The Worst Way to Fire Someone: I Was There
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I guess the message of the article here is that Tim Armstrong dumped the full weight of failure on his team-- undesirable in the view of almost any philosophy of management. Furthermore, in light of Armstrong's experience, his acts were reckless as well.
Most people do not take criticism well at all and in all honesty, most people don't want a big, honest list of their infractions, even if they claim they do.
Consider also that many times employment decisions are entirely petty and done just because someone in the chain of command doesn't like the "laid off" individual. There are various terms that are corpo-speak for this. Employment in an organization is really professional likeability management, which is a tricky, fickle field.
Lawyers are involved from the very beginning of a layoff. They make the template.
>most people don't want a big, honest list of their infractions, even if they claim they do.
If one's immediate supervisor is doing their job, the employee will already know what would be on the list.
Right, I guess I meant that lawyers don't (or maybe, didn't) become a concern until someone was disgruntled enough to make spurious legal claims. They're involved now as a preventative measure, which I acknowledge in other comments, but what I'm saying is that if people were able to take a list of infractions in stride and improve on them, companies would be much less worried about the potential legal liability incurred by given honest feedback to employees.
Two topics not discussed are leaks and rationalization.
Say someone's getting fired for not being the right race, or being a woman in a mans field, or not being a bro, or not going out drinking with the boys enough after work, she wouldn't date the boss, or being too old, or too gay, or too jewish, or whatever. "Sorry its a budget thing combined with different direction of company and best of luck to you" is legally extremely safe. Happens ALL the time. But if the boss has some deep personal conversation and it leaks out that he doesn't like most black people but he hired you anyway so its clearly not race, he doth protest too much, or how it doesn't matter that she wouldn't date him despite him asking her a couple times it really was something else... Or the rationalization thing, where lets face it, he was fired because he is gay and the boss is a republican, if the boss is smart enough not to leak that topic, but sufficiently dumb enough, in a long personal conversation out will come ridiculous rationalizations about the guys LoC or bug report / fix rates or attendance as a distractor for the boss to avoid talking about homophobia, unfortunately the rationalized metrics can actually be measured and open the company to wrongful termination lawsuits. "Your honor he said the only reason was my attendance wasn't very good, but my documents prove it was the best in the office, note the only day I was gone was a scheduled vacation day for the pride parade and he's out of the office continually attending fund raisers for anti-gay marriage republican candidates" etc etc. Usually that kind of stuff is settled expensively out of court with non-disparagement clauses so future employees can't avoid predatory bosses, which is another problem.
You can pretty much assume if "they" won't tell you why you're fired, and you can't obviously figure it out, then it was some illegal thing like above and they're smart enough not to provide lawsuit fodder on a platter.
Ya gotta realize that half of management is by definition below median, and that half of the population can create very expensive lawsuits.
Please don't generalize about a group of people (either managers, or republicans). Employees can be bad, too.
Nah, we only hire Rockstar Ninjas who are a perfect cultural fit only 4.0+ GPAs and only ivy league grads need apply. And they need 10 years experience in some library where the github repo is only 3 years old. Everyone hires like that and complains there's no workers.
Management aren't hired to standards as high, so yeah, half are going to be below median.
If you ever had any experience managing people you'd know this isn't true. Employment law is a minefield, and managers aren't usually lawyers. If you're a manager and it's time to cut someone loose your boss will tell you "don't say anything beyond x, y, and z", as in "tell them we're having layoffs and they're out. Tell them their remaining vacation time will get cashed out. Tell them about COBRA. If they ask anything about performance, reiterate they're being laid off because the company is downsizing, and nobody should assume performance is involved."
This is true no matter what the situation is, from there being a real shortage of money to performance problems.
>...he was fired because he is gay and the boss is a republican...
I always wonder what's wrong with people that they can write something like this. I'm a Republican and I've had gay people work for me. There are probably millions of gay people working for Republicans who aren't scheming to fire them at this very moment.
As a manager, I figure your sexuality is none of my business unless you force the people around you to deal with it. And that's true no matter how you're oriented.
Your use of the word "actionable" is pretty appropriate here. When I was managing people my biggest frustration was not being able to sit someone down over a beer and discuss the situation honestly. Nobody gets "fired" any more. Unless you commit a felony or break one of the PC rules you get "laid off", as in "We had a good quarter, and yes we're buying lots of stuff and hiring people, but we ran out of money to pay you."
As a manager I can't very well come along later and say "Here's the real reason we let you go." Because the lawsuits would start to fly. The over-litigious employment environment (at least in the US) prevents people from learning how to be better employees. I've had people call me up months after we let them go and essentially beg me to tell them the truth. But I couldn't take that risk.
I don't manage people any more, and good riddance to that shit.
Essentially, if you give the ex-employee anything concrete to work on ("You could improve on skill X"), then the fear is that they'll demand clear evidence that they were deficient in that area at your workplace, which you probably don't have. Now you've weakened your case should the employee bring a wrongful dismissal lawsuit (under whatever laws apply in your state/country). Hence the reluctance to say anything at all.
It's not right (morally), but it's understandable.
It's not a perfect solution, but I'd prefer the option if I were in that situation. The expected value of a wrongful termination suit might be less than good career advice.
Hi, you're fired, but here sign this legally binding contract so I can tell you why you are a terrible employee.
As a manager, it's your job to do that BEFORE you have to can them. There is no reason you can't take a person aside and have a discussion. Is anything wrong? Are you OK? In my opinion your performance is lacking in area x,y,z. It's your job and it sucks to have those conversations, but don't feel bad after the fact for slacking off until it's too late. Nobody should be fired for poor performance and not have a clue as to what went wrong.
