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It's Never Too Early to Fire

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Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#61

Post by walshemj »

nvarsj wrote: post #46
lokedhs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked in Sweden, and I would like to offer a counter point. I don't think we disagree that the reason the hiring process is so involved in Sweden is because it's so hard to fire someone. This results in a situation where the company does everything they can to minimise the risk of hiring the wrong person. The downside of this is that companies will not take any chances when it comes to hiring people. I believ…

I work in the UK and it's similar. Except we have a lot of diversity due to a vibrant contractor (at-will) market. Which the Tories are trying desperately to destroy, for some reason. Permanent employees are basically impossible to fire. It's a mixed bag I think. On the one hand, there is a large social benefit to having such gov enforced job security. On the other hand, it drives down wages, and hurts companies that…

Total bollocks in the UK you can let a fulltime employee go at any time in the first 2 years and its fairly easy to fire after that you just have to follow a simple procedure.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#62

Post by flurdy »

nvarsj wrote: post #46
lokedhs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked in Sweden, and I would like to offer a counter point. I don't think we disagree that the reason the hiring process is so involved in Sweden is because it's so hard to fire someone. This results in a situation where the company does everything they can to minimise the risk of hiring the wrong person. The downside of this is that companies will not take any chances when it comes to hiring people. I believ…

I work in the UK and it's similar. Except we have a lot of diversity due to a vibrant contractor (at-will) market. Which the Tories are trying desperately to destroy, for some reason. Permanent employees are basically impossible to fire. It's a mixed bag I think. On the one hand, there is a large social benefit to having such gov enforced job security. On the other hand, it drives down wages, and hurts companies that…

I would disagree that the UK is exactly the same as Scandinavia (having worked in both). Maybe for general companies around the country but definitely not for startups. I have seen many get fired for no particular good reason. They might be arranged via some theater of made up performance reviews then fired, but job security in the startup scene in London at least is a lie. But also those startups get a reputation and suffers for it.

Which is why I am now a contractor in London. No theater. They can let me go on short notice ethically and legally, and I am fine with that. Mostly as I am financially fine with it.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#63

Post by kristiandupont »

>I have never fired anyone too early.

This may well be true but how do you know? The only way I can think of is if the employee went on to become such a rock star at some other place that you actually hear about it. But that's not the only situation where they might have been valuable to you after a while.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#64

Post by woof »

pascalxus wrote: post #8

It takes time to build trust, at least several months, maybe even years. If you fire everyone before you even get a chance to build up trust with them, you'll never get a great team.

Read the first two paragraphs again, please.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#65

Post by arjie »

afpx wrote: post #24

Actually, pretty good advice in the opposite direction, too. If I had known at 18 that I could have easily and successfully walked away from teams, bosses, companies, partners, and investors who gave 'bad vibes', I would easily have (at least!) an extra couple million in the bank. I wasted countless opportunities waiting for things to get better, when I probably intuitively knew that they wouldn't. Partly, it was bec…

If you don't mind sharing, how did you lose the couple million to these people?

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#66

Post by woof »

mbfg wrote: post #26

"You can never fire someone too soon" is a ridiculous statement as it is non-falsifiable.

"You can never comment to early", on the other hand...

He clarifies the provocative title in the section titled "How long should you give people a chance?"

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#67

Post by flurdy »

teej wrote: post #18
kartan wrote: post #13

I like the article, and it has some really good ideas. And it is not about making firing people easier or cheaper. It is about on how to decide when to fire someone. About firing fast and easy, it is a bad idea. I work in Sweden. I don't think I have seen ever anyone fired. What I have seen is some of the best hiring processes. The process looks at the candidate values, and skills. And there is a discussion about wha…

To be completely honest, the legal and cultural landscape in Europe is nothing at all like the US when it comes to letting employees go. Being US based, I would be extremely hesitant taking your advice if you haven't spent time in the US.

Which is when US managers work for European based companies this causes issues if they don't adapt.(And I am sure is the case also in the other direction).

I have come across American managers move straight from Silicon Valley to Europe and not understanding that firing people in Europe (well in the parts I know, UK & Scandinavia) is rare, and not expected. Not understanding that there is a limited pool of potential new employees, with a busy grapevine, and you do not want a reputation as a hire and fire company. Not understanding that internally people no longer want to move to that team etc.

My naïve Scandinavian background balked when seeing the behavior of these managers over and over again. And made me very wary of ever working for a US company even if located in Europe. The culture clash from senior management would be too much.

Though to be fair I have met several very good American colleagues and managers as well. Obviously it is not ubiquitous.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#68

Post by arjie »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #2

Weirdly, I think we would all benefit quite a lot from a normalization of fast firing. Part of the reason it's hard to get a job is that companies are afraid to fire you, so they jump through all kinds of strange hoops to try to predict how good an employee you'll be based on, really, no information. This also forces companies to filter out "possibly good" candidates and only hire "probably good" candidates. If it we…

You're going to run full pace into Goodhart's Law.

> When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

That's my prediction. But I haven't run a company myself so who can tell.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#69

Post by arethuza »

nvarsj wrote: post #46
lokedhs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked in Sweden, and I would like to offer a counter point. I don't think we disagree that the reason the hiring process is so involved in Sweden is because it's so hard to fire someone. This results in a situation where the company does everything they can to minimise the risk of hiring the wrong person. The downside of this is that companies will not take any chances when it comes to hiring people. I believ…

I work in the UK and it's similar. Except we have a lot of diversity due to a vibrant contractor (at-will) market. Which the Tories are trying desperately to destroy, for some reason. Permanent employees are basically impossible to fire. It's a mixed bag I think. On the one hand, there is a large social benefit to having such gov enforced job security. On the other hand, it drives down wages, and hurts companies that…

"Permanent employees are basically impossible to fire."

That really isn't true at all - you can be fired for pretty much anything in the first two years and after that the process is pretty straightforward.

I've never seen a company fail to get rid of someone they didn't want working there - one way or another.

Re: It's Never Too Early to Fire

#70

Post by logicallee »

>To be provocative: No one ever fired someone too soon.

how about when the board fired Steve Jobs? (Specifically, stripped him from all responsibilities, removed him from the head of the mac division, gave him an office with nothing to do). No?

After all, he didn't code, was kind of a weirdo, and the board had every reason to have some doubts.

Was that a "wrong" decision?

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