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Fired

zachholman.com

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Re: Fired

#101

Post by rday »

crusso wrote: post #84
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…

The real tragedy is, learning business is not hard. Any programmer can do it. As a person who's switched back and forth between the technical person, the manager, and the business developer - I can tell you that all of the roles in the company take skill to do properly.

I agree. All the roles are hard to master.

Why have I, in the past 5 years, learned a tremendous amount about markets, equity, accounting, law, pricing, and I don't even know what else. But the business masters (all of them) I've been working with still can't update a webpage?

Just one person's experience, I know. But it's still funny to me.

Re: Fired

#102

Post by Dylan16807 »

_bfhp wrote: post #71
crazypyro wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So we get a sort of intellectual dishonesty we see regularly from politicians: deep philosophical musings to surround a quick sweep-under-the-rug of the actual issue. You are speculating here that he is pushing the issue under the rug. You also speculated that the reason he was fired was somehow related to the humorous reasons he gave. I think its a bit much....

For the first thing, I am noting the actual possibility. Whether he is, I don't know, but he in fact could be, and if he were, a lot of people wouldn't catch it unless it was pointed out. I did no such thing as the second thing you're saying I did.

The way you're calling the sentence a "very important one" is making a really vague accusation. No surprise if people can't tell what you mean, or think your point is a bad one.

Re: Fired

#103

Post by hga »

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…

GitHub is very explicitly no longer a meritocracy: http://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocra...

And per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158997 the same Julie Ann Horvath was both his ex and wanted him fired.

Re: Fired

#104

Post by protomyth »

UK-AL wrote: post #78
Touche wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Getting fired" implies you did something really wrong, which makes you less desirable of a hire. It really depends if we are conflating "getting fired" with "laid off". The latter is not bad. When I hear that someone got fired it usually means they did something like break a big HR rule or caused the company to lose an important account.

I've known people who have gotten fired, and have gotten fired. 70% of the time, its politics. Basically I found out the founder of the company had been lying to me as a early hire, and I asked about it and wanted it fixed. And suddenly performance reviews went extremely negative. Stuff like that is why people get fired. Lesson Learned: Always get it written in a contact, don't trust verbal agreements. Companies only…

"70% of the time, its politics." or someone, somewhere can do you job cheaper than you are doing it. "Reduction In Force" is the cute term I heard once.

Re: Fired

#105

Post by cylinder »

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.

We have mandatory unemployment insurance which pays pretty well.

These are well-paid white collar professionals, they should be saving up emergency funds.

I'm more worried about the safety net for low- and mid-income workers, as well as the fact that health insurance is tied to your employment.

Re: Fired

#106

Post by codezero »

JDiculous wrote: post #92

Why is this on the front page? Because he worked at GitHub? What was the point of this?

A lot of people in tech struggle with the frustration of being fired, or potentially being fired. This post helps to relieve some of the stigma associated with that, and coming from someone who very clearly worked hard at a notable company for a number of years, is also a reminder that people change, and companies change. Did you read the post? Is there anything about it that you found detestable?

Re: Fired

#107

Post by [deleted] »

ElComradio wrote: post #53
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

Image is paramount in this meritocracy.

[deleted]

Re: Fired

#108

Post by switch007 »

mrb wrote: post #13

Human nature is really amazing. After the reading the first 4 paragraph I saw his openness and honesty. I felt compassion and trust. And I was already thinking to myself "Zach really looks like a cool guy; if he is skilled I would probably hire him", without attaching any significance whatsoever to the fact he was fired. If you are reading this, Zach, continue to be open, honest, accept your mistakes, show you do lea…

It would have been stupid to write any other kind of blog post. Some (inadvertent?) self-promotion is a good move.

Re: Fired

#110

Post by badloginagain »

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…

I think this is a really good insight, a lot of the problems people in this thread have complained about can be attributed to bad managers. Balancing business requirements and technical requirements is a difficult thing to do, all the while ensuring everyone feels special/validated/acknowledged.

Parsing out what each camp feels is the most important thing to do, and translating that to something each camp can understand is one of those critical management skills that is hard to teach.

Every programmer needs to know management- even if to just manage oneself. But the better you can communicate the reality of of your technical requirements, the better the business unit will be able to prioritize their requirements. It shouldn't be us vs. them.

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