Now, a normal person would have gone one of two ways. Either they'd start looking around and find something they thought would be more interesting and then leave for whatever that was, or they'd grit their teeth and keep doing the job they didn't like because they need the paycheck and couldn't find anything that paid enough (guys with families, mostly).
This guy, though, figured the things he liked paid less, so there was no hurry to leave. But he didn't have enough personal integrity to actually do the work while he was still drawing a paycheck. So he just stopped working. He'd show up for work every day and surf the web, listen to ball games, talk on the phone, etc.
It took some time, but eventually my buddy sat him down and said "Look, you need to start actually working instead of just showing up to the office," to which the guy replied "No. You're going to have to fire me".
He made my friend grind through all the paperwork to actually fire him. It's a big company, so it took awhile. They gave him verbal warnings, written warnings, put him on a "performance plan", and eventually he was fired. It took months. He wasn't disappointed or resentful or anything. He just took his couple months of free money and waited around for the paperwork to go through.
Absolutely. And I did so in every case. The problem is the sort of person who's clueless enough to actually get fired is the sort of person who going to ignore what you're saying, either because they think your real problem with them is that their a woman/black/gay/old/whatever or they have a big ego that won't allow them to consider they might be doing something wrong or because they figure they have a lot more slack than they really do between "you need to shape up" and "here's a box for your stuff".
If you're actually going to fire someone for cause you need to need to have a paper trail, which would make that all official. But. If you establish a paper trail and then try to pretend you're getting rid of them because there's no money you're going to get sued. So companies usually don't go the "for cause" route at all.
Wait what? I know you can get sued for all sorts of things, but what is the reasoning here? Is it that the given reason is money, but there is evidence that the reason is something else? So what? Would they claim you lied because you don't really have a strong case for the real reason? I'm just confused by this.
Basically the outline of the suit is going to be "You always wanted to fire me because I'm black/Latino/gay/old/fat/thin/sick/whatever, so you tried to pretend I was doing a bad job. But then when it became clear I was such a good employee you couldn't do that you pretended it was an economic decision."
Now, this may or may not fly in court, but from the company's perspective it's a crap shoot, since you never know what a jury is going to do. They'll settle if they can. Which means lots of people will sue just looking for free money, even if they know it's all bullshit.
About that time, or rather a few years later, reflecting on those skits, I told my cofounder, "Dude, I have come to the conclusion that lately if I worked for myself i'd have quit, and if I hired myself i'd have fired myself. What went wrong?" as a result I stepped out of management for a while, and hit the proverbial drawing board.
I can imagine now that someone would sue for this sort of thing being bullying at work, or some such rot, but the skits gave us often too much insight into the real effective personalities at our work, often in the "too much information" category, but almost invariably in good humor.
Just thought the exercise might yet benefit somebody else, still, for the mention.
But some managers have more charisma, or capability to reflect compassion, or whatever it is, so that when they do the firing, it does not feel as bad. Some managers are clumsy and behave among other people's emotions like an elephant in a porcelain shop. Some are just awkward.
And then there is methodology. Corporations often have guidelines for how to do this. For instance, in the processes where I have been involved, there's been a training and emphasis on how things are done: deliver a paper of this format, do it in a personal discussion if possible, with some rehearsed phrases to get around the awkwardness. If you have to do it via mail or deliver the message otherwise, do this and that.
The bottom line is, both the personalities and consistent professional ways to do things have an impact. Still, it's often horrible. There is no guaranteed good way.
I recommend that book highly. As I have seen the mistakes I've made over the years and have taken steps to correct that behavior. :)
There is no graceful way to do it.
One company I worked for, there were probably 200 people, and the CEO gathered everyone into a big room and started talking layoffs, kind of beating around the bush. But essentially saying a core team will stay on, while everyone else is gone.
A person asked, when will we know if we are on the core team? And he just blankly answered, "Oh, we spoke to those individuals this morning" - Yeah, the collective gasp was something I will never forget. I had only been there a week but made the core team. 4 months later the company was out of business.
> I guess my point to CEOs and managers alike is this – don’t fire people in front of 1,000 colleagues for no real reason. To put it mildly, it doesn’t help morale.
> If you are ever considering doing it, take a deep breath, and at least wait until you can meet with the person in private. Or, even better yet, perhaps you shouldn’t fire someone for no good reason at all
My story wasn't about how they told everyone... it was the fact that the CEO couldn't think fast enough on his feet so he broke the news in an unexpected, unthoughtful way. I don't think he intended to publicly tell everyone, but he was caught off guard and reacted. Reacted incorrectly.
Boggles my mind that this seems like an acceptable strategy.
Stores that were closing did not know until a specific date, when they'd go into work as usual and open a securely delivered packet. If the packet delivered was packet A, it informed them that they were laid off, effective immediately - all employees of that location. Packet B informed them that they were not closing. They had no idea what the case would be until the morning they opened the packet, and the packet was delivered the previous night.
Think about that at 1,000-person-layoff scale. If we apply some basic Little's Law math to the process here, we quickly see how "by-hand" firings would drag on for quite some time, perhaps needlessly prolonging the inevitable, and almost certainly disrupting work at the entire office for days on end.
