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Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

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Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#141

Post by eru »

chrisyeh wrote: post #125

For the record, I'm one of the co-authors of "The Alliance," which Dan Lyons refers to in his op ed. Dan refers to our book and quotes a single sentence fragment: "Your company is not your family." Everything else he writes in that section of the piece has nothing to do with the content of the book. 1) "You’re serving a “tour of duty” that might last a year or two" Actually, the book makes it clear that the duration…

Interesting. This sounds like a viable way to play Diplomacy. (Eg http://diplom.org/Zine/S1998R/Ohlman/TrueBlue.html)

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#142

Post by anonymousab »

justin_vanw wrote: post #66

So does the author think that everyone is great at their job? What do you do when you have an employee that can't do the work and you are confident that they won't improve? Pointing out the age difference in the manager and the employee, and their sexes, is just baiting. Unless he wants to make the case that there was sexism or agism from the manager, or that the company engaged in sexism or agism, it is just a red h…

> If she couldn't do the job then there is no reason to be discussing this

The creepy thought processes that go into calling it "graduation" (and throwing a party...) don't rely on any judgement about that employee's performance.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#143

Post by srtjstjsj »

deanCommie wrote: post #60
JayHost wrote: post #17

Amazon is new Walmart. They don't care that you don't like their work environment.They have money; you need money and have little options. I think instead of being interested in recycling talent; Amazon is interested in those who will take the most abuse.

Let's back off with the Amazon hate. Right below it on the same list is Google with an average tenure at 1.1 years. Nobody tries to use that as an argument that Google burns through workers who quit in dissatisfaction.

Does that 1.1 year average tenure reflect the fact that these companies are growing and have many new still-employed employees?

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#144

Post by dvanduzer »

justin_vanw wrote: post #121
supercanuck wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came away with the impression that HubSpot's management was purposely divorced from reality, and so it is hard to take them at face value that she was unable to perform her job. The issue appears that she was too costly to the company due to biological reasons(1. being old and 2. being a woman). The other issue from the article was that there didn't seem to be an objective way of measuring performance so "graduatio…

Too young? I wish! I went through your comments and figured out who you are in real life, and I found that I basically agree with most of the things you say, so I won't give you a hard time. I think Kirkland Signature makes good stuff too! Edit: That sounded really stalker-ish, I did it to see if you are actually even older than I am.

I'm approaching 35 years old, and HubSpot is a publicly traded company, ergo, a grown-ass company. If they need to cut labor costs, they do a layoff.

When I was 17 years old, I got fired without any warning from a mom-and-pop computer repair shop ($10 an hour, I think?) because I "talked too much" at the bench. Coincidentally, they had just hired a 15 year old to do the same job. I had also recently asked how i might go about getting a pay raise.

This is the kind of thing that a small business (which is constantly in crisis) does all the time. It's legal in "at will" states, but it isn't particularly fair.

Larger, publicly traded companies that aren't in crisis have no business acting like high school lunch tables.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#145

Post by PhantomGremlin »

chrisyeh wrote: post #125

For the record, I'm one of the co-authors of "The Alliance," which Dan Lyons refers to in his op ed. Dan refers to our book and quotes a single sentence fragment: "Your company is not your family." Everything else he writes in that section of the piece has nothing to do with the content of the book. 1) "You’re serving a “tour of duty” that might last a year or two" Actually, the book makes it clear that the duration…

managers should be explicit about how an employee's job assignment is going to help develop his or her career

That's interesting. I've had a number of managers in my career and never, not even once, has one of them espoused anything resembling such a position. It's always what can the employee do for the company, not what's mutually beneficial.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#146

Post by bhewes »

Nassim Taleb's "How to Legally Own Another Person" or David Graeber's book The Utopia of Rules and now this article could be categorized as welcome to working in a bureaucracy. I grew up in corporate land and I am use to ex PGW, Deloitte, or McKinsey employees being called alumni. So it makes sense as the current generation of tech companies mature they become more bureaucratic. Hopefully this means we will see a new batch of startups hit the scene soon!

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#147

Post by nostrademons »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #145
chrisyeh wrote: post #125

For the record, I'm one of the co-authors of "The Alliance," which Dan Lyons refers to in his op ed. Dan refers to our book and quotes a single sentence fragment: "Your company is not your family." Everything else he writes in that section of the piece has nothing to do with the content of the book. 1) "You’re serving a “tour of duty” that might last a year or two" Actually, the book makes it clear that the duration…

managers should be explicit about how an employee's job assignment is going to help develop his or her career That's interesting. I've had a number of managers in my career and never, not even once, has one of them espoused anything resembling such a position. It's always what can the employee do for the company, not what's mutually beneficial.

I felt like most of my managers at Google tried pretty hard at this. We certainly did have conversations about what I wanted long-term within my career and how that might best be accomplished within the organization.

Ultimately, I ended up deciding that what I wanted couldn't be achieved inside Google, but they certainly made the effort.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#148

Post by jdale27 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #70

> I joined the company in 2013 after spending 25 years in journalism and getting laid off from a top position at Newsweek. I thought working at a start-up would be great. The perks! The cool offices! > It turned out I’d joined a digital sweatshop, where people were packed into huge rooms, side by side, at long tables. It sounds like this journalist failed to investigate their new job before Day 1...

I think it's a lot more plausible that he knew exactly what he was getting into, and wanted exactly that, possibly so that he could write a book expounding his preexisting notions about the "digital sweatshop".

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#150

Post by ryanSrich »

justin_vanw wrote: post #66

So does the author think that everyone is great at their job? What do you do when you have an employee that can't do the work and you are confident that they won't improve? Pointing out the age difference in the manager and the employee, and their sexes, is just baiting. Unless he wants to make the case that there was sexism or agism from the manager, or that the company engaged in sexism or agism, it is just a red h…

> What do you do when you have an employee that can't do the work and you are confident that they won't improve?

Be an adult and make a tough decision without masking it as a great "thing" (aka: graduation)?

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