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Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

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Re: Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

#91

Post by ziml77 »

macksd wrote: post #71
wccrawford wrote: post #49

Likewise, don't attempt to comfort people about their position when you don't actually know how likely they are to get fired. I knew someone who had done this and the person was fired that day . I'm sure he believed it, too, or he wouldn't have said it. But he apparently didn't have all the facts. He regrets saying it and told the story a few times while I worked with him. On the flip side, I worked with someone who…

Yep - a guy I shared an office with walked in and told me he had been wondering if he was going to get laid off. I comforted him and told him that I couldn't see why there would be lay-offs - we had tons of work to do. He picked up everything off his desk and walked out. Turned out he had just been fired, but he had been told it was a lay off to soften the blow. I actually thought he should be fired but the problem h…

If he told you that he was worried about being fired, then you made the right choice of what to say. Imagine if you'd just shrugged. The only reason you'd respond that way instead of in a comforting way is if you thought there actually was a chance he'd be fired. He'd certainly realize after getting fired that you expected it and that because of that you must not think highly of him.

Re: Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

#92

Post by etblg »

simias wrote: post #6

That's excellent advice that many have learned the hard way... Honestly even as a non-manager it's a very bad idea. When I was a junior one of my colleagues was called to the manager's office. I assumed it would be for some mundane project scheduling or whatever, so I jokingly said "you're getting fired" as he was going there. And he was. This is one of these memories that come back to haunt you late at night when yo…

I did the same thing to someone after they just joined, figured it'd just come off as a joke and no harm would be done. Pretty soon in the following conversation I got the nagging feeling that it didn't come off as a joke.

I still feel terrible about that to the day, and that guy's been working here for years now.

Re: Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

#93

Post by PeterisP »

dfxm12 wrote: post #44
terramex wrote: post #11

As a more general advice - person in position of power should not joke about causing harm. Whether is is manager joking about firing employee, stronger person joking about beating up weaker one or parent joking about throwing child out of house when they misbehave. This kind of humor works only when it is coming from weaker position and even then only in certain situations.

The weird thing is, in my experience, a lot of managers don't see themselves as having power, or at least, aren't willing to use that power for others. Bad managers who don't go to bat for their reports, who joke about firing you while forgetting they can actually fire you, not helping advance your career in any way, etc.

I think that's the key dissonance here - that from the perspective of employees (which it looks like you're channeling here) managers have the power to fire people so it sounds like a real threat, but from the perspective of managers it's just making a fictional exaggeration because they know that they don't really have the power to unilaterally fire anyone without an excessive reason - in most organizations, unless they're the founder-CEO of a small company. They have been delegated some day-to-day administrative power from the corporation and HR with respect to their team, they have a voice and vote for hiring and firing, but they don't often have a veto vote for saying who is or isn't going to be in the team they have been assigned to manage.

Not helping you advance or making your life difficult, yes, managers can do that, but in general in all the organizations I've seen (in IT corps and finance; perhaps industries like e.g. fast food are very different) if a manager would really want to get rid of someone, it would take them months of "political effort" to try and do so (and they might still fail), because they really did not have that power to just fire someone.

Re: Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

#94

Post by gargs »

At one of my previous jobs, managers would leak information about potentially not renewing contracts as 'person X has decided to quit'.

It used to be quite awkward to meet person X at a bar and ask them why they were changing their job when this was the first time they heard about it.

Turns out that toxification of workplace is better at getting rid of people than going about it legally.

Re: Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

#95

Post by dgfitz »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #62

My advice for new programmers: Don't use expletives in any log message, debugging alert, or even code comments. The chance of this coming back to haunt you is not worth the momentary satisfaction it gives you.

You ever grep the linux codebase for expletives? Give it a shot some time.

I wouldn't make it at a company that frowns upon a 'God Damnit' in a log message.

Re: Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

#96

Post by ransom1538 »

simias wrote: post #6

That's excellent advice that many have learned the hard way... Honestly even as a non-manager it's a very bad idea. When I was a junior one of my colleagues was called to the manager's office. I assumed it would be for some mundane project scheduling or whatever, so I jokingly said "you're getting fired" as he was going there. And he was. This is one of these memories that come back to haunt you late at night when yo…

Off topic. Do firings come out of the blue though? I was a VP for a while (not anymore) - but when the person I had to fire was about to get fired, they KNEW it as soon as the door opened. Firing someone is the worst experience ever - the only reason I had to fire someone was because WE screwed up in the interview process.

Re: Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

#97

Post by PeterisP »

michaelt wrote: post #40
stevage wrote: post #14

It's weird, I have worked at many organisations - and at almost none of them did my manager have the ability to fire me. Is this an American thing? In most of these orgs, getting rid of someone is kind of hard work, usually involving a lot of HR. A manager would have much more luck getting you moved to a different team.

In medium/large companies, 99.9% of employees can be fired at the end of a HR process and that HR process is something only their line manager can start. And while transferring an inept employee to another manager might save you some paperwork, it'll make that manager an enemy (unless the employee's performance is much improved by the move). So many managers would do the paperwork.

From the perspective of that HR process, they generally care about the employee as much (or as little) as about that manager. A manager may start some process, but HR might as well consider that it's better (or easier?) for the organization to replace that manager instead of replacing that individual contributor.

Re: Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

#98

Post by JTbane »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #62

My advice for new programmers: Don't use expletives in any log message, debugging alert, or even code comments. The chance of this coming back to haunt you is not worth the momentary satisfaction it gives you.

This is good advice, I was in an interview and was asked why "add the X shit" appeared in one of my commit messages in my personal github repo.

Re: Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

#99

Post by 3pt14159 »

mrosett wrote: post #77
simias wrote: post #6

That's excellent advice that many have learned the hard way... Honestly even as a non-manager it's a very bad idea. When I was a junior one of my colleagues was called to the manager's office. I assumed it would be for some mundane project scheduling or whatever, so I jokingly said "you're getting fired" as he was going there. And he was. This is one of these memories that come back to haunt you late at night when yo…

I once had a friend uncharacteristically not respond to a couple texts confirming plans we'd made. I eventually sent "Are you alive?" and got a call back from the hiking companion who had watched her fall to her death two days earlier. That one gives me nightmares.

Yikes I'm sorry. In my early twenties I'd jokingly do the "finger gun to the head" thing when I got a task I wasn't pleased about.

Then my cousin died by suicide and, being my first encounter with suicide in the real world, it dawned on me that doing that in front of people was super, super not cool. I'll never know if I did that in front of someone that had lost a loved one to suicide via firearm.

Re: Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

#100

Post by mrtksn »

terramex wrote: post #11

As a more general advice - person in position of power should not joke about causing harm. Whether is is manager joking about firing employee, stronger person joking about beating up weaker one or parent joking about throwing child out of house when they misbehave. This kind of humor works only when it is coming from weaker position and even then only in certain situations.

Yep, position of power implies relationship structure that brings completely different social dynamics than the equals. That’s also the exact same dynamics that makes something abuse or not abuse. The recent “Me too” movement was essentially based on it. I’m sure there could be another kind of “Me too” movement that’s not sexual but business or career centric.
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