There is no "good" way to do this. I've never had to do it myself, and I can only hope I never have to. The thought of how "best" to do it would keep me up for weeks. At the very least, I suppose in-person messengers are better than automated voicemail recordings, or sealed envelopes. But even if using a human messenger, a mass layoff is not going to go down well for the people being laid off. There is something to be said for ripping off the band-aid (though perhaps in timed batches, so you're not just dumping N people out into the cold, to fight over the same jobs on the market all at once).
If you're keeping any significant portion of your existing workforce, absolutely. Doing a single round of layoffs and then being able to tell the remaining employees "If we haven't talked to you, you're staying" can make the hit to morale that much smaller. It'll still lower morale, that's unavoidable. But it will take away the stress of "is my job safe?" for the remaining employees.
I think people overthink this, and I think I overthought it when I just did it this week. The fact is that when you fire people, most of them are going to be upset, and they'll find something to rationalize that emotion no matter what you do. If you have a face-to-face, they'll say "Can you believe he was mocking us by wearing his ball cap, or his old tennis shoes, or those jeans he wore the same day he hired all of us, or that polo with the company logo on it like the company hasn't already been besmirched? How disrespectful!" or they'll just completely fabricate something like "Wow, he was so aloof in that meeting, what a mean guy".
What it really comes down to is that most people are going to look for "facts" that support their emotional perspective, not emotions that are congruent with the factual perspective.
The pre-recorded call firings are done that way to make sure the phrasing is perfect. Most likely the lawyer has already written the script and they do several takes to perfect the firing executive's inflection, tone, etc. I don't think this is objectively worse than firing someone in person or via e-mail either.
For the record, the employee I fired stated that the firing was "classless and vile" despite the inclusion of a generous and completely optional severance package, an immaculately respectful email that politely informed her the position was being eliminated and stated that we hoped we'd work together in the future, and so forth. It was honestly one of the classiest firings in which I've been involved, but like I said, to the fired person, there's always a grudge to find if they want to find one, and she wanted to find one. Her grudge is that I didn't "give the customary notice period" for a firing, which afaik absolutely doesn't exist anywhere except in the few cases that fall under the WARN act (under which companies are entitled to pay a severance equal to the legally-mandated notice period in lieu of notice).
Firing via email or pre-recorded message is a way to avoid looking your failure of responsibility in the eye
I also understand that your platitude on firing is transparent propaganda, but that's neither here nor there to this discussion -- whoever did or didn't do things that precipitated or mandated the firing, the fact is that it must happen, and that not everyone reacts the same way or prefers the same style.
I should note I also state this from the perspective of one who has been fired (in all occurrences, I'm using "fired" as a catch-all for all instances where a job is involuntarily terminated; this can mean the contract ends, the company or unit is closing, or performance was unsatisfactory to the bosses). I think I would've preferred to be fired remotely in all instances except one (where I wasn't really fired, but my already-turned-in two weeks notice was prematurely ended). I wouldn't think the bosses were "cowards" for depriving me of the opportunity to personally and physically guilt them, but like I said, to each his own.
The takeaway here is that the people doing the firing shouldn't concern themselves too abundantly about whether the employee is going to appreciate the atmosphere of the firing or not, because news flash: they won't.
> whoever did or didn't do things that precipitated or mandated the firing, the fact is that it must happen
Oh, but you can't call that a fact, because it fails the verifiability test. I mean, firing is a decision made by management, the same management that placed the company in this position in the first place. And it amuses me that in big corporations, management almost never gets fired.
> not everyone reacts the same way or prefers the same style
This is not subjective, as having the common decency to look a person in the eyes before stabbing is something one should learn at home in order to pass for a human.
Truth be told, I would get pretty mad about such things, but fortunately such companies are usually ran by incompetents and so most of them either go out of business or become completely irrelevant and for me that's justice enough.
You must have had a very interesting childhood.
"A true friend stabs you in the front."
There is no argument. There is only the dogmatic belief that there is some cosmic moral code that states persons must be fired in person. As I've said probably four times now, I accept whole-heartedly there are times when that is the best course of action, and I've acted accordingly and fired these people face-to-face. But I don't believe there is a cosmic moral law violated by considering or performing the firing via alternate, asynchronous means. I believe that circumstances can make this a better option sometimes.
>Oh, but you can't call that a fact, because it fails the verifiability test. I mean, firing is a decision made by management, the same management that placed the company in this position in the first place.
This is nitpicking at semantics. I understand that firing is usually a subjective judgment call, obviously. I guess better phrasing would've been "whoever did or didn't do things... the decision has been made and needs to be executed".
>Truth be told, I would get pretty mad about such things, but fortunately such companies are usually ran by incompetents and so most of them either go out of business or become completely irrelevant and for me that's justice enough.
As I alluded elsewhere, I think it is silly to state that the C-levels at all of these big companies are "incompetents" because they don't meet with every employee individually to fire them. It's a routine way to do mass layoffs and it's easy for employees to say "That guy couldn't look me in the eye", but it's also easy for employees to find all kinds of other things to complain about. Since your employees are going to be unhappy when they're fired anyway, I believe it should be done in the most objectively logical and considerate way, even if it leaves room for petty complaints about the venue, because people who want to complain are going to find something to complain about even if you fire them in the most stately of palaces and most well-pressed of designer suits, with braces that keep your eyelids open so that there is no doubt that you were willing to "look them in the eye" when you fired them.
Sometimes there is no good alternative; like others are saying in this thread, it's often impossible to concoct a graceful firing experience. Saying that people are incompetent for remote firings is ascribing far too much value to what is ultimately a subjective presentation, and ignoring the serious and real logistical issues sometimes involved with a "look-me-in-the-eye" firing.
