Honestly even as a non-manager it's a very bad idea. When I was a junior one of my colleagues was called to the manager's office. I assumed it would be for some mundane project scheduling or whatever, so I jokingly said "you're getting fired" as he was going there. And he was.
This is one of these memories that come back to haunt you late at night when you're trying to sleep...
When I went back to my car, where my then-minor sister was waiting for news, I said: "Sie hat es geschafft.", which literally means "She made it" in German - however, I meant it in the meaning of "She doesn't have to suffer any more.", which is also a valid meaning. After seeing the rlief on my sister's face, I immediately apologized and explained the situation.
Ever since this day, I a) think twice before I speak and b) try to avoid double meanings as much as I can. It still haunts me, though she's fine with it.
example question: "Is this job running?" (implied: is it "working"?)
Answer: "No, it is not currently running however I see it is scheduled to run daily at 7pm. I don't see any errors in the past 2 days. Did you expect it to import data recently?"
In this case it was a euphemism an adult would have understood but a child could not, at least as the first statement.
That one gives me nightmares.
Then my cousin died by suicide and, being my first encounter with suicide in the real world, it dawned on me that doing that in front of people was super, super not cool. I'll never know if I did that in front of someone that had lost a loved one to suicide via firearm.
You lost the statistical battle but most people will never encounter this scenario. We all encounter scenarios where we make a joke without knowing X person is going through that. You learn and adjust. For instance, I couldn't make jokes or references about cancer with a partner of mine because one of her friends died at like 17 to lung cancer. I was like, "Oh, alright. I get it. I'll avoid that with you."
You don't need to be disbarred from ever making the joke again just because you encountered someone who is sensitive to it. You just don't use that kind of joke with them.
But for me at least, it's worse when someone changes what they were going to say to try and avoid a topic they know might be sensitive to you, especially if it was in otherwise "innocent", organic conversation.
For instance, changing a joke with a cancer punchline to something else, on the fly, because halfway into it you realize it's going to offend one of the people present. Who certainly has already heard it, and knows what's coming.
Now, not only have you reminded the person of what you were trying to avoid, but you've also created this awkward tension where you-know that they-know, but have to pretend you don't know, because of the social "gesture" of changing their joke for you. Even if the fact that they're coddling you negates that gesture and then some.
The more extreme example of this is the scenario where kids in school are sharing stories about, eg, their mom or dad, and when you get to the orphan, you either skip over them, or ask them a completely different question than everyone else, without acknowledging and explaining why.
Suicide isn't so rare that we should avoid making affordances where we can. And even so, a true comic like Dave Chappelle can create real human even on dark subjects at the same time. It's a balance.
You are seriously digging deep into the "NO JOKES!" stance. Just because you did a joke that didn't go over well doesn't mean you can't make any jokes anymore.
And to be clear - because this is the internet and everyone on HN wants to be a pedantic andy - I'm not saying you go make "Dark humor is like a child with cancer. It never gets old." type of jokes to parents who had children die of leukemia or some shit.
But yes, making arbitrary rules about bad taste jokes is almost always useless.
Still, as a manager with responsibiliy you might want to restrict your toolbox of jokes by your conscience.
This is a very important realization. Firing someone is bad all around. They lose their job, they probably quit another job to join, they feel shame' etc. For the company: you not only need to go hire someone but the person you fired was probably not productive so it’s a double whammy. And you didn’t manage to somehow (if it was even possible) give this person what they needed to succeed. Bad bad bad all around. Hiring someone is a responsibility not only to the company but to them; terminating someone who can’t be productive is the right thing to do but is the company’s failure.
The converse to the “don’t joke about firing someone” is, when firing someone don’t mention how you feel about it; also be unambiguous and don’t accidentally give false hope.
Individual firings seem a bit more predictable.
This is very general advice and you need to correlate it with other events, but it's been a pretty strong indicator something was up: Keep an eye on your manager's priorities especially if they shift in a ways you can't explain.
One example from early in my career: Our manager abruptly became much less interested in product status and overall progress. To his credit he scheduled a call (we were a remote office) a couple weeks later in which he said the following: "Commit your code. Ignore all policies and procedures. Work at your own pace."
We suspected as much, but that call was the confirmation. Ironically, the organization was so large, and the layoffs so huge, they had to arrange financing just to complete the layoffs. This led to a one to two month period where we were employed, but had nothing to do. It was really weird. Generally we'd come to the office, play a bit of Half-Life, then adjourn to my friend's basement to work on the BattleBot we were building.
But for something more actionable, if your manager is constantly pressing you for "what happened with this one" when dates are slipping, or reminding you "you know, you're one of the highest paid people here..."
Take a deep breath, go in, say nothing, sign nothing, demand your last paycheck. The decision has been made, and anything you say only hurts your case if you sue later.
To anyone who has been working a while, that absolutely stinks of redundancies or other tough measures that have to be discussed en masse without rumours getting ahead.
Turns out they just hired someone new without telling anyone and wanted them to get up to speed so they don't look like a clueless bunch with bad communication. Meanwhile everyone in the office is worried they'll be the one fired.
My two examples:
Worked at a telecom company during the CLEC, deregulation days. Group of private investors devised a scheme whereas they would grow this small existing telecom company and then sell it off to a larger company and make millions. They had about $3M altogether invested. CEO burned through $2M in 6 months for stupid stuff like sky boxes at the local sports teams arena's and other frivolous stuff. Sales were slumping, we were getting a lot of calls from unhappy customers during installs. There were multiple closed door meetings with the investors. The funny part was the conference room had really thin walls and there were a lot of yelling during those meetings. You didn't have to be a genius to know whatever they had planned, wasn't happening. The final coffin was when one of the network guys told me he overheard one of the closed door meetings. He said the group was split on whether to continue the company, or fold up shop. Threats of lawsuits essentially ended the meeting and they all marched out of the office in a hurry. To me, I already felt like this wasn't going to last. Now I had confirmation and started planning to find another job.
