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It's Never Too Early to Fire

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Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#131

Post by sokoloff »

StavrosK wrote: post #103
arethuza wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe its a US thing - here in the UK I've seen multiple people re-hired and in each case it worked out pretty well.

I'm not sure if this is common knowledge outside the US (it wasn't for me): "Fired" and "let go/laid off" don't mean the same thing. Fired means they were laid off for some gross reason, e.g. incompetence, stealing from the company, etc. Laid off means they were just let go because of reasons not very related to their performance. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't know if there are precise definitions, but I've always used (in the US):

* Fired with cause - gross reason: sexual harassment, illegal activities, etc.

* Fired - incompetence, laziness, other ineptitude related specifically to the employee, but nothing illegal

* Laid off - financial reasons or business direction reasons for the company. (Some people who are borderline performers get swept up into lay offs, which helps the employee save face.)

In the latter 2 cases, people generally get severance arrangements. In the last case, people are generally eligible for re-hire should conditions or direction change.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#132

Post by derf_ »

wtvanhest wrote: post #5

Just a note, this isnt about firing junior people fast. That is absolutely scummy. This is about hiring/firing very senior, well paid people with lots of prior experience. If you are hiring and then firing junior people fast, you are the problem.

Someone I look up to once said during an interview debrief: "If we make a mistake and hire a bad developer, I can back out their patches. There's only so much damage they can do. But if we hire a bad manager, there's almost no limit to the damage they can do."

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#133

Post by shamaku »

afpx wrote: post #113
arjie wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I understand. I'm just wondering how choices were made which left many millions on the table. I didn't face any choices like that when I was younger so I'm curious.

Opportunity costs and the missed investment returns I am now in my mid 40s. I started working in tech in the mid-90s. I was ambitious and mainly only worked for or led tech startups. (I did well for myself, so can't complain too much) When I look back on my career, had I went with my intuition at critical times, instead of what I felt was 'my duty' (or whatever justification I made to deny my intuitive senses), I wou…

One could say this about relationships too. Live and learn.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#134

Post by raoulr »

kristiandupont wrote: post #63

>I have never fired anyone too early. This may well be true but how do you know? The only way I can think of is if the employee went on to become such a rock star at some other place that you actually hear about it. But that's not the only situation where they might have been valuable to you after a while.

You'll probably never know if you fired too soon. Confirmation bias Will confirm the decision. You'll always know if it was too late.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#135

Post by caseysoftware »

jcadam wrote: post #101
matwood wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a senior programmer with a bit more life experience, I quit somewhere after only 2 months. They valued me, the pay was great, the tech challenges were interesting, but their processes drove me potty. I've done something similar twice, except there were no interesting technical challenges. Both were government jobs where I was lured in to do all this cool work and then get told to sit there and do nothing. The pa…

I was hired into my current position (as a contractor at a government facility) to be a 'software architect and software engineering subject matter expert.' The way the position was sold to me, it sounded like a good step-up in responsibility and an opportunity to grow. What I'm actually doing could be considered a cross between 'IT guy' and 'generic office staff' (I go to tons of meetings, write lots of system-engin…

Then take advantage of it! Pay off as many debts as you can and bank the rest.

A few years ago, the single most powerful thing I did was knock out all our non-mortgage debt. It's freeing to know that if something happened, I could take a pay hit of $Xk/month and still have the same lifestyle.

Being unemployed for several months is way less scary if your monthly expenses are lower and you have cash in the bank.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#136

Post by BoorishBears »

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…

A much more reasonable approach is to provide performance reviews whenever someone wants one along with things they can improve. That allows for transparency without making people feel like they're working towards metric improvements rather than actual performance improvements

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#137

Post by j2bax »

noxToken wrote: post #102
tajen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want you to know that I'm a beginner in management (having hired two juniors for my startup), and I'll use this advice (The junior is not productive, but him being reasonably motivated is the reason why I'll keep him).

Conversely, ramp-up time should not be infinite. A junior employee should not be limping along after a year at the company. Either that person just isn't a fit, or there is something terribly wrong at your company.

As a step before firing for a junior employee that shows any sign of promise, a 3-6 month performance improvement plan with regular check-ins and measurable progress points could make a world of difference. I currently have multiple juniors on PIP's and they are taking them very seriously and improving less than acceptable behaviors.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#138

Post by pmarreck »

shamaku wrote: post #133
afpx wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opportunity costs and the missed investment returns I am now in my mid 40s. I started working in tech in the mid-90s. I was ambitious and mainly only worked for or led tech startups. (I did well for myself, so can't complain too much) When I look back on my career, had I went with my intuition at critical times, instead of what I felt was 'my duty' (or whatever justification I made to deny my intuitive senses), I wou…

One could say this about relationships too. Live and learn.

Actually it struck me in the original article how it could also apply to any relationship.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#139

Post by pmarreck »

Is intuition infallible? I want to hear stories about people who followed their intuition on staying or going (or keeping or firing) and it ended up being the wrong decision long-term. Falsifiability is IMHO an important element of arguing for "intuition"

And yet, I look back and I can't think of a single example in my own life where "listening to my gut" seemed to lead me astray. But I also don't trust my own brain to remember such instances...

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#140

Post by nradov »

usmeteora wrote: post #92
horsecaptin wrote: post #33

Why would anyone work in a person or company that is known to fire quickly?

the big thing here is the struggle between companies like amazon google apple who have tons of applicants, and a startup who has less applicants, and less experience from hiring false positives and identifying false negatives. They acknowledge that they turn down many good people, but also most if not all of the people not qualified. They arent worried about false negatives, they are worried about false positives. So…

There is no real evidence that companies like Amazon / Google / Apple are actually better than other organizations at filtering out false positives, or that they have struck the optimal balance between false positives and false negatives. These are simply unsupported subjective assertions.
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