[HN Gopher] Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing Peop...
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Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)
Author : staccatomeasure
Score : 320 points
Date : 2021-09-20 11:40 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (staysaasy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (staysaasy.com)
| arthur_sav wrote:
| What about quitting? I always joke about quitting
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| I know a person who started joking about leaving if they gave
| him a pile of money and showed him the door. He was super
| valuable to the company and very senior. New CEO and VPs come
| in and start demanding cuts. A couple of months later, guess
| who was given a pile of money and shown the door?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Always strange that 'cuts' often involve spending more money.
| I guess the size of the pile is relevant, and I get that it's
| offset against potential future cost/commitment.
|
| Person X at $100k is given ... $40k to quit now, because it
| will save company perhaps $260k in the next 2 years. But..
| that $40k is coming from somewhere now, no? Maybe some is
| coming from other folks cut immediately without the big pile
| of cash?
| JohnFen wrote:
| This might be related to a business truth that I learned
| the hard way...
|
| It's generally cheaper to make a single larger payout than
| to engage in recurring smaller payouts.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Generally speaking the payouts I've seen amount to about
| 3-4 months of salary, so the timeline to break even is
| fairy obvious (less the cost of benefits, which shortens
| the timeline).
|
| Ditto with layoffs. 2-3 months salary to get rid of
| employees you can't afford at the moment is a short payoff
| compared to salaries, and worth it to salvage some
| reputation for future hiring.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Cheaper in the long-run is an important consideration.
|
| Most large companies set aside money for layoffs in their
| financial filings under one-time expenses. They will
| usually explain what impact the layoffs will be expected to
| have on profitability.
| codingdave wrote:
| That can be to make a company look good on paper when
| seeking some kind of investment round. "Sure, we have some
| big capital expenses this year, but our operating budget
| for the future is X% smaller"
|
| I frequently see short-term decisions to get funding
| triumph over long-term planning when private investors are
| involved. And it might even be the right choice - grow and
| get all the funds, then clean up tech debt in future years.
| It can be frustrating, but is a valid business play.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Depends on company morale. I wouldn't make that joke if people
| are on edge and worried that you might quit.
| lincolnq wrote:
| If one of my reports were joking about quitting, I would at
| least consider whether they were in a ha-ha-only-serious mode,
| and probably bring it up at our next 1:1. I don't think there's
| as much risk of hurting someone personally if you joke about
| quitting, but i do think it's an easy way to attract
| potentially unwanted attention/conversations with your manager!
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| not a lot of upside to jokes like that. it's not wildly funny,
| and it might freak someone out.
| mk89 wrote:
| How is it funny that your manager tells you _as a joke_ that
| he is gonna fire you?
|
| The truth it: neither of them is a joke. It's just pure BS
| that comes either out of sheer and innocent incompetence or
| stupidity.
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| I didn't say it was funny. I also think joking about firing
| people 1. isn't funny, and 2. risks freaking people out.
|
| A good rule of thumb is "don't make gambles where the best-
| case scenario is that nothing bad happens."
| mk89 wrote:
| I think I misread your comment :)
|
| I think that another way to _prevent_ it is by asking
| yourself if the other person will find it funny.
|
| That's a general advice not just specific to
| firing/leaving a company.
| pc86 wrote:
| The reason you don't joke about firing someone is because of
| the power imbalance. The employee will usually be in a bad spot
| if they actually are fired, and the company will be fine
| (usually better off, even). Furthermore, there's no real
| recourse on the employee side. If they are offended by the joke
| they can't really complain, because if the boss is so tone deaf
| as to joke about firing, they're unlikely to take criticism
| like that well.
|
| No such power imbalance exists with an employee joking about
| quitting, but I also struggle to think of any situation in
| which it's actually a funny joke to make.
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| >The employee will usually be in a bad spot if they actually
| are fired, and the company will be fine (usually better off,
| even).
|
| Boss, to employee: "I'd just like you to know that I'd never
| joke about firing you. I recognise that it would be
| needlessly cruel because, although you're reliant on the
| company to earn a living, the company would actually be
| better off without you." D:
| pc86 wrote:
| If the company is firing someone it's [probably] because
| they're in a better position without them. I probably could
| have phrased it better but it's somewhat tautological so I
| didn't think it would be that offensive of a statement :)
| JohnFen wrote:
| In my opinion, joking about quitting is about as good of an
| idea as joking about firing someone. I wouldn't even advise
| talking about quitting in any way unless you've already made
| the decision to quit (and even then, it's not a fantastic
| idea).
| sieste wrote:
| I usually do the opposite. Sometimes when someone I manage asks
| me how things are going, I jokingly tell them I'm trying my best
| not to get fired. I find it helps break the ice, and shows them
| that other people are struggling with that same insecurities.
| Reading some of the comments on here I'm now concerned that such
| comments might also amplify a general latent fear of getting
| fired, so I'll probably stop doing this.
| ickelbawd wrote:
| Yeah probably best to not make it about being fired--since your
| boss is ultimately their boss--makes them wonder when the axe
| might come for them next... That said I'm definitely a fan of
| some self-depreciating humor to help others relax and build
| rapport. Humor can be a wonderful tool really.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I feel that it's sad this even needs to be advice. I'd think it
| should be obvious, but we miss "obvious" things, every day.
|
| Management is, way too often, treated as a "privilege," and a
| "reward."
|
| I was a manager for 25 years. I never felt "privileged," and I
| considered it a "curse."
|
| I hated every damn minute of it, but I kept doing it, because I
| am a control freak, and couldn't trust anyone else to do a better
| job. I also avoided getting promoted, because I didn't want to
| leave my team in the hands of the other managers I knew.
|
| Most of my peers and superiors provided object examples in what
| not to do.
| Danieru wrote:
| In my experience the issue arises not because managers are
| treating the position as a privilege. Rather the opposite. A
| regular person one day becomes a manager. They feel the same
| today as the day before. They feel the new power is fake, or
| theoretical. It becomes easy to joke about this power. In their
| head the joke is funny because of irony. "How could I have
| power? I'm just a regular person."
|
| A further issue is the mismatch in weight given to their words
| over their intention. Even I hit this, once my employee told me
| he gave strong weight to a point I had casually mentioned. For
| once in my life someone remembered what I said better than me.
| It was a bit worrying, as my exact comment had been meant to be
| a minor point.
|
| Thankfully I knew prior to "getting power" to, as I word it,
| "never make jokes which imply a power structure". As the
| listener can never truly know if the joke was speaking to an
| unsaid idea.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Good point.
| LanceH wrote:
| Anyone who doesn't see how this might happen to a newly
| promoted manager lacks imagination.
|
| It's the same thing that manager might have said the day before
| as a peer as a sort of grim humor, but is now suddenly off
| limits. Hell, there is the possibility the relationship is good
| enough that it is still funny.
| indymike wrote:
| The same advice applies to all managers, not just new ones.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23477400
| mberning wrote:
| I don't think it's good for employees to joke about either. I
| worked with a guy that was constantly half joking about getting
| fired, layoffs, etc. It's a real drag to hear about all the time.
