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TL:DR - Sounds like it is a fearful place to work and puts all ownership on the employee and nothing on the person doing the fire with no checks or balances. Ju

by baldfat 11y ago

TL:DR - Sounds like it is a fearful place to work and puts all ownership on the employee and nothing on the person doing the fire with no checks or balances. Just a clear cut you disappoint me and I will fire you quickly and even pay you off instead of you suing me. Having had to fire people this read like a lead balloon. I have fired several people and the hardest one was the first time, but after it was over it felt good for everyone in the business. This is really managing by fear. The manager might say "It won't be a surprise for you or me implies that this is a non-verbal understanding. Well a lot of people get paranoid when it comes to job security and might have had a bad experience so anything and everything means they are on the verge of losing their job. If I was a worker on his team I would shutter any time I saw my boss walk into my office and say may I sit down. Seems very much a scare tactic. My company when we fire someone there has been several steps taken and it is dignified. (Unless you did something illegal or unethical, than it is quick and clean with an escort out the building.) You go through a written warning. You than have a performance progresses plan written by the employee and the manager together. You may have the manager sit in your work space for a few times to make sure that the person understands their roles in action and make sure that it just isn't a lack of knowledge or training. If it is our business culture we will get a co-worker to partner up with the person to help them find their place (Or see that it might not be for them and that is okay for both parties). There doesn't seem to be a check and balance between his decision to fire and the action. As a manager I just didn't see the person's positive side since they had a trait I couldn't stand (perception of them being lazy or a bully to their co-workers) and I almost fired people which months and years later proved I was wrong in assuming they deserved to be fired. This also saves the work place from being a homogeneous Big Boys Club. PERSONAL Opinion : Professionals (I am assuming this is a professional position and not some low hourly wage job) normally don't get fired for them not being smart enough or the ability to improve. I find that it normally is the fault of the employer for why the relationship didn't work out due to a manger or even the negative culture of the company.

wtbob 11y ago
> Sounds like it is a fearful place to work and puts all ownership on the employee and nothing on the person doing the fire with no checks or balances. Just a clear cut you disappoint me and I will fire you quickly and even pay you off instead of you suing me. If you were paying me hundreds of thousands—or more—of dollars a year, then that's kinda how it works: I execute well, or you sever the relationship. > Professionals (I am assuming this is a professional position and not some low hourly wage job) normally don't get fired for them not being smart enough or the ability to improve. I don't understand this at all. Why would an insufficiently-smart professional's employer keep him around—as window dressing? If one's not smart enough for the position, and doesn't have the ability to improve, then who would continue to employ one.
- VLM 11y ago
  "keep him around" Its an underemployment issue. To get this CRUD web app position you need to be a top 1% rock star having passed compiler theory, database design, automata theory, linear algebra and diff eqs at an ivy league or HR won't even let your resume thru to the 8 hour whiteboard interview. The tiny microscopic subset of the population who get past that, are profoundly underemployed and will not have much of an issue with the raw brain horsepower requirement. Its like demanding PE licensed PHD civil engineers, and actually getting them, to work as landscaping manual laborers, and then being worried they might not be smart enough to start the lawnmower. Its just not going to be an issue (edited: "in tech" "on coasts").
  - baldfat 11y ago
    I believe 99% of the time people are fired for things other than the tasks of performing their duties mentally and physically. Usually it happens to be the other non-job description items that get people fired and they happen to make an error that any other person wouldn't get fired for. I call it my "Good Will Dollar Theory." You get to save "Good Will Dollars" when you do good things for others and the company. You lose "Good Will Dollars" when you have a lapse in judgment or execution. When you are out of "Good Will Dollars" you get fired. Everyone has starts with a different amount of "Good Will Dollars" and they are often unfairly distributed to people that sometimes don't even deserve them.
    - s73v3r 11y ago
      Don't forget that they tend to expire, too. Even if you banked up a huge amount of GW$ last year, they're not gonna save you this year.
exelius 11y ago
I think you're looking at this the wrong way. First, this is a guide written by a senior executive about how to handle firing someone. Executives get fired all the time -- the bar for executives is very high, and not every executive is the right fit for every company. You also don't have time to train up an executive on how to do their job; a VP of product needs to come in knowing how to manage product teams. And sometimes it just doesn't work out. From the perspective of the author (who is Silicon Valley royalty and has been a CEO or board member of several large companies for the last 30 years), there is no manager conference or HR process that will make an underperforming executive better. So it's better to be adult about the situation, figure out transition plans, and let the person (and the company) get on with things with a minimum of drama. If your CEO has lost faith in you for whatever reason, you're essentially done as an executive at that company anyway. We've all seen the underperforming VP who sticks around a little too long: their organization becomes demoralized because people can sense when things aren't going well. It's better for the entire company to be definitive about executive hires and fires.

by baldfat 11y ago

wtbob 11y ago

> Sounds like it is a fearful place to work and puts all ownership on the employee and nothing on the person doing the fire with no checks or balances. Just a clear cut you disappoint me and I will fire you quickly and even pay you off instead of you suing me. If you were paying me hundreds of thousands—or more—of dollars a year, then that's kinda how it works: I execute well, or you sever the relationship. > Professionals (I am assuming this is a professional position and not some low hourly wage job) normally don't get fired for them not being smart enough or the ability to improve. I don't understand this at all. Why would an insufficiently-smart professional's employer keep him around—as window dressing? If one's not smart enough for the position, and doesn't have the ability to improve, then who would continue to employ one.

VLM 11y ago
"keep him around" Its an underemployment issue. To get this CRUD web app position you need to be a top 1% rock star having passed compiler theory, database design, automata theory, linear algebra and diff eqs at an ivy league or HR won't even let your resume thru to the 8 hour whiteboard interview. The tiny microscopic subset of the population who get past that, are profoundly underemployed and will not have much of an issue with the raw brain horsepower requirement. Its like demanding PE licensed PHD civil engineers, and actually getting them, to work as landscaping manual laborers, and then being worried they might not be smart enough to start the lawnmower. Its just not going to be an issue (edited: "in tech" "on coasts").
- baldfat 11y ago
  I believe 99% of the time people are fired for things other than the tasks of performing their duties mentally and physically. Usually it happens to be the other non-job description items that get people fired and they happen to make an error that any other person wouldn't get fired for. I call it my "Good Will Dollar Theory." You get to save "Good Will Dollars" when you do good things for others and the company. You lose "Good Will Dollars" when you have a lapse in judgment or execution. When you are out of "Good Will Dollars" you get fired. Everyone has starts with a different amount of "Good Will Dollars" and they are often unfairly distributed to people that sometimes don't even deserve them.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    Don't forget that they tend to expire, too. Even if you banked up a huge amount of GW$ last year, they're not gonna save you this year.

exelius 11y ago

I think you're looking at this the wrong way. First, this is a guide written by a senior executive about how to handle firing someone. Executives get fired all the time -- the bar for executives is very high, and not every executive is the right fit for every company. You also don't have time to train up an executive on how to do their job; a VP of product needs to come in knowing how to manage product teams. And sometimes it just doesn't work out. From the perspective of the author (who is Silicon Valley royalty and has been a CEO or board member of several large companies for the last 30 years), there is no manager conference or HR process that will make an underperforming executive better. So it's better to be adult about the situation, figure out transition plans, and let the person (and the company) get on with things with a minimum of drama. If your CEO has lost faith in you for whatever reason, you're essentially done as an executive at that company anyway. We've all seen the underperforming VP who sticks around a little too long: their organization becomes demoralized because people can sense when things aren't going well. It's better for the entire company to be definitive about executive hires and fires.