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)

#241

Post by a1369209993 » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #191

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.

> the only reason I had to fire someone was because WE screwed up in the interview process. Are you referring to some clerical error or is this assuming that candidates are only as good as they are at interview time and they're incapable of stepping up to the unexpected demands of a role?

> or is this assuming that candidates are only as good as they are at interview time

I'd assume they meant the opposite: candidates are at least as good as they are at interview time, so if they're not capable of filling the role, that ought to be obvious in a properly-done interview.

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

#242

Post by beerandt » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 7:01 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…

This will vary by person...

But for me at least, it's worse when someone changes what they were going to say to try and avoid a topic they know might be sensitive to you, especially if it was in otherwise "innocent", organic conversation.

For instance, changing a joke with a cancer punchline to something else, on the fly, because halfway into it you realize it's going to offend one of the people present. Who certainly has already heard it, and knows what's coming.

Now, not only have you reminded the person of what you were trying to avoid, but you've also created this awkward tension where you-know that they-know, but have to pretend you don't know, because of the social "gesture" of changing their joke for you. Even if the fact that they're coddling you negates that gesture and then some.

The more extreme example of this is the scenario where kids in school are sharing stories about, eg, their mom or dad, and when you get to the orphan, you either skip over them, or ask them a completely different question than everyone else, without acknowledging and explaining why.

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

#243

Post by grillvogel » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 7:18 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 :-)

when the free coffee stops being free (for upcoming mass layoffs)

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

#244

Post by tomrod » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

fighterpilot wrote: post #151

tomrod wrote: post #3

Extremely important advice. Add to that: push upper management for change details, keep timelines and punctuality, define delivery, be up front on status and results, go home at a reasonable hour, take people to lunch or otherwise spend time with them, make your team appointments your number one priority, and praise publicly/coach privately.

What do you mean by "change details"?

Often policies get set in place and in motion before they filter down, and impact is not understood.

Either communicating the course, or if upper management fails in their duties, charting the course and communicating, is essential.

For example, "we will deprecate this technology by XX date, and we have cleared the path to enable this" is often essential to success. In a healthy org, telling people what you're doing, how you're doing it, and why you're doing it is as necessary as when you're doing it.

Just like you don't want to release every feature all at once, you similarly don't want to muck up your infrastructure (physical or business).

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

#245

Post by nceasy » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

the cofounder did a joke like that to me and I must say it was one of those shit moments of being an employee. I hate everytime i need to engage with him since then.

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

#246

Post by andrewaylett » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #163

michaelt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. True but note in the US this isn’t for the same reasons that happens in (for example) Europe. Big companies are better to sue than small companies (they have more money) and were you really fired because you never got any work done or because your manager simply d…

A personal improvement plan is not a fun thing to be on :(.

That said, I do wonder how much the perception of them is skewed by their lack of visibility -- of the cases where I have been aware of a PIP, the only one which was had any real visibility in the wider org was the one where the person ended up leaving the company.

It's entirely plausible that my employer is one of the better ones, though. And even then, I've seen (what appeared to me to be) abuses. One of the things that can come out of a manager putting someone on a PIP is that it's actually the manager who is in the wrong. It takes a good HR team to recognise that, though.

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

#247

Post by andrewaylett » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

ludamad wrote: post #83

pantulis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is truly a mistake. I did adopt the pose of the bastard boss in a tongue-in-cheek fashion (for example breaking a printed vacation request) and never got nothing but a good laugh in response. But this is toxic behaviour an in a multicultural environment can be damaging to the team and personally devastating. Just don't.

It's awkward to LARP that it is all at your whim - because at some point someone will ask too much in a vacation request and you do suddenly need to explain the factors very not much in your control (before proceeding to then rip up their request, of course ;))

I've only ever once been denied a request for annual leave, and I don't recall anyone I've told the story of that to ever having had a similar experience.

One place I worked had spelled out explicitly in the employee handbook that "if you want to take more than three weeks off consecutively, please give us at least two weeks' notice". They also discouraged people from scheduling holidays to accommodate deadlines on the basis that the deadline was probably going to shift, so it wouldn't help.

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

#248

Post by JohnFen » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

lb1lf wrote: post #178

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 ?

-I've tried both, and by a wide margin the worst was firing someone. (Doubly so as I was a low-level manager in a very hierarchical organisation, so I had little to no sway on who got the boot and not - I was basically handed a list over the employees who were to be fired and told to get on with it. That was the hardest bit - I wasn't even able to tell them WHY they had been selected over others as I had no idea. The…

> I've tried both, and by a wide margin the worst was firing someone.

I've done both as well, and I agree. I'll take getting fired any day of the week over having to fire someone.

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

#249

Post by JohnFen » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

edgriebel wrote: post #190

lb1lf wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-I've tried both, and by a wide margin the worst was firing someone. (Doubly so as I was a low-level manager in a very hierarchical organisation, so I had little to no sway on who got the boot and not - I was basically handed a list over the employees who were to be fired and told to get on with it. That was the hardest bit - I wasn't even able to tell them WHY they had been selected over others as I had no idea. The…

I get that there's a lot of anxiety involved in firing someone. But at the end of the day (lol) you still have an office to go to tomorrow, they don't. Source: Been on the receiving end of 2 layoffs (dot-bomb and covid), it _reeeaaaallllyyyy_ sucks to be fired in a down market, like "how am I going to feed my family, how much is in the bank, and when is the mortgage/rent due" level of suckage.

Yes, you still have a job. But you also have the knowledge that (even though it probably wasn't your fault), you just turned someone else's life upside-down, and you have no power to do anything about that. The person who was fired will probably get resolution in the form of a job somewhere else, but you'll rarely ever get to share in that resolution.

To clarify, the person losing their job has the bigger problem and are worse off. But the person doing the firing pays a cost as well, and between the two, getting fired is easier for me to handle than firing someone.

Layoffs are probably a little different because they're less personal, but I've not experienced those, so I don't know.

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

#250

Post by 3pt14159 » Mon, Sep 20, 2021, 7:54 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'm not against dark humour, I think it's grand, actually, and helps us get through trouble. But I think there is a difference between someone putting up a sincere joke and someone in their twenties at the workplace. I'm not Mr. PC Police, but when I put myself in the shoes of someone else that may have lost a loved one in that manner it really shook me.

Suicide isn't so rare that we should avoid making affordances where we can. And even so, a true comic like Dave Chappelle can create real human even on dark subjects at the same time. It's a balance.