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It's Never Too Early to Fire

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Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#21

Post by eshvk »

kartan wrote: post #13

I like the article, and it has some really good ideas. And it is not about making firing people easier or cheaper. It is about on how to decide when to fire someone. About firing fast and easy, it is a bad idea. I work in Sweden. I don't think I have seen ever anyone fired. What I have seen is some of the best hiring processes. The process looks at the candidate values, and skills. And there is a discussion about wha…

> I work in Sweden. I don't think I have seen ever anyone fired. What I have seen is some of the best hiring processes. The process looks at the candidate values, and skills. And there is a discussion about what we expect from her, and what she expects from the job.

I have worked for a few years in a company that is based in Sweden but also has a very large U.S. presence. Couple of points:

1. The recruiting process is involved in Sweden is more involved than in the U.S, agreed. However it is not perfect. False positives do enter the system. Folks there have started getting junior candidates intern/contract as a way of evaluating them. This unfortunately has its own bias.

2. Yes, I think it is impossible to fire people in Sweden. What is typically done in those rare situations is to shuffle you in such a way that you don't do any work. Imagine a head of a team suddenly head in title but with no reports.

3. On the U.S. side, interviews are way easier but then at will employment takes care of that in those rare situations.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#22

Post by asah »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #2

Weirdly, I think we would all benefit quite a lot from a normalization of fast firing. Part of the reason it's hard to get a job is that companies are afraid to fire you, so they jump through all kinds of strange hoops to try to predict how good an employee you'll be based on, really, no information. This also forces companies to filter out "possibly good" candidates and only hire "probably good" candidates. If it we…

or... everyone would spend half their lives running around in job interviews, training/onboarding, exit interviews and so on. Because tech jobs are fundamentally tough and most fits are at least somewhat awkward.

The valley has enough volatility - we don't need more.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#24

Post by afpx »

Actually, pretty good advice in the opposite direction, too. If I had known at 18 that I could have easily and successfully walked away from teams, bosses, companies, partners, and investors who gave 'bad vibes', I would easily have (at least!) an extra couple million in the bank.

I wasted countless opportunities waiting for things to get better, when I probably intuitively knew that they wouldn't. Partly, it was because I didn't want to be considered inconsiderate or rude. But, also, it was because I latched on to other things: the mission, the market, the tech, the product, the teams, etc.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#25

Post by startupempl0ye »

It's never too early to remember that in a startup the decision to get fired depends mostly on the emotional state of a founder. That there is no process in place. It's random. If you do get fired, you have a good chance of ruining your carrier, not being able to get a good reference from your last place of work, wasting opportunities.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#27

Post by traskjd »

pascalxus wrote: post #8

It takes time to build trust, at least several months, maybe even years. If you fire everyone before you even get a chance to build up trust with them, you'll never get a great team.

If it takes you years to build trust, maybe you're just not very good at your job. Why should the business take the risk - for years - that you might be trustworthy?

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#28

Post by strin »

Given a shortage of supply for a job, firing early might not be a good idea. It takes months or even years to find an appropriate good fit for a job.

Sometimes it's easier to just give the person another chance, than to fire him and have no one to do the work.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#29

Post by im3w1l »

forgotpw1123 wrote: post #12
erikpukinskis wrote: post #2

Weirdly, I think we would all benefit quite a lot from a normalization of fast firing. Part of the reason it's hard to get a job is that companies are afraid to fire you, so they jump through all kinds of strange hoops to try to predict how good an employee you'll be based on, really, no information. This also forces companies to filter out "possibly good" candidates and only hire "probably good" candidates. If it we…

>My next company will have explicit rubrics for what it takes to get fired, and your status will be tracked daily >You'll know at all times exactly how close you are to getting fired with how much severance Good luck getting anyone to stick around! People want job security, they don't want to feel like they're walking on eggshells every day. You seem to think the only thing people want out of a job is money. >Anyone…

>It's a serious legal risk to re-hire fired employees.

That's interesting to hear. Could you explain in what way?

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#30

Post by acchow »

kartan wrote: post #13

I like the article, and it has some really good ideas. And it is not about making firing people easier or cheaper. It is about on how to decide when to fire someone. About firing fast and easy, it is a bad idea. I work in Sweden. I don't think I have seen ever anyone fired. What I have seen is some of the best hiring processes. The process looks at the candidate values, and skills. And there is a discussion about wha…

> What I have seen is some of the best hiring processes.

....in software? So Sweden has figured out the software engineering hiring process?

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