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Fired

zachholman.com

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Re: Fired

#91

Post by lchengify »

Re: Zach's COBRA question.

For those who don't know, COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) is a law passed in 1985 [1] that compels companies to offer "continuing health insurance" to employees that leave the company for any reason other than "gross misconduct".

Basically it means that you can pay the company directly for your employer's health plan for a period of time, typically 18 months. The out-of-pocket will be more expensive, because your employer probably covered some of the premium cost. However, the premium as a whole is often cheaper than "individual coverage", since the company negotiates lower premiums with the insurance company.

The company will typically mail you the form to fill out. It's pretty short, basically just a "opt-in" box to continue getting health insurance through the company's plan.

One important detail: depending on your employer, health coverage probably ends on the last day of employment or the immediate end of the next month. However if something happens between you leaving and you filling out the form, COBRA still covers you because the law states that as long as you sign up within 60 days, it's "retroactive back to the event", the event being you leaving [2]. This covers the case of a catastrophe happening in the gap, e.g., getting hit by a car between the event and you mailing in the form.

Caveat: IANAL, so always check with a legal professional when evaluating these options. But COBRA is generally a useful thing and I typically recommend people take it unless they have another gig lined up already.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Omnibus_Budget_Rec...

[2] http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq-consumer-cobra.html

Re: Fired

#93

Post by tomjen3 »

sridca wrote: post #11

Back in December 2012, Julie Horvath expressed her desire to have Zach fired. I wonder if these two incidents are actually related. @Holman is my ex-partner. He was complicit in the actions of both Tom and Theresa Preston-Werner and even admitted to plotting with Theresa Preston-Werner to get women at the company fired. He should be let go from GitHub and I regret being kind to him in previous interviews. http://vall…

Honestly that is a valley vag article. They are not exactly the New York Times of tech journalism - more like all the gossip that we can turn into click bait than all the news fit to print - so I would appreciate another source.

Re: Fired

#94

Post by pbiggar »

MCRed wrote: post #44

Incompetent management is a plague on the industry. And the cause of it is that programmers are relatively low status. In so many businesses, there are "business guys" who end up managing the engineering staff-- at one level or another, but too often it's the direct manager role--and these business guys are incompetent at engineering. When you don't know whether a direct report is doing good or not because you don't…

It sounds like you're implying that GitHub has "incompetent management" where "people mananger are biz guys who don't understand engineering".

However, Zach doesn't appear to say any of these things, so it seems a pretty unfair implication to make.

Re: Fired

#95

Post by ianlevesque »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #80
davidu wrote: post #41

There are people who were at OpenDNS in the early days who were incredible, and as we grew, became less and less incredible, largely because the things that made them incredible actually started to be really frustrating as the company grew and they didn't want to change those things. So they had to leave. Usually it was a series of conversations about how the person, their peers, and the company were all unhappy, and…

> Finally -- For what it's worth, people are fired all the time ( as I have been ) for all kinds of reasons, and so it's not a reason not to hire someone. Professional hiring managers know this. What terrifies me about being fired is: * I have a family to support, and even though we're well off enough to have a 6-12 month cushion, I've seen job markets where it takes longer than that you get hired * The number of unp…

> you can do everything right and still get fired

And that's why much of the world has a social safety net.

Re: Fired

#96

Post by davidw »

MCRed wrote: post #62
wongarsu wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's the part of being fired you usually don't discuss publicly. It always makes somebody look bad and nobody wants to burn bridges

But part of the problem is that in a meritocracy you need people to know who the bad actors are. It seems pretty obvious from outside Github that something has gone rotten in the company over the past couple of years, and the is the latest of the smells. Now any one of us could end up hiring that rotten apple from github in the future, if we don't know who it is. Of course you don't want to slander or libel people, b…

It's pretty rare that someone really gets what's coming to them.

This dude created some serious problems where I worked 15 years ago, and yet he still keeps getting hired:

http://www.advogato.org/proj/DougNassaurWatch/

http://www.suncapinc.com/Doug_Nassaur.htm

Re: Fired

#97

Post by [deleted] »

davidu wrote: post #41

There are people who were at OpenDNS in the early days who were incredible, and as we grew, became less and less incredible, largely because the things that made them incredible actually started to be really frustrating as the company grew and they didn't want to change those things. So they had to leave. Usually it was a series of conversations about how the person, their peers, and the company were all unhappy, and…

[deleted]

Re: Fired

#99

Post by toomuchtodo »

ianlevesque wrote: post #95
toomuchtodo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finally -- For what it's worth, people are fired all the time ( as I have been ) for all kinds of reasons, and so it's not a reason not to hire someone. Professional hiring managers know this. What terrifies me about being fired is: * I have a family to support, and even though we're well off enough to have a 6-12 month cushion, I've seen job markets where it takes longer than that you get hired * The number of unp…

> you can do everything right and still get fired And that's why much of the world has a social safety net.

I don't disagree. As a US citizen, I pine for the social safety nets in Canada and Europe. I'm playing the hand I was dealt.

Re: Fired

#100

Post by crusso »

rcoder wrote: post #82
MCRed wrote: post #44

Incompetent management is a plague on the industry. And the cause of it is that programmers are relatively low status. In so many businesses, there are "business guys" who end up managing the engineering staff-- at one level or another, but too often it's the direct manager role--and these business guys are incompetent at engineering. When you don't know whether a direct report is doing good or not because you don't…

While I agree with the basic tenet that experienced developers make better direct managers for other developers, I strongly disagree that "any programmer can do it", or that "biz guys can't learn programming", much less the assertion that "business" is somehow trivially easy compared to coding. Doing a good job as a manager is hard . You need to triangulate between a lot of disparate opinions and viewpoints, negotiat…

"toxic" is such a great word in this context. I've seen this kind of disrespect for other parts of the organization take down a small company that was otherwise performing just fine.
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