| _moof wrote:
| Oof, I feel this. I've made so many dumb mistakes in management
| gigs, which is normal and just a part of learning any skill, but
| it's so much more painful when your dumb mistakes are with other
| people and their jobs. It's not like leaving out a comma where
| you just feel silly for a second, recompile, and immediately
| triumph and move on. No, now your mistakes hurt other people's
| feelings, create awkwardness, diminish morale... although the
| upside is that if you can deal with your mistakes skillfully, you
| (somewhat paradoxically) end up strengthening relationships and
| your team. But jeez, becoming a new manager is an act of serious
| courage and humility. (And if it doesn't feel that way at first,
| it will soon whether you like it or not!)
| terramex wrote:
| As a more general advice - person in position of power should not
| joke about causing harm. Whether is is manager joking about
| firing employee, stronger person joking about beating up weaker
| one or parent joking about throwing child out of house when they
| misbehave. This kind of humor works only when it is coming from
| weaker position and even then only in certain situations.
| wefarrell wrote:
| "Always punch up, never punch down"
| philwelch wrote:
| The problem with this is that everyone sees themselves as the
| underdog.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Exactly. The article's advice applies just as well if you're
| a senior IC talking to a junior IC.
| ponow wrote:
| What about, "do no wrong"?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| (Good) Jokes that punch up are funny, not immoral. It's
| _really_ hard to make a good joke that punches down; seeing
| it pulled off makes me really respect (and kinda dislike) a
| comedian (and I 've never seen a non-professional manage
| it).
| syspec wrote:
| (got it)
| freen wrote:
| Now, think about your position of power in a historical
| context. Are you a member of a group that has traditionally
| held power? A gender that has traditionally been considered
| "superior" or "acceptable"?
|
| Same thing applies there too.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Yes, let your uncontrollable birth circumstances define who
| you are & how you act.
|
| Wait...
| krageon wrote:
| This sort of performative signaling isn't helping the cause
| you are ostensibly championing. There's ways to interact with
| other people that don't start out from a position of
| confrontation, those are far more likely to prevent folks
| from having a knee-jerk dismissal response to you.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| GP getting upvoted because managers are in the minority on HN
|
| P getting downvoted because members of historically powerful
| groups and genders are not in the minority on HN
| Veen wrote:
| Or because no one likes being lectured by pompous self-
| righteous strangers on a topic barely relevant to the
| article. Especially when it's something we've all heard a
| thousand times before presented as if it were a gift of
| great wisdom.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I agree in this particular case but the exception proves
| the rule. Shoving vaguely applicable yet mostly useless
| proverbial advice into internet comment sections is a
| great low effort way to be rewarded with virtue points.
| There are a few examples elsewhere in the comments of
| such. Had he been more tactful about how he worded the
| topic it likely would have been better received.
| mrosett wrote:
| This comment is gold. I genuinely chuckled as I read it.
| seneca wrote:
| In my case, it's because a managerial position is an
| ephemeral role you voluntarily step into. Accepting a
| managerial role means accepting certain rights and
| constraints, including things like the topic of the
| article.
|
| Being told you have similar constraints simply because you
| were born with a certain configuration is both arguable,
| completely lacking any nuance or insight, and mostly
| original-sin tinged dogma.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Don't like it? Fix your society; it's what the rest of us
| are trying to do. I would _love_ for basic interactions
| with strangers not to be tainted by gender-based power
| dynamics, but here we are; if you 're in a position where
| you can ignore it, chances are that society has labelled
| you "more powerful" (more able to do what you want
| without social reprisal, etc.) and ignoring that is
| making other people uncomfortable.
| gowld wrote:
| Or someone who routinely orders the killing of people, often
| killing innocents people, joking about murdering innocent
| people.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+drone+jonas
| chokma wrote:
| In school, we had a teacher who as famous for making jokes at
| the expense of others. One time during chemistry in front of
| the class he said to his most-liked pupil: "We have enough
| poison here to kill everyone in class. Well, except me and you,
| of course."
|
| And that was the time the class decided to go to our head
| teacher and tell her that his jokes were not funny at all and
| she reported back that our chemistry teacher was surprised
| about how someone did not appreciate his brand of humor.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Yep, position of power implies relationship structure that
| brings completely different social dynamics than the equals.
| That's also the exact same dynamics that makes something abuse
| or not abuse. The recent "Me too" movement was essentially
| based on it. I'm sure there could be another kind of "Me too"
| movement that's not sexual but business or career centric.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The weird thing is, in my experience, a lot of managers don't
| see themselves as having power, or at least, aren't willing to
| use that power for others. Bad managers who don't go to bat for
| their reports, who joke about firing you while forgetting they
| can actually fire you, not helping advance your career in any
| way, etc.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I think that's the key dissonance here - that from the
| perspective of employees (which it looks like you're
| channeling here) managers have the power to fire people so it
| sounds like a real threat, but from the perspective of
| managers it's just making a fictional exaggeration because
| they know that they don't really have the power to
| unilaterally fire anyone without an excessive reason - in
| most organizations, unless they're the founder-CEO of a small
| company. They have been delegated some day-to-day
| administrative power from the corporation and HR with respect
| to their team, they have a voice and vote for hiring and
| firing, but they don't often have a veto vote for saying who
| is or isn't going to be in the team they have been assigned
| to manage.
|
| Not helping you advance or making your life difficult, yes,
| managers can do that, but in general in all the organizations
| I've seen (in IT corps and finance; perhaps industries like
| e.g. fast food are very different) if a manager would really
| want to get rid of someone, it would take them months of
| "political effort" to try and do so (and they might still
| fail), because they really did not have that power to just
| fire someone.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Perhaps, but it's also worth noting the difference in
| visibility between employee/manager. For all the employee
| knows that "political effort" has been ongoing for the last
| few months and they were non the wiser.
|
| I work at a large company with separate
| engineering/management tracks, and gaining any visibility
| into the business from the engineering floor is like
| pulling teeth. For example, I've been blindsided by
| reassignments that are technically voluntary but I know if
| I make a stink about them it'll hurt my reputation. I
| certainly wasn't consulted about the problem my re-
| assignment addresses until it was happening. That lack of
| context creates an environment where employees have to read
| the tea leaves from the drips and drabs of information they
| can get, a joke about firing would definitely prompt me to
| update my resume, just in case.
| noneeeed wrote:
| Totally agree with you on that.
|
| However a slight variation about joking with kids that I find
| does work surprisingly well is the totally exhagerrated
| consequences. But it really has to be totally over the top and
| utterly unbelievable, the sillier the better. It simultaneously
| breaks the impending mood of conflict, makes them laugh, while
| somehow actually motivating them to do what they are resisting.
| We all know it won't be the real consequence of them (not)
| doing whatever, but it still seems to work. It's weird. Doesn't
| always work of course (nothing with kids ever does), but a
| variation on the theme has frequently helped.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I've often done that with my own kids, once tried it with a
| child at my work - trying to none with them - kid took it
| seriously and screamed the place down. No young kids get
| sarcasm, but lots don't get exposed to silliness and so will
| believe even ludicrous stuff from parents. That child taught
| me well!