As a side note, I don't believe I need to be punished for firing this employee. This didn't enter into my calculation because I don't consider it a punishment to fire someone face-to-face if that's appropriate for the situation.
It's not about punishment. It's not: oh, you did something bad, you need to be punished for it. It's that it shouldn't be easy, and doing it in person makes sure of that. That's all it is. And it sounds a lot like you're rationalizing your desire to avoid that situation by telling yourself that it would be better for the employee, as though you won't let yourself consider the idea that it's all about it being easier for you.
The really impressive part of your comment is how you summarized it perfectly in the middle of it.
I've never been fired, but I've fired other people, and I've always believed it's something you should do when looking someone in the eye. That's the way I'd want it done if I were the one packing my stuff. Every time I did it I think there was more stress for me than the person getting fired, but if I were still managing people I'd still do it that way.
The only time I didn't do it that way was when I worked for this sleazy field services body shop that was worried the managers would say something out of school and get the company sued. They had someone from HR who was trained in firing people (love to put that on my resume) by legal do it. And we were not allowed to comment on anything.
I worked at a place where the first inkling something wasn't right is your badge doesn't open the door any more. You go to security to get a replacement (because you think it's broken), and they have all your stuff in a box by the security desk. See ya. Didn't stay there long, though. I kept expecting someone with a broken badge to off himself before he realized he still had a job. Who wants to work at a place like that?
It's lame because firing, both being fired and doing the firing, is lame. Any way it's done, it's going to be lame. "Look me in the eye when you fire me, see if you can stare me down" is really just machismo bloviation, as far as I can tell. Perhaps some people walk away saying "Well, he had the respect to look me in the eye", but somehow I feel that people that get stuck on this would be more inclined to say "That heartless bastard looked me right in the eye as he fired me."
It's a no-win situation. Is it really better to expose the company and the remaining employees to liability by having that meeting 1000 times in one day, repeating the same boilerplate, just so that a few of your ex-employees may walk away with a slightly-more-hospitable opinion of you? Even if they don't have this to mark against you, assuming they were the type of employee inclined to do so, they're still probably not going to like you, because, well, you fired them.
Not to me. To me it's a question of respect. To do it by email even over the phone sends the message you didn't think he was worth enough, as a person, to waste any time on.
All I'm saying is that it's circumstantial. There are definitely cases where an in-person firing is an important part of showing respect; maybe we'll even say it's the default case. But there are cases where it's more respectful, dependent on circumstances and personalities, to do it in an asynchronous communication channel (taped message, email, etc).
Walk through the logistics of firing 900 people individually, one at a time, looking each in the eye individually each time (and/or having your highest-ranking representative do it at various offices), and you'll notice there are some serious problems with this solution too. Is it better to leave the employee in agony all day, wondering when or if he's going to get called, getting increasingly more angry as his friends drop out one by one while he retains access to internal company systems, etc., just so you can walk around and tell everyone "I looked 'im straight in the eye!" If you think beyond this weird hangup that some people have, you'll see that there is really every reason to do the firing in a more efficient way in these cases. The only thing lost is the good vibes from any recently-fired employees that decide the opportunity to stare down their boss before they get terminated is a critical part of their self-worth, which honestly, probably scarcely existed in the first place.
We should do the best thing for all involved, not the most politically correct thing. It's politically correct to have a final showdown where you stare down the person you're about to fire, but it's not always actually the best option.
That said, I've only had two firings go 'bad' over the years, in one case the person had stolen from the company and it was an 'on the spot' affair, in the other it was someone with a history of instability. But other than that layoffs and firings were dealt with in as calm and constructive a manner as possible, including helping those laid off to find new employment and references specifically tailored to the person.
Being an employer is not always fun, hiring people in a time of growth is great, letting them go when things are bad is terrible, but I always remind myself it is a lot more terrible for the employees than for the employer and shielding myself from their emotions would feel like a terrible cop-out.
In this specific instance, I chose to fire her via email because 90% of our communication was via email, it usually takes weeks to schedule and actually get to an in-person meeting time (since she would cancel meetings probably 70% of the time), and we always meet in public places like coffee shops (her choice, not mine), where any visible emotional shock would be apparent to bystanders. It had much more to do with practicalities and concern for her privacy than any concern about "saving myself" from an adverse reaction (which I still got in a nasty retaliatory email).
Making time for her and selecting an appropriate venue would have been better - in my opinion, not being in your shoes that's an easy one to hold. But I've been in your shoes in other situations and we seem to have a totally different take on this.
As for the nasty retaliatory email: you fired her by email, what did you expect in return, a personal visit?
Is it really nicer to make her walk out of a place where she knows people with mascara running down her face than it is to let her read and handle the news at home, just so I can go around and tell everyone that I wasn't a coward and I "owned up to my mistakes" by making an adult cry in public?
I should note that not everyone cries. Maybe she wouldn't have cried. Maybe she would've jumped up and screamed at me. Maybe she just would've been noticeably sullen. Maybe she would've been completely unphased. I ultimately decided that for her sake, it wasn't the appropriate venue to take that kind of risk, and that the news would be best received via email at a time when I knew she'd be home.
>As for the nasty retaliatory email: you fired her by email, what did you expect in return, a personal visit?
It's not that I didn't expect the email, just that I didn't expect to avoid the "consequences" of my "screw up" by firing her in an asynchronous medium.
