Hacker News Reader

Comment by jwdunne | Hacker News Reader

I think firing without giving warnings and opportunity to improve is sick. These people don't even know they were doing badly. I can't tell if they've been told where they screwed up. These people could be spending a lot of time figuring out what went wrong when everything seemed to be going fine. They don't deserve that, regardless of performance.

They are people, they have lives and it wasn't anything like gross misconduct.

I think Mr Musk has a lot to answer for.

View on HN

Some countries have laws requiring notice and time for a performance improvement period, before final termination of employment.

Yes, in Switzerland, for instance, a company is required to offer "job relocation" services for employees that have been working for the company for some years (I'm not sure how many exactly). These services (re-teach how to write a CV, how to prepare yourself for an interview, etc.) cost between 10K and 14K CHF per employee.

I'm in Australia and something like this seems very weird, you sometimes take for granted fair work laws till you see what happens in countries without them.

When I read about pip, I keep going back to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11299310

I think even if we had regulations and requirements like that in the US, it would quickly devolve into a charade. Basically, a six month pip would be the same as a six month notice with the option to fire you any time anyway.

Dumb law IMO. I like at-will employment. I would be pissed if my company was paying 14k on my behalf for something so unnecessary. I can budget my education much better than the government, thanks.

Why would you be pissed? No employee is going to be 'pissed' about something designed to benefit them and ease a layoff.

How can you budget your retraining if you get same-day notice and just 2 weeks severance?

Having six months to prepare for being fire sounds better then "bye tomorrow".

Well Basically every Commonwealth Countries and Countries inside EU, or to put it another way, the difference between the World and US.

Musk seems to think that somebody like Chris Lattner is not good enough for Tesla, so his definition of a 'low performer' definitely seems a bit off. I just hope that the applies the same evaluative metrics to himself.

In a 'Groucho Marx'-ian turn, what would Elon do if he judged himself wanting? Would he have to find a successor, or would he just walk?

It is a hard question to answer, as my ideal would be to reflect on his findings and adjust his behaviour/expectations towards others to match, however I am not sure many people in his position are actually capable of such deep introspection.

The intention is not to improve performance by removing useless people- the intention is to improve performance and dissent-less quotas on those who stay.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com