| Volundr wrote:
| I think people often underestimate the role trust plays in
| humor (with both kids and adults). This explains why some
| pretty awful jokes can be funny when coming from someone
| you know intimately but not from a stranger, and why your
| kids find it funny when you suggest xyz as a consequence,
| but someone else's is horrified.
| namelosw wrote:
| I grew up in a region parents would randomly say something like
| the following to their kids on daily basis and I hated it:
|
| - You're eating too much and we can't afford you, we will
| giving you to human traffickers for free.
|
| - If you go out and play before finishing the homework you will
| be eaten by wolves.
|
| - If you don't obey the cops are going to arrest and execute
| you.
|
| - Stay away from dogs or it will bite your pp off.
|
| - Oh we thought you were useful when we found you in the trash
| can, it turns out we're wrong and we're going to throw you
| back.
|
| And there are hundreds of variants or so. They must have an
| anti-fortune cookie database kept under their pillow... So
| pathetic.
| worker767424 wrote:
| Guess now you get to return the favor and spend a decade
| talking about sending them to the nursing home.
| pm90 wrote:
| "If your grades don't improve you are off to Military
| School." Used to terrify me when I was really young because I
| believed everything they said. As I grew up and the threat
| never materialized I shrugged it off.
|
| Cultures that think this behavior is ok are the fucking
| worst. I would never ever do that if I had a child.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's okay! Anyone with 20 or so years' experience with the
| culture's "humour" will understand that it's _clearly_ a
| joke. Duh. Stupid 10 year old for believing it.
|
| I found the tone of voice most significant in this kind of
| situation. When it was "smiley, jokey", I would get it was
| a joke - but even mock seriousness or, worse, _exasperated
| parent_ , was completely credible.
| peteradio wrote:
| Jesus, where did you grow up. Where I grew up we would make
| the first part of the joke but not the second. You are going
| to jail. Not "you are going to get shot in the head". Dogs
| biting dicks off?! America is too puritanical for that kind
| of imagery to fly.
| namelosw wrote:
| Yeah, I should have guessed it sounds too much for fellow
| Americans. I'm sorry.
|
| I grew up in Asia. I guess it's one of those cultural
| differences, like calling people "fatass" or drinking on
| the street without a shirt is not too inappropriate in some
| places. So people would have to shrug it off, try to adapt,
| and try to think those are just jokes without bad
| intentions. But still, it hurts and it does have life-long
| negative impacts on many people as far as I can see.
|
| On top of that, I find people from better-educated
| families, or people from many other provinces in the same
| country don't share the same experience as us. My guess is
| economic and education status helps. From what I can see,
| the current generation of kids does receive substantially
| less abuse than say three decades ago.
| jagtesh wrote:
| Good general advice. Had a manager who would say to folks "you
| won't get fired for xyz". Even the mention of firing made the
| environment unpleasant. Now I fully appreciate how words can
| have a profound effect on morale.
| anon7725 wrote:
| There is a person in my management chain who makes occasional
| references to being fired along the lines of "If someone did
| X they'd be instantly let go." I find that it makes for an
| uncomfortable work environment - I've never heard managers
| speak this way before. To be clear, I am not speaking about
| some bright-line issue that comes up in required training.
|
| It makes me think that they are a weak "rules lawyer" type,
| who are more interested in always having plausible
| deniability/coverage of their own ass than actually leading
| their team.
| gumby wrote:
| As with everything there is a slight exception (doesn't
| look like you were talking about this case): if someone
| jokes about doing something forbidden it's proper for a
| manager to say "sorry, but I don't like even joking about
| that because violating safety protocol/falsifying govt form
| X/paying a bribe even where it's the country's culture is
| grounds for immediate termination. Let's just move on".
|
| Sometimes we joke about things to reduce fear, but
| sometimes joking about things normalizes them.
| myohmy wrote:
| I do that sometimes. I'm being 100% serious.
|
| I get bureaucrats talk about building slow and expensive
| process controls to prevent someone from doing something
| stupid. I counter with the fact that we don't need the
| controls because my employees know I will simply fire the
| person if they do it.
| dannyw wrote:
| The inverse "we will support you for xyz" works just as well
| anyway.
| kodah wrote:
| "Causing harm" is the kind of vaguery that makes people walk on
| eggshells when taken seriously enough. I agree there are things
| that managers shouldn't joke about, but I do think it's on us
| to be specific about topics and scenarios.
| [deleted]
| mherdeg wrote:
| Something I learned the hard way at the student newspaper is that
| the word "Fired" has some very strong psychological implications
| in US English -- it implies someone no longer has a job because
| of something bad they did.
|
| We got some strong negative feedback about a headline saying that
| people had been "fired" when the story was that a kind of lab
| technology had become obsolete and a number of lab technicians
| had been laid off. I had signed off on the headline, was
| responsible, and have never forgotten.
|
| People take their jobs very seriously; it's the thing we choose
| to do -- or have to do -- instead of being with our families and
| friends. And "fired" is one of the strongest words in our
| language. We need to be sure we understand what we are doing when
| we use it.
| rahulpadalkar wrote:
| The title reminds me of the office episode.
| irateswami wrote:
| It takes someone with a Michael Scott-level of self-awareness
| to ever think it would be a good idea.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| Watch Band of Brothers for more solid leadership advice. My
| favorite: "Never put yourself in a position where you can take
| something from these men."
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Funny you bring that up. Rewatching this with my wife - haven't
| seen it in... 18 years? That's one of those lines that has
| stuck with me the last couple days (midway through so far).
| Really, much of the last 5 episodes are a blur - I can't digest
| all the violence. But that line just sticks out. Any others
| that have stuck with you?
| notjustanymike wrote:
| None specifically, but since I've been managing a team of 9
| engineers during the pandemic I certainly sympathize with
| Nixon becoming an alcoholic.
|
| It's also an interesting show to watch as you progress in
| your career. Winters always wants to be part of the action,
| but is told to hold back and trust his men as he advances in
| rank. There's lessons there for anyone transitioning from
| individual contributor to leader.
| jldugger wrote:
| At my last job there was a chatbot with a !fire command. That
| would track how many times it had been used on a given subject.
| 'chatbot fires printers for the fifth time!'
|
| It was incredibly toxic when applied to humans.
| option_greek wrote:
| Don't Joke <about most things> is a good advice in general for
| management and leadership. You have to assume people will read
| into most of the stuff you say as you are their primary
| information conduit for anything related to workplace.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I led a team of about 65 engineers at my previous job. One of
| things that became apparent at around the 20 mark was that
| rumors spread so quickly and a comment I didn't think twice
| about crystallized into "marching orders" very quickly.
|
| Make jokes, it helps build rapport with people you spend so
| much time with! But be careful about the message you convey,
| people will run wild with it overnight.
