Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

staysaasy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 278 posts

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

#131

Post by spoonjim »

3pt14159 wrote: post #99
mrosett wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I saw someone do that to a man who I knew (but he didn’t) had lost his teenage son to a suicide by firearm two days earlier. They hadn’t even had the funeral yet.

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

#132

Post by ketzo »

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.

The other comments are talking about the American-ness of the firing, so I will also say that this is (in my mind) a particularly American brand of humor.

It's very, very standard for people to make sarcastic/ironic/teasing jokes in this vein as a way of trying to break tension or lighten the mood.

Not really what you asked, but maybe relevant.

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

#133

Post by binarytox1n »

some_random wrote: post #117

Here's another one that's a bit less obvious: anytime you're scheduling a 1x1 with a report, ALWAYS mention the reason for the meeting. You might think it's obvious or that it's just a normal meeting, but you have no idea how the other person will take it.

To expand - every meeting should have a clear agenda that is communicated beforehand. How can anyone expect to be prepared for a meeting if they don't even know what it's about? Spend the 60 seconds it takes to put a description on your meeting request.

Signed, someone who works at a company with a culture of sending blank meeting invites

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

#134

Post by anon7725 »

jagtesh wrote: post #21
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.

Good general advice. Had a manager who would say to folks “you won’t get fired for xyz”. Even the mention of firing made the environment unpleasant. Now I fully appreciate how words can have a profound effect on morale.

There is a person in my management chain who makes occasional references to being fired along the lines of “If someone did X they’d be instantly let go.” I find that it makes for an uncomfortable work environment - I’ve never heard managers speak this way before. To be clear, I am not speaking about some bright-line issue that comes up in required training.

It makes me think that they are a weak “rules lawyer” type, who are more interested in always having plausible deniability/coverage of their own ass than actually leading their team.

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

#135

Post by jon-wood »

giorgioz wrote: post #106
zcw100 wrote: post #15

Ok, that's nice. I'm sure some people do it carelessly but lets at least be honest and acknowledge that many also do it deliberately. It's an easy and cowardly way to assert your dominance. If you get called out on it, and you won't, you'll just say you were joking. When you're not called out on it it's a easy way of reminding people that you can do it. Maybe not now but maybe in the future when you're not feeling so…

I have been mentioning in interviews that I had to fire an employee. It was very hard for me to fire the person and I really do not wish to have to repeat that experience so I try to warn the candidates. Backstory: Our company is fully remote. One of the clause on the contract of each employee is no moonlighting. They are not allowed to work on anything else professionally. They can work on personal software project…

Since you've explicitly asked for advice, the only way to assess remote employees is by what they're delivering. If you employ them for 40 hours a week, but they can deliver what you're asking in 5 and still be responsive when needed, is there really a problem?

If they're also doing another job on the side, but it isn't impacting their delivery of the work you're asking for, that shouldn't be a problem. By doing away with a (largely unenforceable) policy of no moonlighting you also avoid the problem of having to fire people for breaching it.

I'm borderline on whether Alice here was even at fault. She is likely in breach of her contract for several other things, I assume there's a routine NDA in place which probably means that she shouldn't be sharing confidential company information with outside parties, but if not and she was getting work delivered is it really a problem if she did so by being good at project management rather than software development?

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

#136

Post by gumby »

MrGilbert wrote: post #89
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…

3 years ago, I had a talk with the Chief Senior Physician of the hospital my mum was treated. She was terminally ill, she was fightiing for weeks, but there was no hope left. So it was decided to end all life support measures. When I went back to my car, where my then-minor sister was waiting for news, I said: "Sie hat es geschafft.", which literally means "She made it" in German - however, I meant it in the meaning…

I had the same experience, also in German, when I told my 7 yo son that his grandmother (who had been fighting cancer for a few years) “no longer suffering”. He was at first happy. He’s most likely forgotten but that experience will stay with me for the rest of my life.

In this case it was a euphemism an adult would have understood but a child could not, at least as the first statement.

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

#137

Post by dustintrex »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #125
dustintrex wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any remotely sane company, HR does what management says. The manager may well be replaced, but it's the manager's manager or someone even higher in the food chain who makes that call, not HR on their own.

HR has their own obligations to the people they report to. If they can't justify the manager's suggestion without sticking their necks out to a degree they're comfortable with they probably won't. They'll mostly side with the manager (because selection bias, not a lot of managers are bringing them cases of people they want fired where that outcome is not compatible with the processes) but may very well tell a manager…

I don't think we're disagreeing here? Of course HR can and will push back if (say) firing somebody without proper CYA could result in a lawsuit, but the point is that HR is not the one initiating any firing -- that has to come from management.

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

#138

Post by PeterisP »

thebean11 wrote: post #121
PeterisP wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In what world would that be better? I manager tries to fire a bad performer and now the org is down a manager and keeps a bad IC?

In general, in larger organizations with formal processes, HR would look into the situation instead of simply accepting the manager's assertion about someone being a bad performer.

For example, it may be quite clear even from externally looking at other reports (e.g. data from "360-degree reviews" or whatever internal evaluation process the corporation uses) that the consensus around the team is that the person is not a bad performer, but that the team lead has had recorded "problems with cooperation" - in that case, escalating the conflict with an IC to HR may easily be the breaking point that causes the team lead to be removed.

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

#139

Post by gumby »

etblg wrote: post #92
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.

Since he’s still there, he’s probably long shrugged it off but as you haven’t you could consider bringing it up. I doubt it would make him feel any better (or worse) but might make you feel better. And if he laughs it off it might really be a relief to you.

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

#140

Post by yardie »

FreezerburnV wrote: post #114
PeterisP wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure I've ever heard a story where a manager attempts to fire someone, but HR decides to replace the manager instead. Is that something you've seen? I only hear stories about managers being protected as hard as possible by HR.

I've seen it only once. One manager, not in my department, had a high turnover. Staff were either fired, quit, or transfered. Senior management eventually stepped in and discovered this guy was pretty toxic. But they couldn't simply fire him. Since he was well-connected in the industry they gave him time to find another senior position.
Post reply on HN