Fired • Hacker News Board

Re: Fired

#371

Post by clebio » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 1:08 PM UTC

bshimmin wrote: post #221

timjahn wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you paying off the mortgage in 1/5 of the time?

By paying off five times more a month than the bank really wants you to when they gave you the money. (How is he able to do that? By working like a maniac, I guess.)

Also, by having refinanced recently, when the rates were stupid low. My mortgage interest rate is lower than my student loans interest rate, and on at 15-year mortgage. Along with making extra monthly payments, you're in the 7-year payoff range. All depends on how much of your income you put to the extra payments. I don't make mad bills, but it's still quite feasible.

Re: Fired

#372

Post by gaius » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 1:19 PM UTC

engendered wrote: post #369

sib wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This simply isn't true. People who are terminated at Microsoft or Amazon or Google or others for poor performance (either during annual performance review or other times) are not laid off - they are terminated for poor performance.

Everyone who is "laid off" is terminated. http://www.businessinsider.com/microsofts-employee-review-sy... Laid off. Done en masse. I could do this for every company and it is exactly the same . No, they don't say "your performance sucks! You're fired!" In fact that would be a legal quagmire because "cause" is somewhat capricious when the reasoning is "doesn't fall in the top 90%". Which is why they settle with nice d…

I am guessing you are very young and this hasn't happened to you yet. But when the CEO decides that we aren't in that business anymore, or we don't operate in that country anymore, or we just need to impress Wall Street with what a decisive manager I am, your performance as an individual contributor isn't even on the radar. You are just a number.

The reality is, companies don't hire for fun, they have a plan, and they need people to execute that plan. If the plan fails, then the people get laid off, but it is the management that failed by hiring people they didn't actually need. Or it is unpredictable market conditions. A lot of people did everything right but still lost their jobs when the NASDAQ crashed, for example. People who did everything right are losing their jobs right now because of the oil price crash. That is part of growing up, to understand that you can do everything right, you can go above and beyond the call of duty, you can even be brilliant - and still lose.

Re: Fired

#373

Post by twic » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 1:21 PM UTC

shubb wrote: post #327

dragonwriter wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are the employment laws a lot weaker in the US? Don't know about the details of the UK specifically, but, yes, employment protection laws in the US are all-but-non-existent, with at-will employment allowing immediate termination for any but specifically-prohibited (e.g., race, sex, religious, etc., discrimination, retaliation for invoking certain other protections, etc.) reasons.

UK law for new employees is pretty weak. You are basically 'at will' for the first year (although you will be paid notice, in my case 1 week). This is a good read: http://www.lzwlaw.co.uk/downloads/LZW%20FACT%20SHEET%20SJ.pd...

Huh. I didn't know this:

"So, let us assume you have passed your probationary period. Is your employment position then safe? Actually it isn’t. Your employer has until the end of the first year of your employment (technically 11 months and 3 weeks) during which time they can still terminate your employment without fear of the employee making a claim for unfair dismissal. This is because employment legislation provides that you need to be employed for this period of time before you are eligible to lodge a claim."

An employee does gain some protection after passing probation - a longer notice period, usually - but it's worth knowing that passing probation isn't the be-all and end-all.

Re: Fired

#374

Post by chrisbennet » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 1:28 PM UTC

whyaduck wrote: post #242

matwood wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If more and more companies start going to the fire fast as soon as you're not a fit, then expect salary requests to start going up. Taking a new job is a risk, and a fire fast mentality adds to that risk that must be compensated with a salary premium.

A hiring bonus would be a better impedance match - both sides are taking a significant risk. A candidate quitting a job is a significant, generally irreversible, risky step, while handing a new hire a 5 figure sum on day one is similar.

If the risk of getting fired after a couple of weeks is high, I think the balance of risk is such that the employee should get a bonus or big severance for risking all his income. The company takes a much smaller risk comparatively.

Re: Fired

#375

Post by engendered » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 1:37 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #372

engendered wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who is "laid off" is terminated. http://www.businessinsider.com/microsofts-employee-review-sy... Laid off. Done en masse. I could do this for every company and it is exactly the same . No, they don't say "your performance sucks! You're fired!" In fact that would be a legal quagmire because "cause" is somewhat capricious when the reasoning is "doesn't fall in the top 90%". Which is why they settle with nice d…

I am guessing you are very young and this hasn't happened to you yet. But when the CEO decides that we aren't in that business anymore, or we don't operate in that country anymore, or we just need to impress Wall Street with what a decisive manager I am, your performance as an individual contributor isn't even on the radar. You are just a number. The reality is, companies don't hire for fun, they have a plan, and the…

Despite your absurd lead in and desperate moderation, I'll repeat that you are simply wrong, and seem to be trying really, really hard to justify something. Something fairly obvious.

Firstly, to repeat, in most cases in this industry it is performance based. Arbitrary or oddball examples are irrelevant.

When you are laid off, even if it was because the project you were on got axed, take a look around -- did you notice the superstars on the team all got pulled to other parts of the company? Strange, isn't it? Did you notice, in fact, that as things started to look ugly that dregs got transferred to the project?

That's the reality of layoffs. That's how performance based layoffs work. I mean, you're arguing with me despite every single tech example absolutely confirming what I'm saying. People who are valuable to a company will be placed internally, and those who aren't will be jettisoned like unnecessary cargo.

You're trying desperately hard to try to load the word fired and laid off, but the majority of people who are laid off (in this industry) were evaluated and considered not worth keeping.

But talk about steel workers or something.