| tnvaught wrote:
| I would refine this advice to "sarcasm is never appropriate in
| an uneven power dynamic." Whether it's in the context of
| parenting, teaching or managing people. As a go-to form of
| humor, I've learned this the hard way. It's not actually
| helpful for folks to hear the hilarious monologue going on in
| my head when I'm feeling salty. There _are_ legitimately
| relationship-building funny things to say, but they're usually
| self-effacing and, at best, complementary to others.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I might further distinguish between sarcasm towards others
| versus sarcasm towards oneself. Most of my sarcasm _is_ self-
| effacing, and I think that 's generally okay with adults.
| (Less-so children.)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| While I certainly agree that jokes are _dangerous_ , they're
| also a key way humans form social connections! I do think a
| sense of humor is important for building a rapport with
| colleagues.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Many ordinary social interactions have become sins recently.
| Saying anything that could be interpreted as offensive poses
| a very real risk to your career, the list of potentially
| offensive things is incredibly long, and gets longer with
| each passing moment as novel outrages pop up in all corners
| of the world.
|
| You can still be kind, empathetic and polite to everybody you
| work with. But avoiding authentic personal relationships at
| work is very sensible, along with having very clear personal
| boundaries. Normal colleagues can form cliques of people they
| trust, but it's not a great outcome for management to be
| participating in that, even though that's what usually
| happens.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| But inappropriate jokes about firing people and the like
| are not "ordinary social interactions" with aspects "that
| could be interpreted as offensive", they are an objectively
| oppressive and distressing behaviour that even the least
| upset subordinates of such a manager recognize as
| inappropriate.
| anon7725 wrote:
| I don't know why this is being downvoted - it's good
| advice. You should adopt a "work persona" that elides the
| riskier elements of your true self.
|
| "Bring your true self to work" and other modern workplace
| nonsense is risky advice to take seriously. It's mostly a
| coded communication that does not mean what it appears to
| on the surface.
| option_greek wrote:
| For peers at same level in their own setting that is indeed
| true. When with people that report to you, might not be a
| good idea because, one can't tell if even the laughter is
| genuine or obligated to.
|
| There are some instances where it might potentially help -
| when your team is under stress (real or perceived). Light
| humor (if well done), might alleviate some of the tension in
| the room and let them focus on work.
| ludamad wrote:
| As management especially, joke _clearly_. There is far more
| weight on you to not mislead than for the "keep a serious
| atmosphere" that some might take it as
| [deleted]
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| The greater the risk the better the laugh.
|
| Depends on what you are going for.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| My advice for new programmers: Don't use expletives in any log
| message, debugging alert, or even code comments. The chance of
| this coming back to haunt you is not worth the momentary
| satisfaction it gives you.
| dgfitz wrote:
| You ever grep the linux codebase for expletives? Give it a shot
| some time.
|
| I wouldn't make it at a company that frowns upon a 'God Damnit'
| in a log message.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| "I wrote this under duress" is my favourite comment I've
| personally left, mostly so the poor bastard who maintains
| that code after me doesn't hate me quite as much.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I probably wouldn't either. It's not that I wouldn't like to
| write those things, or enjoy reading them in the tribulations
| of those who'd been there before me. The problem is more when
| it reaches a customer via some error prompt which you
| modified for debugging or some logging output which ends up
| in their console.
| aeternum wrote:
| It's still not a good practice. Customers do sometimes see
| log files and when they do it's because things are broken and
| they're typically not in a good mood.
|
| Perhaps you have a highly orthodox individual as a user,
| should they be forced to read or even repeat a 'God Damnit'
| in a log or error message while on the phone with support?
| Should an atomic-bomb survivor be told that their files were
| nuked?
| JTbane wrote:
| This is good advice, I was in an interview and was asked why
| "add the X shit" appeared in one of my commit messages in my
| personal github repo.
| [deleted]
| DaemonAlchemist wrote:
| Agreed. I once worked for a company that built custom
| e-commerce sites. One of our clients decided to bring
| development in-house, and wanted the codebase for their site. I
| had to go through every source file line by line to remove all
| of the expletives the core team had put in the comments before
| handing over the code.
| Trufa wrote:
| Darn, I made the mistake once and never again, the face of the
| CEO pointing at the word "PENIS" on the site was a good enough
| lesson I guess.
|
| I guess it was as lucky as you can get since we had made the
| joke together and I just forgot to delete it. Still remember
| the code, I thought I was sooooo funny. I apologize on behalf
| of my former self.
|
| *:after { content: 'PENIS'; }
| lrvick wrote:
| One of my favorite bosses joked about everything and was totally
| irreverent, even on topics of firing.
|
| Everyone loved them because they did it with a candor that was
| always very obviously not serious it was disarming.
|
| Given the nature of the work we did was very high risk, the
| disarming was welcome. Being fired was nowhere near the worst
| case outcome if we didn't do our jobs well, so joking about
| anything was fair game if it helped relieve some tension.
|
| Be careful not to create environments where people have to add
| walking on eggshells to their already long list of difficult
| responsibilities.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| As a manager you are never allowed to forget that:
|
| - different cultures have different meanings for the same things,
| so you will be misinterpreted lots of times
|
| - most people have no sense of humor, so joking with them is a
| waste of time
|
| - anything you way will eventually be used against you
|
| It is a very sad world.
| makach wrote:
| It is a very good advice. The general advice is really to be
| professional in the workplace. Don't make a joke, unless it is
| during lunch and you are trying to tell a _real_ joke.
|
| Don't use silly variable names, or add jokes or profanity into
| your code or documentation.
|
| Sooner or later it will surface and there is NOTHING quite as
| embarrasing as showing a unknown third party or a manager
| something on the screen that screams immaturity.
|
| That doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to have fun at the
| workplace, because you should. Also it makes life at work much
| easier if everyone has fun- just be professional and respectful.
|
| Also, sometimes you do slip up. Don't be afraid to apologize. It
| is ok. It is human to make errors, but learn from your mistakes
| and move on.
| gargs wrote:
| At one of my previous jobs, managers would leak information about
| potentially not renewing contracts as 'person X has decided to
| quit'.
|
| It used to be quite awkward to meet person X at a bar and ask
| them why they were changing their job when this was the first
| time they heard about it.
|
| Turns out that toxification of workplace is better at getting rid
| of people than going about it legally.
| asamiam wrote:
| I think this falls under the general "don't threaten the
| relationship." Whether it's joking about firing, saying "maybe we
| should just get divorced", joking a child was an accident etc.
| When things get stressful people often reevaluate comments in
| their new emotional state and what might have felt like a joke
| could become a threat. Subsequently instead of working to solve a
| problem for a situation they trust, people often work for self
| preservation.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I always laugh when I remember my old manager calling a meeting
| where he talked about our product not being profitable and us
| needing to pull out all the stops to fix that, including reducing
| the headcount, and then being shocked and angry that someone had
| started a "rumor" about layoffs. He had meant through attrition,
| but it was a misinterpretation that I think should have been
| predictable in context. If you're in a position of authority you
| have to be careful about what messages you send.
| standardUser wrote:
| The few times I have heard a manager joke about firing someone,
| my immediate though was "oh, this person is completely
| unqualified to be in charge of anyone and I should start looking
| elsewhere".
| stevage wrote:
| It's weird, I have worked at many organisations - and at almost
| none of them did my manager have the ability to fire me. Is this
| an American thing?