It may be a cultural difference or maybe it is for legal reasons but I don't believe in getting people fired 'on the spot' unless they've done something quite terrible and in every other case the fact that we will be parting ways at some point is most likely evident to both parties long before it needs to be formalized. So maybe that's why I don't need to resort to firing people from a safe distance because the writing will have been on the wall for quite a while.
Case in point: when I wound down TrueTech Canada Inc (15 employees at its peak) it was obvious to everybody working there that we were doing bad, even so I found the time to try to get those that had trouble finding other employment at least a temporary fix. I'm still in contact with almost everybody that I employed over the years and that's a point of pride with me. If I'd have sent them an email while keeping them in the dark about the situation until the last moment I doubt that that would have been the case.
I'll also say that for all the politically-correct management platitudes that people like to throw around like "if someone gets fired, it's always the boss that failed" or "your employee should always know what's coming", real life is frequently somewhat more complex. I completely agree with the principles behind these populist quips, but like most things in the real world, there are imperfections -- mitigating factors -- that can make the application of the principles complex. These are generalizations, and they're good generally, but they're not good all the time.
I've also been able to maintain good relationships across employment status changes, fwiw. I've hired back people I've fired before and maintain a good rapport with most employees I've had to dismiss. I'm in an engagement now with someone who I've hired myself, been hired by, quit on, and been fired by (remotely, for a gig he didn't hire me for) and we've been able to remain friends through all of that, so I don't think it's a generalized issue with my conception around employment relationships.
EDIT: Also, even if people know a termination is coming somewhere along the line, it's easy to forget and they often will have an adverse reaction when it actually comes down. I don't think "employee is so naive they think they'll be kept around after X Y and Z" is the only situation where this kind of consideration is appropriate. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree; we place fundamentally different values on "looking someone in the eye" (maybe because I've done so much telecommute stuff that I don't see this as the MO for "big decision" discussions, at least not with reference to employment). It simply isn't an important independent principle for me, and I try to consider what will make the employee most comfortable, within reason.
That's super-weird, frankly. If you're running a serious business you ought to at least have access to office space for something as important as this, even if it's hiring one for an hour. In the worst case if an in-person meeting takes that long to arrange then something like skype or even a phone call is still a much better fallback than email.
If she doesn't turn up to the meeting where you're firing her then sure, email.
I guess the root of the thing here is that I don't think it's that bad to fire someone over email if that's appropriate for the situation and personality. I didn't give this list as proof that I couldn't've fired her in person if I REALLY wanted to, I gave it to provide just a bit of context around the circumstances that influenced the tradeoff.
Yes, it's possible she'll go around and think about how I'm such a spineless coward because I didn't make her cry in the coffee shop when I fired her, but it's probable she'd go around thinking I was a spineless coward or INSERT_INSULT_HERE even if I met her in person and did it. That's the point. A friend recently fired an employee in person and was informed that he would come back and "rape him [my friend] in the ass". Obviously the setting is not the most important part of the firing; the most important part is that it's happening at all.
At this point it may be worthwhile to indicate that these positions aren't all for well-tempered, highly-compensated hackers or engineers. The worker I fired did not have advanced skills and neither did the worker my friend fired. Some people in these groups are less objective about these involuntary departures than you'd expect in a conventional white-collar setting.
It would've been highly unusual to procure a space that would've been appropriate for this type of meeting and she'd immediately be tipped off that something weird was happening. This could put her in a worse frame of mind; if she enters fancy virtual office and thinks, "Wow, this is a nice place, I wonder if we're going to move here, I bet some really big super cool deals are happening that I'm about to hear about", is that really going to make the situation less volatile?
And again, I'm doing all of this... why, exactly? So she'll have one less checkbox in the "things to hate" list? She can put plenty there if she wants to, "fired me by email" is really immaterial, and again, even though it may look worse to fire via email, I did end up doing it out of concern for her long-term well-being, not mine, since it doesn't really make a big difference to me either way -- it's just an hour or so of my time, for her it's a big life change, and we usually meet at a public place near her home (for her convenience, of course), which is where this would've potentially gone down.
Luckily I moved on to healthier areas before the hammer started falling. That said, I still think about how much of a drag it would be to come in to work only to be fired. Spare me the time and awkward situation, I say.
If I was worried about my image, I would've fired her in person so that I could tell everyone "Oh me, oh my, I would NEVER fire an employee without a full honor guard and 21-gun salute!", and so that she couldn't tell anyone "Oh, that guy didn't even have the balls to fire me in person." I also wouldn't post about this on HN defending the executives of major multinational corporations, known worldwide for their abysmal IQs and inability to perform basic critical reasoning functions.
I'm honestly not seeing how opting not to do this in person can be perceived as "good for image". Can you clarify?
Like I said, I've fired people in person before and I'm not going to shrink from that duty if it's truly the best course of action. But I'm not going to insist on it at the cost of the employee's dignity just so that I can tell everyone "I have never fired someone in a non-sound-bite friendly manner".
The C-level that fired everyone by pre-recorded conference call most likely went through a similar dilemma, and I sympathize with him. I don't think it's an objectively bad way to fire a group of people. Is the alternative, that your peers start getting called into an office and told individually that they're being fired while you sit there in panic with continued access to corporate resources just waiting for your turn, really that much better just because there's some lackey that can stare into your soul and relay the message from corporate HQ? Or could the C-level be seen as a coward for not delivering the message himself and making a lackey take the blame?
