Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020) • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by myohmy » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

anon7725 wrote: post #134

jagtesh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I do that sometimes. I'm being 100% serious.

I get bureaucrats talk about building slow and expensive process controls to prevent someone from doing something stupid. I counter with the fact that we don't need the controls because my employees know I will simply fire the person if they do it.

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

#222

Post by ponow » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

wefarrell wrote: post #88

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.

"Always punch up, never punch down"

What about, "do no wrong"?

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

#223

Post by pseudalopex » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #164

jameshart wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firing someone is the worst experience ever I mean... yeah, it sucks, but have you tried being fired ?

Being laid off is terrible. Getting fired is like a divorce -- it usually comes at the end of a long or intensely bad experience.

Is that based on the idea fired means for cause and laid off means not? Many people and jurisdictions say fired includes both.

The end of an intensely bad experience can be the beginning of another.

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

#224

Post by munchbunny » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

ipnon wrote: post #177

tailspin2019 wrote: post #4

No one told me this prior to becoming a manager, and I did make this mistake once and immediately regretted it. It seems like obvious advice, but the circumstances where this sort of thing could happen are described very well in the article. I revert to humour in awkward situations, like a lot of people, but I quickly realised that there are some things that you can’t joke about when in this position. Thankfully I do…

You should be all business at work. It is your job after all. Work parties then become hilarious because all the humor is saved for special occasions.

I disagree - humor is really useful as a communication tool. If you are naturally inclined towards humor, don't suppress it entirely. I've found it useful once in a blue moon to indirectly make the point everyone is thinking but nobody wants to acknowledge. But more generally I've found it useful to put people at ease at the start of a meeting where I need people sharing ideas and feedback.

In my experience, there are two types of humor that should be avoided, which I learned the hard way:

* Punching down (including joking about doing harm from a position of power)

* Sarcasm/cynicism in public channels, especially when it's directed at specific people/teams.

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

#225

Post by EasyTiger_ » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #192

EasyTiger_ wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How incredibly insensitive.

Maybe if they knew ahead of time, but they didn't, so it was just a joke, and in no conceivable way an insensitive one.

Being called to the manager's office is stress-inducing for most people and presumably the person was having issues in their role beforehand and was expecting something serious. To make a joke about such things is beyond callous.

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

#226

Post by vincentmarle » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

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…

> 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 if they notify me in advance. This is because in a fully remote companies there are not office hours and it's very hard to define what's work and what's not.

> I'm a single founder software engineer growing a team and having to deal with management for the first time. I'm unsure of most of my decisions. If you have some advice that you can give me in a kind fashion without making me feel even more inadequate that I already do it might help me become a better manager.

My feedback: drop the terrible policy. It's not legal in California for a reason.

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

#227

Post by RobertKerans » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

worker767424 wrote: post #188

ransom1538 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It happened to me. The only signs leading up to it were asking me to use a project management tracker a few weeks before and my manager asking me a month before if I was happy working on the project I was on. My output wasn't great, so I wasn't shocked, but I'd gotten so little feedback about it that I assumed that low output was normal. It was a small company, and they person doing HR said they had no idea it was go…

Aye very similar at my last job -- got asked a month before that if I was happy, then got given a task with a slightly weird vibe about it that noone except the CTO (also my direct manager and the HR, was small company...) seemed to know I was doing. Same amount of time for me as well, 9 months. My output wasn't great either (I'd made an error taking the job, ignoring a series of red flags the CTO was waving in front of me in favour of getting experience with a specific tech stack, which was stupid, and I p much hated my life by that point). Place had done random firings before though (designer and a business support were in one day, gone the next), so not surprised, but hey ho.

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

#228

Post by bradlys » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

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.

There are so many jokes we make everyday that are about dying or experiencing something unpleasant that it's not reasonable to put up such a barrier. You're basically saying, "NO JOKES!"

You lost the statistical battle but most people will never encounter this scenario. We all encounter scenarios where we make a joke without knowing X person is going through that. You learn and adjust. For instance, I couldn't make jokes or references about cancer with a partner of mine because one of her friends died at like 17 to lung cancer. I was like, "Oh, alright. I get it. I'll avoid that with you."

You don't need to be disbarred from ever making the joke again just because you encountered someone who is sensitive to it. You just don't use that kind of joke with them.

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

#229

Post by redshirtrob » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #155

indigochill wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a couple of mass layoffs. How much you see that coming can be a function of how close to the decision-making you are and how familiar you are with the process. As I've advanced, I've progressively seen it coming farther out. But the first one was totally out of the blue to me. Individual firings seem a bit more predictable.

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

I've seen a couple mass layoffs. I survived one, but did not survive the next one a few years later.

This is very general advice and you need to correlate it with other events, but it's been a pretty strong indicator something was up: Keep an eye on your manager's priorities especially if they shift in a ways you can't explain.

One example from early in my career: Our manager abruptly became much less interested in product status and overall progress. To his credit he scheduled a call (we were a remote office) a couple weeks later in which he said the following: "Commit your code. Ignore all policies and procedures. Work at your own pace."

We suspected as much, but that call was the confirmation. Ironically, the organization was so large, and the layoffs so huge, they had to arrange financing just to complete the layoffs. This led to a one to two month period where we were employed, but had nothing to do. It was really weird. Generally we'd come to the office, play a bit of Half-Life, then adjourn to my friend's basement to work on the BattleBot we were building.

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

#230

Post by wizzwizz4 » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #228

3pt14159 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are so many jokes we make everyday that are about dying or experiencing something unpleasant that it's not reasonable to put up such a barrier. You're basically saying, "NO JOKES!" You lost the statistical battle but most people will never encounter this scenario. We all encounter scenarios where we make a joke without knowing X person is going through that. You learn and adjust. For instance, I couldn't make j…

I tend to go the “make sure everyone is okay with that kind of joke first”, but there's very little practical difference between the results of these two strategies.