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Comment by forgotpw1123 | Hacker News Reader

>My next company will have explicit rubrics for what it takes to get fired, and your status will be tracked daily

>You'll know at all times exactly how close you are to getting fired with how much severance

Good luck getting anyone to stick around! People want job security, they don't want to feel like they're walking on eggshells every day. You seem to think the only thing people want out of a job is money.

>Anyone we fire we'll sit down in the exit interview and write a plan for how they can get re-hired in a few weeks or months if they're interested.

I don't think you know what firing means. It's not a mutual decision and you really don't want that employee working for you at that point. It's a serious legal risk to re-hire fired employees.

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People don't perform at 100% all the time either. No slack == lots of stress. Lots stress == high turnover rate. High turnover rate == loss of institutional knowledge, loss of ability to respond to changing market conditions or even normal customer needs, and also lower ability to innovate.

It's a serious legal risk to re-hire fired employees.

Interesting, I'd never heard that before. Could you possibly expand on that?

>It's a serious legal risk to re-hire fired employees.

That's interesting to hear. Could you explain in what way?

Maybe its a US thing - here in the UK I've seen multiple people re-hired and in each case it worked out pretty well.

It was likely re-hiring people who left on their own will. Re-hiring someone you fired is quite a bit different, especially if it was for cause.

I'm not sure if this is common knowledge outside the US (it wasn't for me): "Fired" and "let go/laid off" don't mean the same thing. Fired means they were laid off for some gross reason, e.g. incompetence, stealing from the company, etc. Laid off means they were just let go because of reasons not very related to their performance.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

> Fired means they were laid off for some gross reason

You're correct in spirit, but no one ever uses the phrase "laid off" to mean "fired". "Laid off" usually means you were let go because of say, financial problems in the company, no need for your position, etc. "Fired" implies cause.

> Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You're right. "laid off" would tend to mean "made redundant".

You are wrong, but in the right general direction. "Laid off" means involuntarily terminated because of a reduction-in-force / elimination of positions. "Fired" means involuntarily terminated for any other reason. Except in the case of positions with special protections, either contractual (personal or union) or legal protections of the type that apply to career civil service positions, you cannot assume firing is about either misconduct or performance; it can just be because the boss decided his nephew needed a job.

And "let go" subsumes all forms of involuntary termination, both layoff and firing.

I don't know if there are precise definitions, but I've always used (in the US):

* Fired with cause - gross reason: sexual harassment, illegal activities, etc.

* Fired - incompetence, laziness, other ineptitude related specifically to the employee, but nothing illegal

* Laid off - financial reasons or business direction reasons for the company. (Some people who are borderline performers get swept up into lay offs, which helps the employee save face.)

In the latter 2 cases, people generally get severance arrangements. In the last case, people are generally eligible for re-hire should conditions or direction change.

I see, thank you. That's pretty clear.

It could be construed as you screwing them out of stock options vesting, for one.

"it's not a mutual decision (to be fired) "

Surprising as it may seem, I am going to have to disagree with you here.

If someone is performing poorly, the most likely explanation is that they are unhappy with their job, for whatever reason.

And the best way to handle the situation is to figure out what is making the employee unhappy.

And sometimes the problem might not even be solvable for your company. And in that situation, the best outcome for both of you is to end the business relationship.

A much more reasonable approach is to provide performance reviews whenever someone wants one along with things they can improve. That allows for transparency without making people feel like they're working towards metric improvements rather than actual performance improvements

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