there with a JD.
  - cookiecaper 12y ago
    >Lawyers are involved from the very beginning of a layoff. They make the template. Right, I guess I meant that lawyers don't (or maybe, didn't) become a concern until someone was disgruntled enough to make spurious legal claims. They're involved now as a preventative measure, which I acknowledge in other comments, but what I'm saying is that if people were able to take a list of infractions in stride and improve on them, companies would be much less worried about the potential legal liability incurred by given honest feedback to employees.
VLM 12y ago
"somebody will say something to trigger a lawsuit" Two topics not discussed are leaks and rationalization. Say someone's getting fired for not being the right race, or being a woman in a mans field, or not being a bro, or not going out drinking with the boys enough after work, she wouldn't date the boss, or being too old, or too gay, or too jewish, or whatever. "Sorry its a budget thing combined with different direction of company and best of luck to you" is legally extremely safe. Happens ALL the time. But if the boss has some deep personal conversation and it leaks out that he doesn't like most black people but he hired you anyway so its clearly not race, he doth protest too much, or how it doesn't matter that she wouldn't date him despite him asking her a couple times it really was something else... Or the rationalization thing, where lets face it, he was fired because he is gay and the boss is a republican, if the boss is smart enough not to leak that topic, but sufficiently dumb enough, in a long personal conversation out will come ridiculous rationalizations about the guys LoC or bug report / fix rates or attendance as a distractor for the boss to avoid talking about homophobia, unfortunately the rationalized metrics can actually be measured and open the company to wrongful termination lawsuits. "Your honor he said the only reason was my attendance wasn't very good, but my documents prove it was the best in the office, note the only day I was gone was a scheduled vacation day for the pride parade and he's out of the office continually attending fund raisers for anti-gay marriage republican candidates" etc etc. Usually that kind of stuff is settled expensively out of court with non-disparagement clauses so future employees can't avoid predatory bosses, which is another problem. You can pretty much assume if "they" won't tell you why you're fired, and you can't obviously figure it out, then it was some illegal thing like above and they're smart enough not to provide lawsuit fodder on a platter. Ya gotta realize that half of management is by definition below median, and that half of the population can create very expensive lawsuits.
- travisby 12y ago
  Ya gotta realize that half of employees are by definition below median. You missed the possibility that the employee is too prideful, or lacks the intelligence to 'obviously figure it out.' Please don't generalize about a group of people (either managers, or republicans). Employees can be bad, too.

tsotha 12y ago

>The fired employee will likely never receive what's most valuable: a thorough and actionable analysis about what went wrong. Your use of the word "actionable" is pretty appropriate here. When I was managing people my biggest frustration was not being able to sit someone down over a beer and discuss the situation honestly. Nobody gets "fired" any more. Unless you commit a felony or break one of the PC rules you get "laid off", as in "We had a good quarter, and yes we're buying lots of stuff and hiring people, but we ran out of money to pay you." As a manager I can't very well come along later and say "Here's the real reason we let you go." Because the lawsuits would start to fly. The over-litigious employment environment (at least in the US) prevents people from learning how to be better employees. I've had people call me up months after we let them go and essentially beg me to tell them the truth. But I couldn't take that risk. I don't manage people any more, and good riddance to that shit.

ptaipale 12y ago
That's so true, and it's not just the US. Also, and perhaps even more so, Western Europe.
yuhong 12y ago
I have been saying that the CA employee defamation laws has to be changed since Yishan Wong's comment on Reddit.
njloof 12y ago
What if they ask "Do you have any suggestions for how I could perform better at my next job?" That opens the door to nonspecific advice that could touch on those issues.
- pja 12y ago
  Not really, if the fear is being sued for wrongful dismissal. If the advice is so non specific that it doesn't contain anything actionable, then it's probably not specific enough to be helpful. Essentially, if you give the ex-employee anything concrete to work on ("You could improve on skill X"), then the fear is that they'll demand clear evidence that they were deficient in that area at your workplace, which you probably don't have. Now you've weakened your case should the employee bring a wrongful dismissal lawsuit (under whatever laws apply in your state/country). Hence the reluctance to say anything at all. It's not right (morally), but it's understandable.

louischatriot 12y ago

It doesn't have to be the case, at least not from my experience managing startup teams. The most usual case I've seen is that you have to let the employee go for performance reasons but you still have a good relationship with him and it's pretty natural to help by a) telling what was wrong and what he could improve in his new job and b) offering help to find a new job/talk to his prospective employers about what he did do right. I would even argue that even the most selfish managers should still proceed that way, since ending a relationship on a (as much as possible) positive note decreases the risk of a lawsuit afterwards.

ptaipale 12y ago

I don't think there's a good way that would everywhere, in all cases, be perceived by the person in question as good. Everyone's an individual. But some managers have more charisma, or capability to reflect compassion, or whatever it is, so that when they do the firing, it does not feel as bad. Some managers are clumsy and behave among other people's emotions like an elephant in a porcelain shop. Some are just awkward. And then there is methodology. Corporations often have guidelines for how to do this. For instance, in the processes where I have been involved, there's been a training and emphasis on how things are done: deliver a paper of this format, do it in a personal discussion if possible, with some rehearsed phrases to get around the awkwardness. If you have to do it via mail or deliver the message otherwise, do this and that. The bottom line is, both the personalities and consistent professional ways to do things have an impact. Still, it's often horrible. There is no guaranteed good way.

bphogan 12y ago

The book Corporate Confidential talks about how this works in large companies. It states that, generally, people who get laid off are the ones who have clashes with the managers. They disagree too much, complain, gossip, etc. Has nothing to do with work performance. Always comes down to if your boss likes you. If your boss doesn't like you, you make a layoff list so the next time the company needs to downsize, you go away. Solves any issues of wrongful termination because many places are "at-will" anyway, and they can simply say "sorry, we have more people than we have work" and not ever tell you the reason why. I recommend that book highly. As I have seen the mistakes I've made over the years and have taken steps to correct that behavior. :)