>@cookiecaper, you've basically ignored the argument. There is no argument. There is only the dogmatic belief that there is some cosmic moral code that states

>@cookiecaper, you've basically ignored the argument. There is no argument. There is only the dogmatic belief that there is some cosmic moral code that states persons must be fired in person. As I've said probably four times now, I accept whole-heartedly there are times when that is the best course of action, and I've acted accordingly and fired these people face-to-face. But I don't believe there is a cosmic moral law violated by considering or performing the firing via alternate, asynchronous means. I believe that circumstances can make this a better option sometimes. >Oh, but you can't call that a fact, because it fails the verifiability test. I mean, firing is a decision made by management, the same management that placed the company in this position in the first place. This is nitpicking at semantics. I understand that firing is usually a subjective judgment call, obviously. I guess better phrasing would've been "whoever did or didn't do things... the decision has been made and needs to be executed". >Truth be told, I would get pretty mad about such things, but fortunately such companies are usually ran by incompetents and so most of them either go out of business or become completely irrelevant and for me that's justice enough. As I alluded elsewhere, I think it is silly to state that the C-levels at all of these big companies are "incompetents" because they don't meet with every employee individually to fire them. It's a routine way to do mass layoffs and it's easy for employees to say "That guy couldn't look me in the eye", but it's also easy for employees to find all kinds of other things to complain about. Since your employees are going to be unhappy when they're fired anyway, I believe it should be done in the most objectively logical and considerate way, even if it leaves room for petty complaints about the venue, because people who want to complain are going to find something to complain about even if you fire them in the most stately of palaces and most well-pressed of designer suits, with braces that keep your eyelids open so that there is no doubt that you were willing to "look them in the eye" when you fired them. Sometimes there is no good alternative; like others are saying in this thread, it's often impossible to concoct a graceful firing experience. Saying that people are incompetent for remote firings is ascribing far too much value to what is ultimately a subjective presentation, and ignoring the serious and real logistical issues sometimes involved with a "look-me-in-the-eye" firing.