|
| In most of these orgs, getting rid of someone is kind of hard
| work, usually involving a lot of HR. A manager would have much
| more luck getting you moved to a different team.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The uniquely American thing (compared to your perspective, at
| least) is you can get fired for almost any reason, or no reason
| at all [0]. In any case, whether that decision technically
| comes from the manager or the manager filling out paperwork
| which is then approved by HR, or if the manager is merely being
| used as the bearer of bad news, etc., I think is beside the
| point.
|
| 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
| firebird84 wrote:
| They can start the process. Once that process is started your
| career inside the company is basically over. Even if you
| survive it (and/or survive the PIP) you will not want to work
| there anymore. May as well be fired at that point.
| 7402 wrote:
| In the places I've worked (always in the U.S.), although there
| may be a procedure the managers have to go through when firing
| or laying off someone (which does involve HR), I believe it is
| often considered part of the manager's job to be the one who
| personally delivers the bad news.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Depends on the type of contract they have. There's a bunch of
| people that are on recurring 3 month contracts that can be let
| go at the end of each period.
|
| The permanent employees however... better be prepared for a
| year long process.
| [deleted]
| ketzo wrote:
| The other comments are talking about the American-ness of the
| firing, so I will also say that this is (in my mind) a
| particularly American brand of humor.
|
| It's very, very standard for people to make
| sarcastic/ironic/teasing jokes in this vein as a way of trying
| to break tension or lighten the mood.
|
| Not really what you asked, but maybe relevant.
| gumby wrote:
| In most US States the company's ability to fire you is hardly
| constrained just as your ability to quit is unconstrained.
|
| Everywhere in the US you can't be fired for your country of
| origin or due to age (these aren't always easy to prove of
| course) but, for example, if the boss decided to get rid of all
| left-handed people one day that would be perfectly legal.
| michaelt wrote:
| In medium/large companies, 99.9% of employees can be fired _at
| the end of a HR process_ and that HR process is something only
| their line manager can start.
|
| And while transferring an inept employee to another manager
| might save you some paperwork, it'll make that manager an enemy
| (unless the employee's performance is much improved by the
| move). So many managers would do the paperwork.
| PeterisP wrote:
| From the perspective of that HR process, they generally care
| about the employee as much (or as little) as about that
| manager. A manager may start some process, but HR might as
| well consider that it's better (or easier?) for the
| organization to replace that manager instead of replacing
| that individual contributor.
| FreezerburnV wrote:
| I'm not sure I've ever heard a story where a manager
| attempts to fire someone, but HR decides to replace the
| manager instead. Is that something you've seen? I only hear
| stories about managers being protected as hard as possible
| by HR.
| yardie wrote:
| I've seen it only once. One manager, not in my
| department, had a high turnover. Staff were either fired,
| quit, or transfered. Senior management eventually stepped
| in and discovered this guy was pretty toxic. But they
| couldn't simply fire him. Since he was well-connected in
| the industry they gave him time to find another senior
| position.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Yes, I have seen unit-level "personality conflict"
| situations being resolved by firing the line manager.
|
| It's important to note the distinction between "manager"
| and "management". In larger organizations an entry-level
| worker is x levels away from top management, and a first
| level line manager is x-1 levels away from top
| management, where x is 5-10 i.e. they are quite far from
| management and very close to the actual worker.
|
| In a large company, from the perspective of actual
| decision makers or HR, a first level line manager or a
| team lead is just a slightly different job description of
| anonymous interchangeable peon. You have a hundred
| customer service representatives and a bunch of CS
| teamleads; you have fifty small branch
| offices/stores/warehouses/whatever and so you have fifty
| mostly interchangeable branch managers. Their role is
| supervising the team and executing the assigned goals and
| policy with minimal influence on it - any actual policy
| is set by that manager's boss boss or higher; any policy
| exceptions are likely to require approval from that
| manager's boss or higher, etc. Of course, if you have
| only a hundred or so people in the whole organization,
| then it's different, and most organizations are small or
| medium enterprises - but quite a few people do work in
| large corporations.
| dustintrex wrote:
| In any remotely sane company, HR does what management says.
| The manager may well be replaced, but it's the manager's
| manager or someone even higher in the food chain who makes
| that call, not HR on their own.
| PeterisP wrote:
| They way I've seen it, the manager's manager formally
| makes the call, but they wouldn't really know the other
| person involved (they would just work with their
| subordinate managers) nor the details of the particular
| problem. If they care, then they would get into the
| details and perhaps fire whichever of the two is actually
| at fault; but if they don't care much (which I've seen
| happen, especially in more lower paid/mass market
| positions), they would rubberstamp whatever HR says -
| especially since it's not that unlikely that the conflict
| will escalate into a complaint (no matter if real or not)
| about discrimination or workplace abuse, and so from the
| perspective of that manager's manager it's very important
| that a Proper Process gets followed and (for many jobs,
| though usually not for IT jobs) not that important to
| them about who stays and who leaves afterwards, as HR
| will just get an equivalent replacement.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| HR has their own obligations to the people they report
| to. If they can't justify the manager's suggestion
| without sticking their necks out to a degree they're
| comfortable with they probably won't.
|
| They'll mostly side with the manager (because selection
| bias, not a lot of managers are bringing them cases of
| people they want fired where that outcome is not
| compatible with the processes) but may very well tell a
| manager to just deal with it if that's what's "doing
| their jobs" looks like.
|
| Things like this are never as black and white as people
| looking for cheap upvotes make them out to be.
| dustintrex wrote:
| I don't think we're disagreeing here? Of course HR can
| and will push back if (say) firing somebody without
| proper CYA could result in a lawsuit, but the point is
| that HR is not the one _initiating_ any firing -- that
| has to come from management.
| thebean11 wrote:
| In what world would that be better? I manager tries to fire
| a bad performer and now the org is down a manager and keeps
| a bad IC?
| PeterisP wrote:
| In general, in larger organizations with formal
| processes, HR would look into the situation instead of
| simply accepting the manager's assertion about someone
| being a bad performer.
|
| For example, it may be quite clear even from externally
| looking at other reports (e.g. data from "360-degree
| reviews" or whatever internal evaluation process the
| corporation uses) that the consensus around the team is
| that the person is _not_ a bad performer, but that the
| team lead has had recorded "problems with cooperation" -
| in that case, escalating the conflict with an IC to HR
| may easily be the breaking point that causes the team
| lead to be removed.
| gumby wrote:
| > In medium/large companies, 99.9% of employees can be fired
| at the end of a HR process and that HR process is something
| only their line manager can start.
|
| True but note in the US this isn't for the same reasons that
| happens in (for example) Europe.
|
| Big companies are better to sue than small companies (they
| have more money) and were you really fired because you never
| got any work done or because your manager simply didn't like
| you because of something you didn't control or because they
| didn't tell you what you were supposed to do? So the company
| lawyers and HR people put together a long list of things to
| go through to make such suits hard to file.
