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Comment by maxehmookau | Hacker News Reader

Firing someone for a "lack of chemistry" and refusing to give details is a Grade A dick move.

Honestly, not really. It sucks, but from a risk management perspective, less information given out is always better. Was she fired for legit reasons? Who knows. There is no advantage to the employer to give reasons. You can't really blame anyone for trying not to be sued.

I'd say the dick move is firing someone without any kind of coaching or explanation about what you'd like to see done differently. The coaching should have happened well in advance of the firing.

A firing that comes as a complete surprise to the employee is generally a sign of a bad manager (not always, but true enough to be a useful heuristic).

I guess there could be some improvements, such as a right to feedback law (protections for both parties), make it harder to legally fire someone but easier if it's a real democratic team decision, better short term unemployment benefits.

Knowingly hurting someone else in order to avoid the risk of getting sued is a dick move.

It's a selfish, rational dick move, but most are. People rarely do dick moves that don't benefit themselves.

However, life isn't all about avoiding risk. Sometimes you should seek out risk to make you a better person. Or, if you're part of a company, to make you a better company. Telling people why they weren't hired / were fired helps them improve, and taken to the limit, it helps the entire society improve.

What could be a legit reason that could've given credence to a lawsuit?

If the reason was: "You're a woman" then they should've been sued.

Assuming that a firing for "lack of chemistry" (which is a very real and valid concern, btw: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-relationships-wor...) is, without evidence, veiled discrimination, is also a Grade A dick move, by being a "default victimization mindset". Anecdotal firings of minority hires are insubstantial proof of discrimination; in fact it may be the opposite, if there's a diversity retention policy (meaning that the problem was significant enough to violate their own policies). This is exactly the kind of conclusion-jumping that rubs people the wrong way and ironically makes it more likely for you to get let go based on "lack of chemistry" (because it's really "we can sense this person is just itching for an opportunity to be a victim and we don't want to be subject to a baseless lawsuit"... but of course, that can't be stated aloud, because http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

I'll be honest again: Yes, I'm a white male, but I'm considering hiring people for the first time and this sort of thing TERRIFIES me because I genuinely want to help out whoever I can, and I'm even a natural fan of "underdogs"... What would I do if my nonwhite, nonmale (or both) hire just isn't working out (for valid reasons) but I can't yet afford to fight a discrimination lawsuit? Let's say my imperfect solution to this was simply to just keep hiring other white males for a while. Eventually I realize I NEED more diversity, but now I've created the perfect conditions for discrimination lawsuits by having an all-white, all-male company... Do you see yet what the problem is, here?

This article may be worth a read for you: https://www.paychex.com/articles/human-resources/eeoc-workpl...

Below, I do some napkin math to attempt to estimate your likelihood of getting in trouble for firing somebody.

In 20 years, there were 1.8M employee discrimination cases filed in the US, so ~roughly 90K per year. Each year, about 19M employees are fired or laid off.

Considering that not all employee discrimination suits arise from termination, we can expect a rate to be significantly below the calculated likelihood of 0.04% (90K/19M), or less than 1 in 200. However, I don't have an estimate for this,

You can adjust that for the prevalence of underrepresented groups in your field, of course - usually it will be about half that have some protected factor (age, gender, ethnicity, disability, etc.), so let's double that, for 1 in 100.

Of those cases, 82% were closed without even a settlement. So we're back down to about 1 in 500, if you pretend that the EEOC chooses entirely randomly and cannot differentiate between real discrimination and made up ones.

I think it would be worthwhile for you to do some real risk assessment, and figure out whether the < 1/500 chance of paying some money, if you need to fire a person with a protected attribute, is worth being "terrified" about.

(Also, age discrimination constitutes the plurality of EEOC cases, so you should possibly be more concerned about hiring people over the age of 35 than hiring women or black people).

There's a difference between "this is evidence of discrimination" and "this is proof of discrimination". Getting fired without explanation is definitely evidence of discrimination: most employers are smart enough not to give a reason when firing someone for illegal reasons, so the majority of those firings are going to be "without giving a reason".

Conversely, if you do have a legitimate issue, it's (a) usually something you couch the employee on before firing them and (b) means you can give a vague reason like "performance" and thus avoid paying out unemployment.

The employee herself can also reasonably observe the social environment - it's not as common these days, but there's still plenty of places that have the Asshole Rockstar who is never going to get fired. It's a bit suspicious when places like that suddenly trot out "culture fit" for the first time, as an excuse to fire a woman.

(I'd also say that as long as you don't do anything stupid like TELL people you're discriminating, it's remarkably hard to prove discrimination - legally you're pretty safe there. The other reply does a good job breaking out the math)

In my experience the sort of people who would play the racism/sexism card if it wasn't the case also tend to be the people who loudly virtue signal and shame others on social media about those topics all the time, and even announce it in their profile/blurb next to their avatars. I think as long as you do a quick google search on someone and test their character in the interview, it shouldn't be as risky as you're worried about.

I don't think the hiring all white guys scenario as a workaround as you described is very realistic. If people are actually doing that, they're missing out on the full talent pool certainly.