I believe people have romanticized this process far too much. I don't believe a staredown is so obviously superior to alternate forms. I understand that you just said it is and that the only reason I didn't do it this time was because I was worried about my image (again, what?), but I don't find that to be a convincing argument. As I said elsewhere, I'd prefer to be fired remotely. A couple of the other guys in this thread have expressed that too. I felt that was the appropriate course in this situation.
It's not easy to be the boss and make these calls. Everyone is going to have an opinion without the information or perspective and there are people that are going to dislike you for the decisions you make, no matter what they are. It's part of the territory. It'd sure help hacker entrepreneurs if we dropped the PC line once in a while and had some real talk.
On May 14, 2007, the staff of Sigil Games Online were told to meet in the parking lot at 4:30PM and to take with them what they would need for the rest of the day. The employees were told that the launch of the game had not gone well, the company was in financial trouble and they were selling the company to Sony Online Entertainment. Director of Production, Andy Platter, then told the employees "You're all fired."
A production studio I was with had to shut down due to some contracts falling through, and everybody went to the liquor store, got a bunch of beer, sat outside (this was in the Summer) and had an afternoon drinking and reminiscing. We all just chatted from 10am till late into the evening.
It was sad but also one of my fondest memories, one of those that makes you tear up and smile.
I'd see it as you're with a bunch of people, some even friends now all applying for the same remaining jobs
Another thing is that all the poker and casino companies often share office buildings in small non-regulated countries like Malta and Gibraltar. So the same happens to all the other companies which means the streets outside are filled with people from a dozen of companies who have just been fired.
I think two thirds of the whole building or something like that was relieved on the same day the last time it happened.
You can listen to the actual clip here (I wouldn't say he screamed at him, but it was forceful):
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/08/11/audio_reco...
And the HN discussion on this article:
No matter what the company is, when it reaches a certain size it's going to have HR people and lawyers, and they're going to put processes in place so even if you want to take the fired person out for a beer and an honest chat about what went wrong, you can't.
This discussion is centered on examples of the shitty ways people have been fired, but the really shitty thing we should be focused on is the tendency not to give people firm, dispassionate, detailed guidance on the company's expectations for their performance and subsequently give them accurate feedback on how they have performed relative to that standard. "We want you to crush it and do epic shit; I'm here as a resource if you need anything" might feel good to say to a new employee; it's a lot more pleasant than saying, "I expect you to know how to do X by Y date, while keeping me advised of any changes in A and B", etc. But the latter will reduce both your and their stress over the long run.
I am a millennial, and I can't help but notice that as a cohort we really suck at accepting criticism and negative feedback. Not sure why this is, but it's unmistakable.
Having a parent call in to complain about feedback an employee receives used to be pretty much an urban legend, yet now it's rampant.
There's also the ridiculous test-driven culture of schooling, an artifact of the absurdly misguided "No Child Left Behind", where numbers and scores matter far, far more than any actual understanding. Criticism in the form of lower grades can be really damaging to someone's academic career, so no wonder people hate it so much.
Decades ago you could squeak through into the program you wanted with high grades and make up the difference in terms of passion for a subject. Now if your grades aren't perfect, you'll never get into competitive programs. What kind of a system is that?
When you're conditioned to think that any mistake you make, no matter how minor, goes on your permanent record and may steer your life completely off course, you get a bit touchy about it.
Wait, seriously? What!!?
Can you speak to this? I'm part of the over-35 cohort, but I'm not sure that I understand what you mean.
I think that a lot of millenials, especially those who went to selective colleges, have a hard time dealing with active supervision and negative feedback. I think this is because relative to previous generations, millenials were raised in a more coddling environment -- participation trophies, grade inflation, etc. I think that this coddling is especially pronounced with regard to high-achieving children/teenagers, who by the time they are in their early 20's have a track record of "success" (i.e., straight A's, high SATs, got into college of choice, got job of choice), and who have basically been set up to suffer major emotional trauma at their first encounter with anything that significantly diverges from "success" as they have come to understand it.
On the non-millenial side, I think that people of a slightly older generation see themselves in a bit of a conundrum, in that they want to get top talent (technical or not) from the top schools, they perceive that "kids these days" are a bit more sensitive and less overtly competitive than they were when they were that age, and get a little bit scared about the possibility of fucking up and putting the hot new developer (who was a "big recruiting win") in tears. So, they treat the new kid with kid gloves and basically keep their fingers crossed that he/she will be able to do quality work just by figuring things out on his/her own.
I actually don't think millenials themselves are responsible for any of the above. It's the fault of their parents, the general environment fostered by the elitist college-industrial complex that encourages everyone to aspire to a 4-year degree (and which idolizes those who go to the top schools), and subsequently managers who don't want to take the risk of actually helping the people under their charge develop professionally and personally.
I do agree that credentials do not equal competency. Although they used to be a proxy (signal) of/for it. Universities manufacture credentials, not competency.
Many/most of us still living in a world-of-the-past where a university degree signaled a base-line competency to learn a domain. Not even that is true any more-- even from a top university.
It only affected about 1/4th of the staff, but it was enough to send me out job hunting.
At another place, they felt they had overhired for a PM position. So they called up one of the PMs and let him go -- with 30 days notice. His job, for the rest of his time was to take the surviving PM around to his customers, tell them he had been fired and that this new PM would be inheriting the work. The PM that survived described it as "the roughest professional work he'd ever done, spending all day with a dead-man walking". The company felt they were being compassionate with the 30 days, but it was absolutely demoralizing for both employees. Based on that I decided to start looking for another place right after that.
There's not a lot of right ways to fire people, but there are definitely wrong ways.