Re: Fired

#376

Post by twic » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 1:39 PM UTC

brianpgordon wrote: post #346

itsdrewmiller wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll show you a meritocratic workplace as soon as you show me a way to measure developer productivity.

Every engineer knows the pecking order of who the top performers are. The trick is not determining merit, it's arriving at a consensus about merit without politics hopelessly skewing the result.

I don't think this is true. Programmers' values vary. One person may value the number of features implemented over the maintainability of the code, while another may not. One may value finding creative uses for existing components over integrating new components, while another may not. As a result, programmers' evaluations of their own and each other's performance may not be consistent.

I once worked somewhere where there was a guy who went round the company getting involved in projects, pushing radical new approaches, not thinking things through properly, writing mediocre code, then moving on to something else. I thought he was a hazard [1]. I recently learned that he's been promoted to 'principal engineer'.

[1] Exaggerating somewhat. I like the guy, i think most of his ideas are great, and i respect him a lot. I just worried about the complexity and speed of change exceeding our ability to execute successfully.

Re: Fired

#377

Post by chrisbennet » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 2:03 PM UTC

engendered wrote: post #369

sib wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This simply isn't true. People who are terminated at Microsoft or Amazon or Google or others for poor performance (either during annual performance review or other times) are not laid off - they are terminated for poor performance.

Everyone who is "laid off" is terminated. http://www.businessinsider.com/microsofts-employee-review-sy... Laid off. Done en masse. I could do this for every company and it is exactly the same . No, they don't say "your performance sucks! You're fired!" In fact that would be a legal quagmire because "cause" is somewhat capricious when the reasoning is "doesn't fall in the top 90%". Which is why they settle with nice d…

Yes, layoffs are often when "deadwood" is let go.

However, it is import to realize that just being excellent at your job will not protect you from being laid off. Just because you want to believe that it will, doesn't make it true.

Re: Fired

#378

Post by clebio » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 2:05 PM UTC

halostatue wrote: post #299

kelnos wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one…I had to address why I was no longer at the company clearly, directly, and without evasion or disparagement. I handled it very well, I think. Can you elaborate on this a bit? I could sometimes use some lessons in diplomacy...

Sure. I’m only able to answer in the case where you’ve been fired without cause. Depending on the “cause”, it may be easy to apply these rules, too—but if you have been dismissed because of something that you did that put the company in a bad legal situation (for example), there won’t be much help with this. The fundamental rule of interviewing is not to lie. You don’t have to tell all of the truth about getting fire…

This is really on-point. You echo a lot of how I think about interviewing: always tell the truth, but highlight pieces of the truth to craft the narrative you want. Be fallible. Don't speculate, and pay close attention to whether a line of discussion is fact-based or speculative. Don't disparage your previous (or current) employer.

Your comment is the sort of nuanced experience that makes reading through this thread worth the time.

Re: Fired

#379

Post by gaius » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

engendered wrote: post #375

gaius wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am guessing you are very young and this hasn't happened to you yet. But when the CEO decides that we aren't in that business anymore, or we don't operate in that country anymore, or we just need to impress Wall Street with what a decisive manager I am, your performance as an individual contributor isn't even on the radar. You are just a number. The reality is, companies don't hire for fun, they have a plan, and the…

Despite your absurd lead in and desperate moderation, I'll repeat that you are simply wrong , and seem to be trying really, really hard to justify something. Something fairly obvious. Firstly, to repeat , in most cases in this industry it is performance based. Arbitrary or oddball examples are irrelevant. When you are laid off, even if it was because the project you were on got axed, take a look around -- did you not…

When you are laid off, even if it was because the project you were on got axed, take a look around -- did you notice the superstars on the team all got pulled to other parts of the company? Strange, isn't it? Did you notice, in fact, that as things started to look ugly that dregs got transferred to the project?

Nope. Because you are just talking complete nonsense. It just doesn't work like that.

I'll tell you a story, I was laid off about a decade ago, along with about 6000 others. The CEO had decided that offshoring was clearly the future of software development. Only it wasn't, many of my cow-orkers got called back as consultants, for way more money, because that company found itself completely unable to ship any working software with its "CMM level 5" offshore operation. Not me tho', because I can't remember if it took me 1 week or 2 to find a new job and start it, with a nice bump in salary too. I'm neither a "superstar" nor a "dreg". No-one got pulled into other parts of the company in this process as you imagine happens, because those parts of the company didn't exist anymore either.

Another good example is SGI, superstars or dregs (I can guess which one you think you are), they all lost their jobs when the CEO bet the farm on Itanium. Google occupies their campus now. One day, they'll lay people off too. Did their fabled interview process suddenly start letting "dregs" in?

That's the reality of layoffs, they can happen to anyone, and they are decided far, far above the level that anyone knows or cares if you are a "superstar" or a "dreg". When it happens to you - and in a 40-50 year career it is a matter of when not if - try to remember my words and not feel all, ermm, dreggy about it. In the meantime, try to curtail your arrogance a little.

Re: Fired

#380

Post by pcthrowaway » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 3:01 PM UTC

davio wrote: post #282

I figured out on a Friday that I was getting laid off/fired/downsized on Monday. Over the weekend I decided I would act like a zen master. I walked in like I was getting a promotion, acted gracious the entire time, thanked the people and let them know I was sorry they had to do this and then walked out like I just got promoted. I actually talked to the HR lady at a later day and she confided how the director and her…

I was very careful to handle a rejection from a company I had interviewed with in November with similar grace; thanked the HR person I had been corresponding with and reiterated that I thought it was a great fit but that I wish them well with their future candidates. They contacted me again in February and I'm starting with them this month.