|
| One of those processes are to put people "on a plan": written
| warning with super-explicit instructions of what to do. I've
| found in a couple of cases this has been the (final) wake up
| call that has made someone get back on track. But what sucks
| is that most companies just treat it as a check off item:
| once someone is on a plan they can never recover.
|
| Also when the problem is the manager, feedback rarely flows
| in that direction.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| A personal improvement plan is not a fun thing to be on :(.
|
| That said, I do wonder how much the perception of them is
| skewed by their lack of visibility -- of the cases where I
| have been aware of a PIP, the only one which was had any
| real visibility in the wider org was the one where the
| person ended up leaving the company.
|
| It's entirely plausible that my employer is one of the
| better ones, though. And even then, I've seen (what
| appeared to me to be) abuses. One of the things that can
| come out of a manager putting someone on a PIP is that it's
| actually the manager who is in the wrong. It takes a good
| HR team to recognise that, though.
| gumby wrote:
| It's important for the success of the individual that the
| PIP not be public.
|
| I don't know if you meant that or not so thought I'd
| mention it.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It depends on the organization whether or not it's hard
| internally, but technically it's very easy in America... most
| states are "at will" employment, which means you can be fired
| by an employer for no reason at any time.
|
| So if someone within the organization has enough power they can
| fire people on a whim. I lived paycheck to paycheck throughout
| my childhood (with a single parent) and into my 20s and I've
| got a deeply embedded fear of losing my job at any moment.
| GordonS wrote:
| As a Brit who has been both managed and manager in the UK,
| Scandinavian and Europe for 2 decades, my first thought was
| also, "wtf, this must be a US thing".
|
| When managing people, why on earth would joking about firing
| people even cross your mind?
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think it depends on the size of the organization. At a
| medium-to-large company, there will almost certainly be an
| established process involving HR.
|
| At a small company, there is often no such thing as HR, and
| your manager often has the direct power to fire you.
| nullspace wrote:
| Yep, it's usually not possible for a manager to unilaterally
| fire you here either. However, a manager who has built up
| trust, by delivering and building a strong team, can
| tremendously influence that process.
| xwdv wrote:
| You can be moved to a bad batch team where you are put on a
| performance improvement plan that is impossible to satisfy and
| then be fired. Pretty simple workaround.
| umanwizard wrote:
| It's not possible at most companies in the US either, although
| of course, your manager would have a lot of influence on the
| decision.
| gjvc wrote:
| This is excellent advice. I have witnessed this on several
| occasions, and it's always cringe-worthy to witness and harmful,
| if not to the recipient, then to one or more observers, who more
| often than not have to suffer in silence. My most benevolent
| interpretation is that this is just a low-effort attempt at
| humour, poorly judged and which has gone wrong.
|
| It doesn't take much thought, really, to consider that the office
| may provide employees a welcome change of scene from their own
| swirling domestic situation, and to have one leak into the other
| like this may be quite upsetting.
|
| I have promised myself that if/when I witness this again, I will
| take the opportunity to tell the manager in question that his/her
| remarks were damaging to their own standing, and that they would
| do well to apologise ASAP, be that in private or in public.
|
| Be a leader of people and times [1], not simply a manager of
| issues and tasks.
|
| [1] as in, "experiences"
| musicale wrote:
| Isn't joking about firing people (not to mention actually firing
| people) one of the most common ways that managers assert and
| reinforce their dominance in the social status hierarchy?
|
| In most companies, managers' greatest power (besides controlling
| subordinates' movement, actions, privacy, and access to amenities
| such as light, heating/cooling, quiet environments, restrooms,
| etc.) is their largely unlimited power to simultaneously deprive
| subordinates of their livelihood, health insurance, social
| relationships, and social status.
|
| Ed Zitron suggests that maintaining this social dominance and
| control over subordinates is typically the underlying (and
| primary) reason why managers want employees "back in the office":
|
| https://ez.substack.com/p/the-work-from-home-future-is-destr...
| notdonspaulding wrote:
| Along the lines of this advice, I've been trying to find an
| article I read at some point in the past with advice that sounded
| like:
|
| > On day 1 of a new hire's employment, I explain what it will
| look like if and when I come to fire them. I explain that I will
| be negotiating their severance and here's how it will look...
|
| Does this ring any bells with anyone? I have this article lodged
| in my brain as being a great conversation to have with someone on
| day 1, but have since never been able to find the article again.
| zcw100 wrote:
| Ok, that's nice. I'm sure some people do it carelessly but lets
| at least be honest and acknowledge that many also do it
| deliberately. It's an easy and cowardly way to assert your
| dominance. If you get called out on it, and you won't, you'll
| just say you were joking. When you're not called out on it it's a
| easy way of reminding people that you can do it. Maybe not now
| but maybe in the future when you're not feeling so generous.
|
| I remember a job interview where the interviewer launched into a
| story, unprompted, about firing someone. Didn't express any
| regrets or sympathy for the person. That interview was over that
| second. Maybe that person was the most deserving person in the
| world to get fired but just the fact that he thought it was
| something to be discussed with an interviewee spoke volumes.
| giorgioz wrote:
| I have been mentioning in interviews that I had to fire an
| employee. It was very hard for me to fire the person and I
| really do not wish to have to repeat that experience so I try
| to warn the candidates.
|
| Backstory:
|
| Our company is fully remote. One of the clause on the contract
| of each employee is no moonlighting. They are not allowed to
| work on anything else professionally. They can work on personal
| software project if they notify me in advance. This is because
| in a fully remote companies there are not office hours and it's
| very hard to define what's work and what's not.
|
| Employee Alice worked for us 3 months. She was not very
| responsive but her work was a 7/10. One day I found Alice was
| actually part of an agency and she was actually a Project
| Manager delegating all her work to other people. I noticed this
| because she had a MacBook but screenshots of her work were on
| Windows. When confronted she straight out denied the whole
| thing. After finding many more evidence she finally admitted
| she had delegated work to some "friend". I fired her with her
| pleading it was all a big misurderstanding. It was terrible, I
| felt so bad because even though I had found a lot of physical
| proof of her deception she was still playing the card of
| "please no really it's a misunderstanding". I doubted myself a
| lot fearing I had indeed fired an innocent person just being
| paranoid.
|
| Now when I hire new employees I underline the NO MOONLIGHT
| policy and tell them I had to fire an employee in the past. It
| was ugly and I wish to not have to redo that.
|
| I'm a single founder software engineer growing a team and
| having to deal with management for the first time. I'm unsure
| of most of my decisions. If you have some advice that you can
| give me in a kind fashion without making me feel even more
| inadequate that I already do it might help me become a better
| manager.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Since you've explicitly asked for advice, the only way to
| assess remote employees is by what they're delivering. If you
| employ them for 40 hours a week, but they can deliver what
| you're asking in 5 and still be responsive when needed, is
| there really a problem?
|
| If they're also doing another job on the side, but it isn't
| impacting their delivery of the work you're asking for, that
| shouldn't be a problem. By doing away with a (largely
| unenforceable) policy of no moonlighting you also avoid the
| problem of having to fire people for breaching it.