One "right way", at a small startup I was with, we had struggled for a while and simply run out of money, the lead investor got everybody on the phone, and simply announced who was being let go and their severance packages, and who would be staying behind. I survived, but based on my previous experience, I immediately started looking for another job.
Layoffs are a bad sign for everybody, and I've found that the people who get laid off are usually the "lucky" ones. In every case, the people that survived the culling had it miserable and usually ended up getting laid off anyways just a bit later. It signals "the company is in trouble, our business plan is not working" and it's almost always time to just move on.
It think when you see someone more senior go it's a catalyst for someone in that team to think "Ooops, time for me to go" and once one or two team members leave, the others feel resentment (didn't get promoted into the managerial position) or fear of change (rightly so -- a new manager is going to make mistakes and half the team is gone)
The other funny thing is that an employee I fired recently criticized me for not giving her notice and allowing her to be a dead-employee-walking with continued access to all corporate accounts and resources, even though I offered her a generous severance package in lieu of notice, which a couple commentators in the other thread seem to find objectionable, and your second anecdote validates the potential issues with giving notice to an employee involved in an involuntary change.
Seems your former bosses were HN devotees.
I've never had to bulk lay off people before, but based on my experience surviving a couple, the one that worked out the best for everybody was the "just do it" rip-off-the-bandaid all at once approach. The one on one approach just sewed terror into the entire office while it was happening.
It reminds me to this day of how horror stories work, with the long build up of expectations, waiting for management to make it to your end of the hall was the worst.
I've also learned, management 101, don't fire people with notice, ever. Not only was it terrible and humiliating to have witnessed, it opens you up to disgruntlement as the employee's emotions build up and down. Even somebody you don't think will do something, might, in a fit of anger at the unfairness of it all, do something stupid.
I think many of my former bosses were definitely devotees of the kind of HN "let's build a family and a cool place to hang-out, not a business" mentality that permeates lots of startup-land.
But this went on for months. Once you start threatening to fire people? You've got nowhere to escalate past that. You're done. People just throw away any sense of civility and hang in as long as they think they can get a check out of you. Talk about ways to destroy your company morale.
You should always fire quickly, gently, privately, and with kindness. You should never fire publicly and harshly. And you should never drag out firing somebody because you're too chicken to get the job done. You want to play the role of hard-as-nails company leader? Fine. People remember that stuff. You want to be a billionaire prick, good for you. But I'll never work for you. Life's too short.
It's moved much closer to the US system for employees during the first 2 years of employment. The situations under which a Tribunal can be called, and the amount of support available to an individual has decreased. And, the total amount of money that an employer can be hit with is at a fixed level.
Although I wouldn't judge prematurely. I've never had to fire people. Perhaps an unemotional way works better.
(of course without substituting values for the template variables)
There's an assumption here that Armstrong wanted to boost morale, because that's what a good person would do, or because that's what other effective managers do.
And really, one very simple explanation for what would otherwise be a howling blunder like this is that it was damn well intentional; that it was exactly intended to provoke stress and anxiety. That destroying morale was explicitly the point.
Is that so unthinkable? Fear and domination are popular management strategies when times are tough, and times have been tough in the journalism business - as the author takes some time to point out - for quite a while.
- Somewhat predictable. One of my devs just didn't want to do the work. You could tell he just wanted to be something other than a dev (which he admitted to afterwards). I mean he knew how to do it, it wasn't a complex task (read a file, compare it to a DB, show the differences). But after many weeks of zero progress, I decided enough was enough. I think he was relieved.
- Pleasant: I call my remaining dev into the office.
Me: "So, you know what's going on in the company, right?"
Dev: Smiling, almost laughing his head off: "Yeah haha, I can't believe the boss blew that much money in a few weeks. It would take me ten thousand years to make that amount. Of course I know what's up."
Me: "Glad you understand. You're right, I just worked out the loss comes to far over the total of everything everyone in my family (parents, grandparents, ...) has ever made in all of history. Times ten. Well at least you have the experience in finance now. More than happy to provide a reference. Anyway, gotta can everyone else now..."
We even did the old Alan Sugar "You're Fired!" routine from the Apprentice on one guy, causing much laughter.
- Absolutely shocking. So, the boss has hired a new trader, and he's coming towards the end of his probation period (3 months typically in the UK). Boss goes on holiday, and runs into a guy who says he knows this person, and comes up with some hearsay that is totally not checkable. Calls his junior managers (I was away), makes us can him right before the deadline. Lawyer tells us not to say anything at all about why he's being canned. Obviously, the guy wants to know why, but it's not like the reason makes any sense, and the lawyer of course doesn't want us sued. Dude goes red, appeals to common decency, starts shouting, but no. Just silence. I'm still annoyed about this thing. I never even got to say goodbye or any chance to tell him after the firm went down the toilet. Come to think of it, the boss had everyone fired through his juniors (me and a couple of others.)
If you've told a guy "look, you're a salesperson and you need to make X calls per day" and then they don't make those calls, well then you've given them a chance and they blew it. They knew they blew it and so the subsequent firing is both understandable and foreseeable.
My own firing came out of nowhere and made no sense. 6 weeks prior I'd been given a raise. It was so egregious and personal, the manager himself was fired a few months later. Possibly the most flabbergasting part is that the company was scared to hire me back due to fears id harbor a grusge, gather evidence and sue them for something else later (which wasn't true). The whole thing was shocking and confusing to the point that I went through the stages of grief. It also shattered my faith that the world works in predictable ways: if you're a loyal, hard worker with a great performance record, you have nothing to worry about. Suddenly that safety was just gone. In subsequent jobs, no matter how well they say I'm doing, I feel I could be axed at any moment. It's a horrible feeling. I have very real scars from it. (Obviously.)
