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It's Never Too Early to Fire

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Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#141

Post by ianleeclark »

horsecaptin wrote: post #33

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

Hell if I know. I worked for a company which burned through people like there was no tomorrow at my last job. Every time I went into the main office (every other month, there was always a sea of new faces in the Solutions Architect team; first three months they fired the COO, senior network engineer, and a solutions architect for my team in Austin. It's incredibly shitty to think you're going to be fired every time you're called into your bosses office.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#142

Post by pillowkusis »

pmarreck wrote: post #139

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…

if you fired someone too early, how would you ever know? They're at a different company. You'd have to somehow hear from a separate, trusted source that they were actually doing way better. Incredibly rare.

the whole thesis of this article ("you can never fire someone too soon") reeks of selection bias

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#143

Post by usmeteora »

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…

I see this happening alot. Basically government needs smart people like this to step in and rescue things when things go wrong, but they don't by any means want people like this changing the company culture or inconveniencing other people with doing more work or better work. You are there to be that smart computer guy who fixes things when things they don't understand go wrong.

They pay you alot of money to be there to do stuff they don't understand, but outside of that, they don't really want you interfering with their day to day life with all that "tech stuff".

Definitely find a better job, and don't underestimate the value increase in you quality of life by being around better people who challenge you. Nothing is worth more than that. So outside of minimum financial obligations, make plans to move elsewhere even if it will take a while. If you are the breadwinner in your situation for yourself and or other people, they will have to deal with it.

It may take even 3-4 years to move if you have long term commitments and get ready to go and do it without being risky financially, but honestly its worth it. If you are the one providing for people and you are the one donating half of your waking life and you are the one smart enough to be dissatsified with the lack of mental stimulation then you deserve to have a job you enjoy.

Being around people at work who challenge you and being on a good team will without a doubt increase your personal joy in life as well. Being emotionally isolated in a company who designates you as the computer guy and wants to drain your brain more by asking to create documentation to make the integration of technology in the company appear more valid than it really is, or save them if you don't show up work one day, is an abuse to your mental situation as much as you allow it to happen.

If you are already that smart, rising to the challenges you wish you could will only result in more income later, so don't let the current financial benefits/perceived location limitations stop you from pursuing a more rewarding career.

A couple years may seem like a long time but...what are you going to do, rot in a n IT office for the next 40 + years of your life? Make the difficult decisions/sacrifices now and even if you are in your 30s or even more, still youll get decades of happiness and challenges you won't if you throw your hands up in the air now.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#144

Post by pillowkusis »

raoulr wrote: post #134
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.

isn't it always "too late"? The fired employee would have to have a long pattern of problems. With the benefit of hindsight you'd know that you should have fired them after the first 5 or 10 problems.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#145

Post by michaelbrooks »

afpx wrote: post #24

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 bec…

It's odd, because my first two dev jobs I had to be let go. First time was due to them needing someone of senior skill yet paying for a junior salary and let me go after just 3 weeks, and the other due to money running low and let me go after a year of working for them.

This taught me that businesses are out for themselves no matter how nice the people are. It then taught me that if I don't like somewhere, I will just outright look elsewhere and bail.

After being let go from my second workplace, I left my next one due to him promising me more money and then going back on it with another deal which sounded great, but actually sucked when I thought about it. He is a really nice guy, but such a shady businessman, so I looked elsewhere and then handed in my notice.

The workplace after that one wasn't any better, they wouldn't use GIT, worked on each site whilst live (no dev environment). I hated it, so I took a week off to search elsewhere, found something better and handed my notice in.

Also, I tried to push for better practices which the other devs loved, but my manager and boss just wouldn't listen and refused any of my input.

There's actually a guy in that workplace who is super nice, but has never been let down like I have so he feels he owes the company everything and won't leave. Whenever he tries, the boss will offer him more pay and then he stays. It's sad, because he deserves so much better. :(

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#146

Post by [deleted] »

mattmanser wrote: post #82
usmeteora wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for saying this. Honestly, probably could have cut a total of four years of waste out of my life by just knowing the company was not a good fit for me. I used to stay at a place and say "Ok, maybe its me, what can I do to put the most effort in, and maybe that will change how upper level toxic management trickles down and fundamentally changes how politics over rule technology and data based decisions, or h…

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 have never regretted it and only feel relief whenever I think about it. I walked straight into another job. If I were to stop freelancing and get a job again, I would just leave it off my CV.

[deleted]

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#147

Post by auserperson »

mattmanser wrote: post #82
usmeteora wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for saying this. Honestly, probably could have cut a total of four years of waste out of my life by just knowing the company was not a good fit for me. I used to stay at a place and say "Ok, maybe its me, what can I do to put the most effort in, and maybe that will change how upper level toxic management trickles down and fundamentally changes how politics over rule technology and data based decisions, or h…

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 have never regretted it and only feel relief whenever I think about it. I walked straight into another job. If I were to stop freelancing and get a job again, I would just leave it off my CV.

I had to do this too.... Was in a job where they were misogynistic an had to quit. I leave out of my CV.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#148

Post by mindcrime »

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.

Interesting, I'd never heard that before. Could you possibly expand on that?

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#149

Post by crpatino »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #10
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.

> If you are hiring and then firing junior people fast, you are the problem. I'm going to challenge this point of view. It is absolutely, and obviously, expected that junior people have a ton to learn, and they should be given leeway for that learning process. So yes, if you fire a junior person because you're not willing to put in the mentorship necessary, then I agree, you are the problem. However, junior people re…

The keyword here is that GP never said "if you do fire junior people", but "if you are firing junior people". The later implies a recurrent pattern of behavior and, unless you want to argue that an unknown factor beyond your control has been sending a disproportionate amount of bad apples your way, it is ultimately your problem.

Most common causes I can think for this problem are: an indiscriminate hiring process that fails to keep out poor candidates, either defective operations or hostile work environment that results in excesive burn out rates for employees, irrational expectations from management teams (specially founders who struggle to make the transition to later stage startups).

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#150

Post by usmeteora »

michaelbrooks wrote: post #145
afpx wrote: post #24

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 bec…

It's odd, because my first two dev jobs I had to be let go. First time was due to them needing someone of senior skill yet paying for a junior salary and let me go after just 3 weeks, and the other due to money running low and let me go after a year of working for them. This taught me that businesses are out for themselves no matter how nice the people are. It then taught me that if I don't like somewhere, I will jus…

yup, basically kept getting increases in pay (but not promotions or authority to change the situation I was in for the better) to stay.

Don't take the bait.

it's an admission that they know you are more valuable than you are being treated, and an acknowledgement that your misery in the situation is not going to change, which is exactly why they are hoping you will be ok with continued frustration in lieu of more money.

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