|
| I'm borderline on whether Alice here was even at fault. She
| is likely in breach of her contract for several other things,
| I assume there's a routine NDA in place which probably means
| that she shouldn't be sharing confidential company
| information with outside parties, but if not and she was
| getting work delivered is it really a problem if she did so
| by being good at project management rather than software
| development?
| corobo wrote:
| If you want that much control over your employees you're
| going to get employees that allow you to take that much
| control over them. It's the new "pay peanuts, get monkeys"
|
| No moonlighting, screenshots, this quote "This is because in
| a fully remote companies there are not office hours and it's
| very hard to define what's work and what's not"
|
| Someone good enough to do exactly what you need is not the
| sort of person that _only_ does exactly what you need. You
| 're only interviewing people that didn't rule you out
| vincentmarle wrote:
| > Our company is fully remote. One of the clause on the
| contract of each employee is no moonlighting. They are not
| allowed to work on anything else professionally. They can
| work on personal software project if they notify me in
| advance. This is because in a fully remote companies there
| are not office hours and it's very hard to define what's work
| and what's not.
|
| > I'm a single founder software engineer growing a team and
| having to deal with management for the first time. I'm unsure
| of most of my decisions. If you have some advice that you can
| give me in a kind fashion without making me feel even more
| inadequate that I already do it might help me become a better
| manager.
|
| My feedback: drop the terrible policy. It's not legal in
| California for a reason.
| bb123 wrote:
| I love advice like this - it is clear, easy to remember, and
| simple to apply.
| ccvannorman wrote:
| You can also have new managers watch a season of The Office to
| learn what not to do ("fake /joke firings" happened a lot on
| that show!)
| amelius wrote:
| And now we have a URL we can direct our managers to whenever
| they make these stupid jokes.
| adolph wrote:
| Gotta love those domains that can be read two ways.
| sempron64 wrote:
| Related marriage advice: don't joke about divorce.
| tomrod wrote:
| Extremely important advice. Add to that: push upper management
| for change details, keep timelines and punctuality, define
| delivery, be up front on status and results, go home at a
| reasonable hour, take people to lunch or otherwise spend time
| with them, make your team appointments your number one priority,
| and praise publicly/coach privately.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| What do you mean by "change details"?
| tomrod wrote:
| Often policies get set in place and in motion before they
| filter down, and impact is not understood.
|
| Either communicating the course, or if upper management fails
| in their duties, charting the course and communicating, is
| essential.
|
| For example, "we will deprecate this technology by XX date,
| and we have cleared the path to enable this" is often
| essential to success. In a healthy org, telling people what
| you're doing, how you're doing it, and why you're doing it is
| as necessary as when you're doing it.
|
| Just like you don't want to release every feature all at
| once, you similarly don't want to muck up your infrastructure
| (physical or business).
| perpetualpatzer wrote:
| Can you elaborate more on what you mean by "define delivery"?
| michaelt wrote:
| If I tell a guy to make me a table, and he puts his heart and
| soul into making me a beautiful wooden dining table, then
| when he shows it to me I tell him I actually wanted a glass
| coffee table and would he please start over from scratch,
| throwing his work away will be very bad for his morale.
|
| That's not to say requirements can't change - of course they
| can. But they shouldn't change just because I forgot to make
| myself clear the first time.
| tomrod wrote:
| If you're leading a software team, championing a clear
| definition of "done" for the team and business partners
| (usually collaboratively). Other teams have analogous
| targets. There are some teams where the "work" resists
| completion.
| dncornholio wrote:
| I think you should be able to joke about literally anything.
|
| Context matters though so you should not be doing it all the time
| or to everyone. But for me personally, almost no joke is too far.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| > But for me personally, almost no joke is too far.
|
| That is very rare, unfortunately.
| depaya wrote:
| That's great for you, but it gives you no excuse to make other
| people uncomfortable just because _you_ don 't think a joke is
| too far. And no, saying "it's just a joke" isn't an apology.
| dncornholio wrote:
| And that's where context matters! Know when to and when to
| not joke is key. But the subject doesn't matter IMO. Also
| bullying 'jokingly' is not joking. It's bullying. But true
| jokes can be applied on every subject.
| JohnFen wrote:
| My initial reaction was that's so obvious that surely it doesn't
| need to be said. Then I remembered the first two people I ever
| hired (who were friends) and that I made that joke within the
| first two weeks.
|
| Nothing bad came of it, but it does show how easy it is to do.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| Better advice - rent The Office and do the exact opposite of
| everything Michael Scott does.
|
| (No throwing stars or nunchucks either.)
| Arrath wrote:
| Joke about being fired yourself, never about canning lower level
| folks unless you get to that sort of banter relationship with
| them.
|
| I trend more for the joking line of "hey once you move onward and
| upward be sure to send me your consulting rate cause we'll still
| need you"
| thewebcount wrote:
| Oh man, I had to sit through something like this one time. I was
| at a resort in the Pacific with my spouse. It was on a tiny
| island, and there were 2 restaurants that were the only places
| you could eat. One was a moderately priced restaurant you'd go on
| most nights, and the other was a very fancy restaurant that only
| sat 8 people at one large table, so you had to book it the day
| you got to the resort as it always filled up. The chef made the
| food right in front of you and you got to meet and interact with
| a few other couples at the resort.
|
| The chef was a young woman of color, and the resort manager, and
| older white woman who was everyone's boss was from the country
| that had colonized the island. The boss decided to insert herself
| into the dinner because some friends of hers were staying at the
| resort and were at the restaurant that night. She dominated the
| conversation the entire night, and repeatedly made jokes about
| firing the chef. It was incredibly awkward and made an otherwise
| fantastic meal horrible. We wrote a letter to the resort about
| how awful the experience was. I don't know what eventually became
| of it, but I hope it made some sort of difference.
| nmstoker wrote:
| Important advice. Often a red flag about other potential problems
| too.
| srevenant wrote:
| Then there are those bosses who do it on purpose, to just screw
| with you. I had one boss who was upset because we both submitted
| to present at a conference (VMworld) and I was selected, but he
| wasn't. He then declined the business paying for the trip, so I
| paid my own way, then he arrived at the conference, slipped past
| the guard the day I was presenting (I was first panel of the day
| and did a dry-run) and stepped up to a group of us talking after
| I had just finished and said, casually, "whew, what a long call I
| just got off, we were talking about your replacement."
|
| I remember looking at the VMware guys I was with and their eyes
| were bugging out like WTF, did he really just say that. By this
| point I was used to his crap and kindof let it roll off me. After
| we got away one of them asked if I was okay and said screw the
| presentation--he'd go introduce me to some people :D I talked him
| through it and did the presentation anyway.
|
| This boss was definitely toxic--he relished psych games, and at
| one point handed out copies of "The art of War" so we could all
| "brush up"--and as much fun as I was having working there (not
| because of this stuff), I finally did leave within a few months
| on my own terms. Never have I worked with anybody as toxic as
| that.
|
| (After I returned I asked the CTO about the call the boss was on
| where they "talked about my replacement." The CTO scoffed at it,
| and said that call had no such conversation. In followups my boss
| backpedalled and said he just meant because I was going away for
| a few weeks and who would cover me during that time--of course
| that's what he meant).
