Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#471

Post by cwkoss » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 7:48 AM UTC

dav1app wrote: post #403

On my last job, a new manager called me for a meeting on Friday 4PM. I spent the whole month on an extremely stressful project. The meeting was about an app that integrates credit card payments, billets and bank account on a terminal that is going to be available to the general public. The deadline? 11PM of the same day. Final version. From 0 to 100% in 6 hours. I said that it was impossible. He said that I was incap…

Yikes. You should send his boss/ceo/investors a spite email telling the story about how he lost a worker who was working for 1/2 market rate by setting impossible deadlines.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#472

Post by RealityNow » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 7:49 AM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #440

halfer53 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reason I hate about PIP( performance improvement program). They set ridiculous goals for you in very short amount of time that nobody can possibly complete, then fire you on grounds of incompetence. A friend of mine who works in Facebook told me that an employee committed suicide due to the pressure of PIP. I suspect that guy was put into PIP due to poor rating (meet most), then was given a ridicul…

It's a sad story; but PIP is really the pink slip; you take it as an advance notice that you're going to be fired, and start looking for jobs. I've heard stories of people completing PIP programs successfully, but quite honestly, I don't get it. Once you got to that point, you're not a good fit to the team and/or they don't appreciate you. Makes no sense to stay. I could understand staying with the company & switchin…

PIP isn't a pink slip at all companies. I once got a PIP when working at a mid-sized corporation. Fortunately my performance wasn't an issue, they just didn't like that I was frequently late to the daily morning standup (which upper management refused to allow us to reschedule to later in the day despite my insistence), didn't appear attentive in meetings, and was working from home too much. I started coming in to work on time and stopped coding during meetings and they took me off the PIP a couple weeks later.

Of course I took this as a sign to gtfo of the company, so I started applying, left for a massive promotion and 40% raise, and now I work remotely at a company where we only have standup once every couple days and it's not first thing in the morning. Nobody's micromanaging my work schedule or nagging me for not clocking in at a certain time, and I'm making way more money especially since I don't have to live in SF/NYC anymore and pay nearly half my compensation in taxes and cut a third of my paycheck to a landlord. Funny thing is that I'm actually more responsive/available now because I value my job more, enough to enable Slack notifications on my phone and respond asap (within reason). Couldn't be happier.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#473

Post by ninjahatori1 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 7:50 AM UTC

Organization I work for is in experimental phase about what roles would be more efficient, last December I switched to be a DevOps from Software Engineer role, partly because of "Organizational Needs". but now, they want to move all the DevOps into a room extracting them out of their Scrum Teams, and they've asked few guys (including me) to be "Multi-Functional" which I don't get it.

as they're moving backwards from what really DevOps means, I want to move out as I fail to see any outcomes of this move which will turn out to be good for either of us.

also, if I start back up with Development I'll be treated as a Junior developer and will be shoved to work on non-interesting parts of the project.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#474

Post by bontaq » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 7:51 AM UTC

jl2718 wrote: post #320

So many ideas in my head that I really want to be working on, and I can’t seem to separate myself from the mental model of having a set position in a heirarchy, taking confused and/or hostile direction from seemingly arbitrary sources of authority. Some kind of fear, not even financial, more like the idea of getting lost, losing touch, never finding my way back, being abandoned and undesirable, dying alone. And beyon…

There's no need to rationalize the stress, it just is stressful. "Ability to be stressed" doesn't really apply when it's an entirely different thing, with different things making you stressed.

I don't think I found corporate politics funny until I had a pretty good nest-egg of savings built up (nothing crazy, about a year of living expenses).

Your other worries, I would talk to a therapist or at least someone better than me about. A lot of ourselves flows from our jobs, and it sounds likes it's got you.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#475

Post by lazyasciiart » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 7:51 AM UTC

There's a team at my workplace that I think is almost literally making our product worse every time they check in code. They rejected a security fix I made because they didn't want to test it. The manager makes incomprehensible decisions and just blatantly lies about what they are doing. My entire team has a policy of just not interacting with them to avoid problems. How am I supposed to respect the management skills and decision making of execs who keep these people around?

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#476

Post by lazyasciiart » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 7:53 AM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #384

spookyuser wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow thank you so much for this. There's some stuff I've been working on which I want to sync to Dropbox as I type but without the .git being synced too. Up until now I've just had to deal with the .git files being synced with Dropbox. But now it looks like I finally have a way of moving the repo!

If your bosses are concerned about Git, then they will likely have a fit over Dropbox. Get permission first, it is not worth your job.

The Dropbox comment is from a different user.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#477

Post by vast » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 7:55 AM UTC

* three planning layers

* no reasonable reaction on devastating feedback

* purely numbers driven. Ignoring tech debt and creativity

* no new recruits in years

* not honoring experienced programmers

* no working creative process to bring the product to the next level

* naive and reactional cargo culting

I have great colleagues. Workload is usually fine, except too many topic on the table. We have quite a lot freedom how to handle things, but not so much about the what. Our tech management is quite horrible. The top manager has unsolved conflicts with the majority of coders. Mostly because he has no idea about tech and never gives reasonable feedback. Fluctuation is currently extreme and I will be leaving soon with only 2 tech people remaining that have been there long term.

Our company has the potential to break the 1bn threshold next decade, just to give an idea about the scale.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#478

Post by rovr138 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 7:59 AM UTC

sAbakumoff wrote: post #442

dav1app wrote: post #403

On my last job, a new manager called me for a meeting on Friday 4PM. I spent the whole month on an extremely stressful project. The meeting was about an app that integrates credit card payments, billets and bank account on a terminal that is going to be available to the general public. The deadline? 11PM of the same day. Final version. From 0 to 100% in 6 hours. I said that it was impossible. He said that I was incap…

what kind of company takes 1 morning to fire an employee? that does not sound realistic.

Maybe they needed or wanted a reason to fire them. If that’s the case, it was all ready to go on HR.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#479

Post by rovr138 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 7:59 AM UTC

dav1app wrote: post #403

On my last job, a new manager called me for a meeting on Friday 4PM. I spent the whole month on an extremely stressful project. The meeting was about an app that integrates credit card payments, billets and bank account on a terminal that is going to be available to the general public. The deadline? 11PM of the same day. Final version. From 0 to 100% in 6 hours. I said that it was impossible. He said that I was incap…

Glad you got out and best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#480

Post by tallanvor » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 8:00 AM UTC

guitarbill wrote: post #448

tallanvor wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for Facebook, but I know that in some companies, it really is possible for individual contributers to successfully complete a PIP. I've known at least 3 coworkers at my workplace who have been put on PIPs. They were given realistic expectations that didn't require them to work 50+ hours per week, and they completed the plans successfully. Of course, a manager who's put on a plan is generally gone in a f…

that just seems weird though. for it to get to the point of a PIP being necessary, a lot has had to gone wrong until then. feels like it's a blunt instrument, used when usual communication has almost broken down. are expectations not normally discussed more informally in regular 1:1s already? i do know people who have successfully completed PIPs and stayed. but every person who's taken the PIP as a signal to look for…

In one example, I think the poor management was with a previous manager who allowed the person to get away with not performing at the level that he should have been. When that manager finally left, it took a PIP for the guy to understand that the new manager expected better performance, and that was after months of warnings.