So in other words, these are human beings. They deserve an explanation. They deserve a chance to do better (if it's performance related) and maybe they deserve a sincere apology for bringing them into a position that isn't working put like both parties had hoped.
So yes, and this is very personal to me, there are good and bad ways to do it. Anyone who says otherwise shouldn't be employing or managing anyone.
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</head></html>This is not true. The employee had been specifically been warned about his behaviour before and told not to do it. [1]
Don't go on about how it doesn't change anything, if it didn't then people would mention it in the story.
But they don't because readers need that snide, they are better than others feeling to be clear cut.
An employee going against his boss, while his boss is super stressed and then getting fired adds to much humanity.
The original OP's story is interesting from a company facing layoffs side of view though.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com.au/aol-ceo-apology-2013-8
So I won't go on about how it doesn't change anything--though it doesn't--but I will inquire as to why you'd cape for one of the most universally acknowledged jerks in the industry.
Of course, some employees missed the phone call and showed up at work only to be locked out. I was 2000 miles away visiting my in-laws. I called in multiple times Friday morning trying to find out if I had a job to return to on Monday. Each time, it became harder and harder to find a manager who was still "with the company". I ultimately survived but that was not the most relaxing of vacations.
The converse, a company letting you go effective immediately, no severance, is sufficiently discourteous that it will likely prevent anyone from -wanting- to come back, as well as will build a reputation for them that will likely prevent a lot of talent from even looking at them as a possibility.
It behooves both employees and employers to keep their professional impressions positive.
When a typical employee's BATNA against informal blacklisting on the employer grapevine is minimum wage, homelessness or gun in mouth they have no expectation of control over the situation, even if they do nothing wrong. Whereas a company does expect to have control; all they have to do is not write down any discriminatory reasons, and just claim underperformance. So if they want you to dance like a bear, you'll either dance like a bear or start scrambling to fund your early retirement.
That's why we have nothing to say any time someone raises the question of how it's fair for things to be so asymmetrical: because it isn't fair, it's just what you have to do to make your monthly payments.
I think the main reason there's no notice by employers in the US is the lack of unions/organised labour to fight for rights like these.
But there is some law about notice. The WARN Act covers large employers who are conducting large layoffs. They have to give 60 days notice of large layoffs 50-500 depending on work site size and other factors.
Nobody ever talks about this side of the coin when it comes to layoffs and how companies behave. Everyone thinks oh its legal for them to just throw you out with no severance so its fine that they did that.
Then sadly anyone complaining about being laid off in that way is labeled a "bitter former employee", and quitting without giving 2 weeks notice is considered you slapping them in face.
Full disclosure: Over the years, someone may well have told me that this story was not accurate.
>>You could almost make that flipping burgers. And this job required a college degree and experience.
So is 'flipping burgers' not "no skill, minimum wage, part time" now? Maybe a cook in casual dining restaurant can make $30k, but nobody 'flipping burgers' at the Burger King is.
Another example: Our regional victim-witness program, run by the state, requires a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and/or Sociology, and previous experience with courtroom work or social services. However, it starts at less than most of those social services or court clerk positions pay, and those jobs have much lower barriers to entry (basically, high school diploma and no criminal background). It's purely a "do it for the love of the job, not the money" kind of thing, and that would be fine except it's barely a living wage around here. Given that you're expected to be on call 24/7/365 on salary (i.e. no overtime/holiday compensation and no way to have a second, part time job), it's simply not financially viable for most people.
They wanted someone to run the back end for an 18 county area, including supporting local offices. Starting pay? Between 26k and a starting cap of just over $30k/year.
I had a similar "opportunity" come up last year. The county I grew up in needed to hire a new IT director, and as I had worked at the sheriff's office there for several years, I had a few friends still working for the county. One of them tipped me off about the job after they dropped my name in the bucket on my behalf, and it turned out they were looking at me specifically because they knew I had worked there before and got along well with the sheriff's office staff. The previous IT director "hated cops" and was never a good fit for government work, apparently.
I was interested until I found out the starting pay was just a little more than I make now, and I would basically be one of two people servicing the entire county, as well as being on call from over an hour away. Yes, it's a fairly rural county but it's a job for a full staff, not one or two people. The county could barely afford to offer the salary they posted as it was, so I declined.
Funny thing, and similar story to yours -- and the guy that offered it to me didn't know this -- but one of my very first jobs while I was still in school was with this same agency. He was kind of surprised that I knew the building and their location in it. :)
You praise someone publicly, but you reprimand someone privately.
This is totally applicable for firing as well.
Boss/Owner: "Our investor is cutting our funding from enough for 3 engineers down to 2 engineers."
Me: "Gee boss, we're really going to miss you..." ;-)
Surely they've brickwalled them in the employment contracts saying "The employee agrees not to publicize events happening inside the company, with no limit of time, or the employee agrees to compensate the company for the loss of image"? How come the OP doesn't mind talking negatively in public about his former company?
I've already signed a simple software EULA which specified: "You (the Customer) will not comment about the performance of the product in public".
He singled out two female employees and their "distressed babies" as reasons for cutting the 401k match, in front of the whole company. He did not volunteer to reduce his salary instead.
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-aols-ceo-meant-blaming-a...