I also worked at a huge corporation in their development department. We were a new team working on some big initiatives the company wanted to get going. Everything was going pretty smoothly. Then the recession hit in 2008. Then over the course of several lunches with various people in other departments, I found out several departments were having layoffs, reducing budgets, and putting projects on hold. Pretty soon, a lot of the teams we were working with which had dozens of people working on them, suddenly only had two or three developers. It really felt like the walls were closing in so I started looking. Literally the day I put in my two week notice, my manager said they were planning on putting our two projects on hold and laying everybody off within the next two weeks.
I think it just comes down to paying attention to what's going on around you. There's always signs things are not going well, you just have to recognize them when they present themselves. At both places, there were people who held on until it was too late. One of the techs at the telecom company said he came in one morning and the office was dark, and a security guard told him they had shut down the company and because of legal reasons, nobody could go in the office.
It was an easy few months to find another job, and sure enough a bit later the company was sold to a VC firm and then again to another corp. Things could have been fine for me, but I honestly didn't want to go through the two ownership changes. My lesson? The information usually isn't too hidden, you just have to understand the implications of the emails that you usually pass over.
Around 4 or so weeks before, I started receiving unusual interest in projects I was working on, as in my 2nd line manager (boss's boss) dropping by to make various inquiries - how's it going, remember to write up some documentation/process, do you think you'll get to the XYZ portions). It was unusual since my supervisor and I didn't talk about that during our one-on-one meetings - a more natural flow would be for boss's boss to follow up on issues I raised with my boss, or for him/her to relay their questions through my boss, not for him/her to inquire directly.
Second oddity was that weekend or the next weekend. I stopped by the office for a few hours Sat morning, and saw another even higher level manager, maybe my 3rd line manager (can't remember who reported on up etc). But I was previously a direct report of the 3rd line manager so it wasn't weird to say hi and chat. They asked what I was doing there on a weekend and if anybody specifically asked me to come in. Well no... at the time I thought it was a little odd to ask that.
Third odd sign was I put in a vacation request for Fri and Mon two weeks in advance, and it got denied. With the reason "you are scheduled for XYZ class on that Fri", and oh, I hadn't heard that class was coming or I was added to it. It was weird because typically they'd send email and ask who is interested in XYZ, we're thinking of bringing in a class, of these days which is good, etc. To find out you are in a class next week by denying a vacation request? That was weird. I asked around various coworkers and nobody else was scheduled for that class or even knew it was coming. Big red flag.
Final sign was the Tue before, boss emailed and said I could have Fri off after all. No mention of Mon off too, and no mention of class details the Tue before the class.
I figured out the layoff day moved to Thu so I would get Fri off anyway and of course I would have Mon off too (boss slipped up not mentioning it).
And sure enough, I get in Thu, I hear rumors that layoffs are occurring. After checking email and seeing nothing, I went up to the sales area (errand to run) and saw a few employees in tears while packing up. I return and my boss is looking for me, asking where I was, and oh we need to have a meeting right now. 2nd line manager is there and someone else I didn't recognize (i.e. the HR rep). Suspicions confirmed as I looked in from the hallway.
I mean... yeah, it sucks, but have you tried being fired?
That was the hardest bit - I wasn't even able to tell them WHY they had been selected over others as I had no idea.
Then a few weeks later, they came for me, too.
Source: Been on the receiving end of 2 layoffs (dot-bomb and covid), it _reeeaaaallllyyyy_ sucks to be fired in a down market, like "how am I going to feed my family, how much is in the bank, and when is the mortgage/rent due" level of suckage.
To clarify, the person losing their job has the bigger problem and are worse off. But the person doing the firing pays a cost as well, and between the two, getting fired is easier for me to handle than firing someone.
Layoffs are probably a little different because they're less personal, but I've not experienced those, so I don't know.
I've done both as well, and I agree. I'll take getting fired any day of the week over having to fire someone.
The end of an intensely bad experience can be the beginning of another.
My output wasn't great, so I wasn't shocked, but I'd gotten so little feedback about it that I assumed that low output was normal. It was a small company, and they person doing HR said they had no idea it was going to happen, so I think it was a quick decision. I was pretty bitter because of that, and that I was 9 months in after taking a large pay cut, and no options vested yet.
That place went on to do random firings for a year.
If someone simply isn't working well enough for their role, there is usually some kind of capability process after which their employment might be terminated but we wouldn't usually call that being fired and if that is made clear in the job description and in regular feedback, I don't think most people would consider that unreasonable.
Curiously how did you screw up the interview process?
Are you referring to some clerical error or is this assuming that candidates are only as good as they are at interview time and they're incapable of stepping up to the unexpected demands of a role?
I'd assume they meant the opposite: candidates are at least as good as they are at interview time, so if they're not capable of filling the role, that ought to be obvious in a properly-done interview.
I still feel terrible about that to the day, and that guy's been working here for years now.
Their manager walked by and said rather flippantly, "I wouldn't bother doing that, he won't be here to enjoy it."
Luckily I haven't been fired since, but that "joke" stuck with me.
Many years ago it got to be a standing joke in various places I’ve worked that if someone actually left a digram on a whiteboard, eg some bit of server infrastructure or UML, you’d add extra arrows pointing to “DOWNSIZING” or “EMPLOYEE REDUNDANCIES” bubbles.
Then one day I explained the old joke at a new gig and everyone in the room got really serious for a moment.
They told me that 6 monthish prior someone from senior management had left plans for the last downsizing round on a whiteboard and lots of people had seen it…