Fired • Hacker News Board

Re: Fired

#71

Post by _bfhp » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 8:04 PM UTC

crazypyro wrote: post #52

_bfhp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment explicitly didn't speculate on any particular reason, it pointed to language that could easily be politician-grade rhetorical defense. Did you read my whole comment? People can speculate about the reasons if they can point to relevant historical record. Why not? This man isn't sacred, is he?

>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.

Re: Fired

#72

Post by nirvdrum » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 8:04 PM UTC

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #50

samstokes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we can keep the speculation and character smearing to another thread? I have no connection to the author, but he's written a very personal post about a subject that isn't often discussed, so I don't feel like this thread is an appropriate place to attack him.

It seemed to me the post was tiptoeing around the reason of the dismissal, and the author even alludes to the story behind it with: > Seemingly everyone’s got stories of being stuck under shit managers, or dealing the fallout from things out of their control. I don't support "character smearing" or "attacking" in any way, but as a reader of the post, I would like to know more about the reasons for his firing, even in…

One of the reasons you usually don't hear about why people get fired is the employee is offered a severance package in exchange for signing a non-disparagement agreement. Usually that agreement cuts both ways, so you're happy to sign it. You get some money to help you decide what's next, while you and your employer exit on as best terms as reasonably possible. The only thing you need to give up is venting on the Internet, which usually wouldn't work out so well for you anyway.

Naturally, I don't know what if any arrangement was made here. But that's a big part of why you hardly ever hear about why someone was fired.

Re: Fired

#73

Post by alexk » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 8:06 PM UTC

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…

Can you elaborate a bit more about the things that made them awesome and the things that they did not want to change?

Re: Fired

#74

Post by shampine » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 8:06 PM UTC

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…

Just reading the post not knowing who he was made me follow him on Twitter, follow him on GitHub, and I ended up looking through three of his super popular repos, reading the readme and giving him a few stars. So ya, he's going to go on to do better things without question. I read a lot of blog posts per day and that kind of immediate desire to research [the author] is uncommon.

Re: Fired

#75

Post by MCRed » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 8:06 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #63

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…

When you interview ask how many people with MBAs and no programming experience you'll be working under. That is a good heuristic for future pain and frustration. Managers who are good engineers don't always manage well. Managers who have never been engineers are usually worse. > When you don't know whether a direct report is doing good or not because you don't understand what their doing, by definition you cannot man…

Oh, I think it's ok if the manager, with an engineering background, spends a lot of time managing and not a lot of time writing code. They may be further away from understanding the details of the product, but that's ok.

I experienced this personally when I architected a product, the team grew and the product grew and before long there were modules that I had never worked on.

I don't think the manager of engineers needs to be as strong as the other engineers on the team, but they have to understand engineering on a fundamental level, and be able to look at code code and comprehend it, even if they don't know the whole product, or all the details.

Re: Fired

#76

Post by marssaxman » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 8:07 PM UTC

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…

I'm not sure what you mean by "slip lower and lower in status". The software industry has worked pretty much the way you describe as long as I've been a part of it, and I haven't noticed any sort of diminution of status for software engineers. If anything, the trends go the other way: the industry has embraced the idea of a non-management career development track for engineers. Big companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have very well established high-level engineering roles which do not involve people-management, precisely so that they can allow engineers to continue developing as engineers.

Re: Fired

#77

Post by serve_yay » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 8:08 PM UTC

_bfhp wrote: post #33

> Unless you're embezzling money or using the interns as drug mules or something. Let's say that Holman did something not so hyperbolically terrible as these silly examples, but still terrible enough to reflect on his character for some people but not others (as in, the reason is controversial), and that's what got him fired (this is for arguments sake; I have no idea who he is or why he got fired). This sentence wou…

Yes, it's almost as if politicians have reasons for saying the things they say (and not saying the things left unsaid).

Re: Fired

#78

Post by UK-AL » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 8:09 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #57

detaro wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a red flag if someone talks about getting fired?

"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 argue for "Professional" behaviour, when its in their favour.

Re: Fired

#79

Post by paulrademacher » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 8:10 PM UTC

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…

You're free to ask people who come in to interview at your company, "why did you leave your last job?" and apply your own judgement.

Or if you truly want to help improve Github, you should join them! :-)

Re: Fired

#80

Post by toomuchtodo » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 8:11 PM UTC

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 unprofessional or biased hiring managers is vastly greater than the number of professional ones (I was disqualified for a sysadmin position based on a background check showing a city ordinance violation from tenants I had who left garbage on the front lawn when I attempted to be a landlord in my early 20s in a small Illinois farming community)

* Just like in personal romantic relationships, you can do everything right and still get fired