If you have to let someone go, you do it in private.

Also I almost forgot about AOL. What were they doing in the last 10 years? I only remember they threw their "AOL Internet CDs" in every mailbox.

I mean one response is just that if I'm managing a team of 100 people, I haven't delegated effectively. That I shouldn't be making decisions to fire anyone who I don't directly work with in some capacity. With 100 people, I don't think I can give them individually enough of my time to treat them fairly with that sort of decision. That's a call their more immediate manager should be initiating. Then I'd be able to look into it with time set aside for that person, to give them a much fairer treatment - but by its very nature that ensures that sort of approach excludes it just happening out of the blue.

I would never consider firing someone who I hadn't had at least one 1 on 1 conversation with about whatever the issue was. (Unless it was something ridiculous, like serious industrial espionage or something, but at that point you're calling the police on them rather than having a 'you could do better with this' conversation.) I've had that approach pay off as well, because sometimes it's honestly the person's manager that's more at fault, or they've some problem in their life that can be worked around - and a bad manager can cause a lot of damage before you find them out if you don't look into things.

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My general approach to management is that everyone gets at least one warning - preferably not phrased as a warning at first, you should be offering feedback that's not just do this or you'll get fired as a regular thing. But however you set that mechanism up, if you don't give clear signals, then when someone screws up it's all on you in my book. Just bam, 'you're fired,' isn't something that people can realistically work with. Fire people whenever they mess up and by the end of it you're probably not even going to have anyone who was there who remembers what the first guy was fired for any more. That's not an efficient method to transmit knowledge.

Besides, it costs a lot of money to hire people - increasingly so as the skill of the person you're trying to hire goes up.

There's no call to be nasty, even when you've decided that unfortunately you can't work with someone, or they don't fit with the company or something. They'll remember that you hurt them, what good can come of that?

Making an example? If you make examples that your team doesn't agree with they'll just start looking for other jobs - at least if they're not trapped - that just makes you come across as a bitch, and if they do agree with you no example was needed.

You never know when that person's going to be working for a company you want to do business with, or someone's thinking of applying for a job opening you have, or you're thinking of going somewhere else. If you've hurt the person and they're asked, 'So, what was X like' you, probably, don't want them to be all: 'That woman was a total bitch, impossible to work with.' You don't want that sort of rep going around in the industry.

If the worst should come to pass, and someone has to be let go, I think a conversation needs to take place. Face to face with someone who's been working with them for a while ideally, (you shouldn't just get called into some stranger's office and given your marching orders. Barring their not being allowed to talk to you themselves, that's cowardice on the part of whoever's meant to be managing you,) and, most of the time, reasonably private. You probably don't benefit from making people lose face in front of their friends, and you don't want people to think you don't care about them.

There are, admittedly, some trade-offs as to whether it's going to have at least one other person semi-present. There are some people who I've known with anger-management problems, and I wouldn't feel safe alone in a room with them giving them bad news. At the very least I'd want my door open and to know there were some folks around who'd stop them if they decided to take it out on me.

But other than 'are you going to need a witness in case they make accusations?' and 'are you going to need someone there so you don't get attacked?' Yes, preferably in private. Seems like a bad idea to humiliate people if you can possibly help it.