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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)

#201

Post by at-fates-hands »

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…

Used to work sales for a large corporation. One of the fun things the women did on our team was decorate our cubicles when people had birthdays. One morning they were laughing and having a good time decorating of the sales guys cubicle.

Their manager walked by and said rather flippantly, "I wouldn't bother doing that, he won't be here to enjoy it."

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

#202

Post by [deleted] »

JTbane wrote: post #98
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.

[deleted]

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

#203

Post by _moof »

Oof, I feel this. I've made so many dumb mistakes in management gigs, which is normal and just a part of learning any skill, but it's so much more painful when your dumb mistakes are with other people and their jobs. It's not like leaving out a comma where you just feel silly for a second, recompile, and immediately triumph and move on. No, now your mistakes hurt other people's feelings, create awkwardness, diminish morale... although the upside is that if you can deal with your mistakes skillfully, you (somewhat paradoxically) end up strengthening relationships and your team. But jeez, becoming a new manager is an act of serious courage and humility. (And if it doesn't feel that way at first, it will soon whether you like it or not!)

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

#204

Post by ashtonkem »

mgkimsal wrote: post #37
checkyoursudo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a person who started joking about leaving if they gave him a pile of money and showed him the door. He was super valuable to the company and very senior. New CEO and VPs come in and start demanding cuts. A couple of months later, guess who was given a pile of money and shown the door?

Always strange that 'cuts' often involve spending more money. I guess the size of the pile is relevant, and I get that it's offset against potential future cost/commitment. Person X at $100k is given ... $40k to quit now, because it will save company perhaps $260k in the next 2 years. But.. that $40k is coming from somewhere now, no? Maybe some is coming from other folks cut immediately without the big pile of cash?

Generally speaking the payouts I’ve seen amount to about 3-4 months of salary, so the timeline to break even is fairy obvious (less the cost of benefits, which shortens the timeline).

Ditto with layoffs. 2-3 months salary to get rid of employees you can’t afford at the moment is a short payoff compared to salaries, and worth it to salvage some reputation for future hiring.

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

#205

Post by AdrianB1 »

As a manager you are never allowed to forget that:

- different cultures have different meanings for the same things, so you will be misinterpreted lots of times

- most people have no sense of humor, so joking with them is a waste of time

- anything you way will eventually be used against you

It is a very sad world.

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

#206

Post by [deleted] »

worker767424 wrote: post #194
foobarian wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any tips/signs to look out for :-)

Unscheduled one-on-one early in the day, possibly with HR present, and your manager looks incredibly nervous. Take a deep breath, go in, say nothing, sign nothing, demand your last paycheck. The decision has been made, and anything you say only hurts your case if you sue later.

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by emodendroket »

I always laugh when I remember my old manager calling a meeting where he talked about our product not being profitable and us needing to pull out all the stops to fix that, including reducing the headcount, and then being shocked and angry that someone had started a "rumor" about layoffs. He had meant through attrition, but it was a misinterpretation that I think should have been predictable in context. If you're in a position of authority you have to be careful about what messages you send.

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

#208

Post by aeternum »

dgfitz wrote: post #95
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.

It's still not a good practice. Customers do sometimes see log files and when they do it's because things are broken and they're typically not in a good mood.

Perhaps you have a highly orthodox individual as a user, should they be forced to read or even repeat a 'God Damnit' in a log or error message while on the phone with support? Should an atomic-bomb survivor be told that their files were nuked?

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

#209

Post by aaron-santos »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #199
foobarian wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any tips/signs to look out for :-)

If you can keep a bead on the welfare of the department you're working in if its a large corporation. Smaller startups, its usually pretty obvious. My two examples: Worked at a telecom company during the CLEC, deregulation days. Group of private investors devised a scheme whereas they would grow this small existing telecom company and then sell it off to a larger company and make millions. They had about $3M altogeth…

I'll add to the list. Be aware of org/process changes. For example, I was working for a company who had been acquired a couple of years earlier. They were transitioning from analog to digital, but were slower than most competitors and weren't doing too well. One day, there was an announcement that some of the merged sales channels were being un-merged. The writing was on the wall, the business unit was being separated in order to sell it off.

It was an easy few months to find another job, and sure enough a bit later the company was sold to a VC firm and then again to another corp. Things could have been fine for me, but I honestly didn't want to go through the two ownership changes. My lesson? The information usually isn't too hidden, you just have to understand the implications of the emails that you usually pass over.

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

#210

Post by AdrianB1 »

dncornholio wrote: post #73

I think you should be able to joke about literally anything. Context matters though so you should not be doing it all the time or to everyone. But for me personally, almost no joke is too far.

> But for me personally, almost no joke is too far.

That is very rare, unfortunately.

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