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Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

the danger is that if you do have to fire 5 people, firing one person a month is going to be worse for morale than firing five at once, then making it clear you are done.

Now, I'm the first to say that I might be wrong, but my feeling, from the original story, is that this guy simply doesn't know how to manage in a way that would help those 5 people work more effectively. I doubt that just upping the fear level a little would change that.

Really, I say that without any negative judgment towards the original poster or towards the employees in question... different people are capable of different kinds of management, and different people are capable of working under different kinds of management. It's quite easy to have a competent manager and a competent employee, and to have a matchup that produces zero work due to conflicts in style.

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We are tech company, we don't even have sales or marketing department. We do awesome products and people love it. That's how we do and sell.

Normally I'm not a manager just an passionate engineer however setting up your own company generally makes you an instant manager.

Can't I find 5 more people who can work without nudging instead of hiring a useless person (read: manager) to just nudge people?

Or do you think finding 5 new people who fits the bill is harder than finding one manager who can nudge people.

>Normally I'm not a manager just an passionate engineer however setting up your own company generally makes you an instant manager.

If you have 8 people working for you, well, you are a manager. You can also be other things, but you are a manager. expecting to manage eight people without any effort is like expecting to code up a complex web application in an evening. sure, if you are really great, yeah, maybe you can do it? but very few people can.

>Can't I find 5 more people who can work without nudging instead of hiring a useless person (read: manager) to just nudge people?

It's possible to find people who don't need nudging. It's just hard. People who can work without nudging make excellent and very expensive contractors.

The thing of it is, if you have 8 people working for you, uh, you are not only a manager, but an advanced manager. Hell, just hiring 8 good people without making a bunch of mistakes is no mean feat.

I'm not sure that hiring a manager as a go between would help you much; there are plenty of incompetent idiots going around selling themselves as excellent managers, and like anything else, it takes one to know one.

The thing is, coordinating 8 people is a difficult task. hiring a good manager could ease the burden, or it could add a 9th personality in there to muck things up.

I think the point is that if you fire 1 as an example, the other 4 will improve. So pick the worst and lose him. If you do indeed need to fire all 5, then do it at once and pay the remaining people more.

I'd be surprised if the problem is that more than 50% of your programmers need to be fired . Maybe 1 or 2 and better managament for the rest. I don't think you need a manager for 8 people, but you probably do need to do a little better yourself at managing. If you are the leader/owner of the company, and it has 8 employees, then you are the manager whether you want to be or not.

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