If you consult an experienced HR specialist they will walk you through this difficult situation.

I'm a random person on the internet and we're unlikely to cross paths, but I would _strongly_ recommend hiring a good HR advisor and people who can explain the problems in your comment. Admitting your mindset isn't productive is hard, but I'd recommend some introspection here.

> Yes, I'm a white male, but I'm considering hiring people for the first time and this sort of thing TERRIFIES me because I genuinely want to help out whoever I can

You're not "helping out" by hiring a women, or a person of color. This mindset has set you up for failure before even starting.

> What would I do if my nonwhite, nonmale (or both) hire just isn't working out (for valid reasons) but I can't yet afford to fight a discrimination lawsuit?

If there's a valid reason, then there won't be a discriminiation lawsuit.

> Eventually I realize I NEED more diversity

"Eventually" is too late. Hire a diverse team from day 1. This comment suggests that "diversity", however you define it, is sub-optimal and a burden to be carried.

> but now I've created the perfect conditions for discrimination lawsuits by having an all-white, all-male company

This is a problem of your own making by not making the effort to hire a more diverse team from day 1. The additional potential legal costs are a cost associated with this approach.

Edit: "hourglass-figure adorer" in your HN bio is a bit of a concern. Does this have a meaning I'm not aware of, or is part of your public, profesisonal persona the enjoyment of a particular female body shape?

> Admitting your mindset isn't productive is hard

Nah, I am good at admitting fault given sufficient reasoning or evidence, unlike most people. But if I think I have a point, I may double down on it. Observe:

> You're not "helping out" by hiring a women, or a person of color. This mindset has set you up for failure before even starting.

Yeah, maybe. I was trying to suggest that I... ok, fine.

> If there's a valid reason, then there won't be a discriminiation lawsuit.

In the OP's article, the discrimination was assumed to be the reason even if other more valid reasons might have existed. This is not evidential.

> Hire a diverse team from day 1

That's what I was suggesting.

> Does this have a meaning I'm not aware of, or is part of your public, profesisonal persona the enjoyment of a particular female body shape?

Let's just say I am 48 years old and used to subscribe to Heavy Metal (https://www.heavymetal.com/), which prominently features... well, you probably already know. Also that shaming me for my sexuality (without me harassing anyone, of course) is not only not a rational argument, it is discriminatory, and I refuse to apologize for how I am. It may also be convenient in this era of "cancellation for disagreement" (or as the woke leftwing sugarcoats it, "consequences") that I work for myself. >..< If I ever hire someone who has a problem with that, I'll ask them if they feel uncomfortable and work from there (note that women who express open interest in certain male body types do not faze me... but I don't want to create an uncomfortable work environment, so yeah, I'd probably have to remove that, sigh)

An impressively nuanced answer! Thank you.

And whilst I certainly do not wish to shame you. (Consenting adults can do as they please, enjoy what they please, etc.) as someone with responsibility for hiring and firing I'm glad you can see how it could lead someone to feel uncomfortable in a work environment.

IANAL, but I think the general perception is that by giving reasons, one exposes the employer to additional risk of a lawsuit.

So IIUC, the legal system carries some of the blame here.

I worked at a small company where everyone was on probation their first 3 months, towards the end of the 3 months our manager would come around and ask what we thought of the new person. If enough of the team found you annoying, you didn't get to stay.

And maybe a recipe for a lawsuit here in the US. The only female developer? It looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck.

Is it any better or worse than "Sorry, it's just not working out?" I've seen this happen a few times.

Similar to interviewing where they never tell you why you weren't selected (or very rarely - it's happened once in my experience) - they don't want any kind of legal liability. The less info they give you, the less you have to file a lawsuit is the theory. It definitely sucks, though.

I don't let candidates know either and it has nothing to do with legal liability whatsoever.

If I post a job up for a developer position, even as a small company in Toronto I get on the order of 1000 applicants in a matter of 2-3 weeks and I usually will only hire 1-4.

I am not going to come up with a rejection reason for 996 people. The reason you got rejected is because there are a ton of you out there and I can only hire so many so I am going to hire the very few who I am very certain will do a good job for the specific requirements my company has right now, even if it does something means I end up rejecting even better qualified candidates who I am uncertain about. Every hire costs me on the order of 50k per person in straight up recruiting costs, ramp up time to get that member to be productive, time lost doing interviews and filtering 1000s of people.

Hiring and firing people is basically the option of last resort because of how risky, expensive, and time consuming it is.

Finally it's highly unlikely that anything I say will be of much help to you anyways.

Not talking about all applicants here, I'm referring to people that have been interviewed and made it to some kind of final interviewing stage where typically you end up with only 3 or 4 applicants max.

The one time this happened I had gone through the phone interview and had what I thought was one of the best onsite interviews I'd ever had (in over 25 years of software development). The hiring manager actually called me up a few days later and apologized for not selecting me. He said that I interviewed well and everyone on the team liked me, but that the other candidate had some extra experience in an arcane area that was quite relevant to what they were going to be doing. I thanked him and told him that I understood as not many people would have actual experience in that tech. It was helpful to know that my perception (that I had interviewed well) matched their perception.

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