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| No one told me this prior to becoming a manager, and I did make
| this mistake once and immediately regretted it.
|
| It seems like obvious advice, but the circumstances where this
| sort of thing could happen are described very well in the
| article.
|
| I revert to humour in awkward situations, like a lot of people,
| but I quickly realised that there are some things that you can't
| joke about when in this position.
|
| Thankfully I don't _think_ the team member took any offence by it
| (although how would I know) - we had a good rapport and
| relationship, but I immediately realised my "joke" could be taken
| so many different (wrong) ways that I made a conscious decision
| to be much more careful after that.
|
| Like many things in life, it seems blindingly obvious in
| retrospect but not necessarily when you're caught up in the
| moment.
| ipnon wrote:
| You should be all business at work. It is your job after all.
| Work parties then become hilarious because all the humor is
| saved for special occasions.
| johnsimer wrote:
| Check out Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in
| Business and Life (And how Anyone Can Harness It. Even You.)
| by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas
| WitCanStain wrote:
| Disagree. Working at a place where you are or can be genuine
| friends with coworkers is much more pleasant, and you can't
| be friends with someone if the only time you escape the
| sterile confines of the 'all business' relationship is at
| work parties.
| munchbunny wrote:
| I disagree - humor is really useful as a communication tool.
| If you are naturally inclined towards humor, don't suppress
| it entirely. I've found it useful once in a blue moon to
| indirectly make the point everyone is thinking but nobody
| wants to acknowledge. But more generally I've found it useful
| to put people at ease at the start of a meeting where I need
| people sharing ideas and feedback.
|
| In my experience, there are two types of humor that should be
| avoided, which I learned the hard way:
|
| * Punching down (including joking about doing harm from a
| position of power)
|
| * Sarcasm/cynicism in public channels, especially when it's
| directed at specific people/teams.
| JohnFen wrote:
| A positive working environment where people can interact as
| humans do is the grease on the skids of productivity and
| creativity.
|
| You can certainly have too much "party" in the office. But
| you can also not have enough.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Coming from an individual contributor perspective and watching
| new managers/poor managers go off on tangents - two others that
| are advisable to avoid are:
|
| - Avoid all urges to make comparisons between your direct
| reports to your children no matter how relevant it may seem in
| your head
|
| - Avoid referring to your direct reports as cats that need to
| be herded at the start of every meeting
| JohnFen wrote:
| The advice I give is pretty much: treat people like the
| professionals that they are. If they don't live up to your
| standards, then correct that through training, dismissal,
| whatever. But always treat them like the professionals they
| are.
| jagtesh wrote:
| Apologize, move on and hope for the best. Management is an art
| and mistakes (in hindsight) are bound to be committed. Never
| stop learning and don't be hard on yourself.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I run a Mastodon instance and every time one of my users posts a
| really, really terrible pun there is _such_ a strong temptation
| to say "oh god that was terrible, you're banned forever". And
| then I stop and think about how a few of the people on there have
| some _really_ bad social anxiety, and I find some other way to
| say "holy shit that was a terrible pun, well done".
|
| It's a similar thing, I think. I'm unexpectedly in a position of
| power over my friends and I want to efuse it with jokes.
| [deleted]
| meerita wrote:
| My experience is, never state your powers. People already know
| your reach, but sometimes, they don't. It happened to me in a
| multinational ecommerce giant where employees started to feel
| they were bosses. The relationship with the managers started to
| scalate badly, there was no respect at all. The feeling back then
| was "what, are you gonna fire me?" and so on. Projects went
| crazily bad and devs blamed management, when management was
| totally crippled. Instead joking or stating my power, I went to
| my boss and asked the head of the guys causing problems. My boss
| asked me if I could just let it pass, and I did it, 4 times.
| Until I said it was me or them. Then my boss asked me to do what
| i wanted. What I did, instead of firing them, I moved them out of
| the team to a newly created useless team. They were shocked,
| because I didn't fired them. They bragged about they now have
| their own special team, lmao, i remember how they've believe they
| gonna change the company, until 2 months of nothing todo from
| their side, no other teams wanted them, no other teams wanted
| even to share projects with them. They came back to my teams
| begging to join again, they will do everything is asked for, no
| more nagging, etc. I think it was better than fired them, to be
| honest.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| I think the advice is good but too narrow. The problem is
| calibration of jokes. I saw managers joke in very bold ways and
| it was totally fine but also saw managers using humor as passive-
| agressive initiative of an attempt to downplay someone's work.
| nceasy wrote:
| the cofounder did a joke like that to me and I must say it was
| one of those shit moments of being an employee. I hate everytime
| i need to engage with him since then.
| bootlooped wrote:
| I have made this mistake, I think the damage was between none and
| low but I still regretted it.
| pantulis wrote:
| This is truly a mistake. I did adopt the pose of the bastard
| boss in a tongue-in-cheek fashion (for example breaking a
| printed vacation request) and never got nothing but a good
| laugh in response.
|
| But this is toxic behaviour an in a multicultural environment
| can be damaging to the team and personally devastating. Just
| don't.
| ludamad wrote:
| It's awkward to LARP that it is all at your whim - because at
| some point someone will ask too much in a vacation request
| and you do suddenly need to explain the factors very not much
| in your control (before proceeding to then rip up their
| request, of course ;))
| andrewaylett wrote:
| I've only ever once been denied a request for annual leave,
| and I don't recall anyone I've told the story of _that_ to
| ever having had a similar experience.
|
| One place I worked had spelled out explicitly in the
| employee handbook that "if you want to take more than three
| weeks off consecutively, please give us at least two weeks'
| notice". They also discouraged people from scheduling
| holidays to accommodate deadlines on the basis that the
| deadline was probably going to shift, so it wouldn't help.
| some_random wrote:
| Here's another one that's a bit less obvious: anytime you're
| scheduling a 1x1 with a report, ALWAYS mention the reason for the
| meeting. You might think it's obvious or that it's just a normal
| meeting, but you have no idea how the other person will take it.
| sequoia wrote:
| "Come to my office for a 1:1 at 3:30. You're getting fired."
|
| The problem with always mentioning the reason is that it then
| stands out when you don't. Sometimes there is something
| unpleasant to discuss that you can't put in a meeting invite.
| firebird84 wrote:
| When I was instructed to deliver someone's layoff paperwork I
| had to do this. I scheduled a meeting with the guy with no
| good purpose, just a meeting in a weird room nobody usually
| uses for meetings (we were laying off a lot of people). He
| immediately asked me what it was for, and of course I
| couldn't answer. He knew then exactly what it was about.
| PeterisP wrote:
| One could argue that the firing decision should be
| communicated in a meeting intended to discuss either some
| incident that causes the firing or a previously scheduled
| meeting on the progress (i.e. lack of it) a performance
| improvement plan or some equivalent. Firing should not be
| arbitrary, there's some reason for it that the person
| would/should know, so that reason (whatever it may be) is a
| reasonable topic to mention in the meeting invite.
| binarytox1n wrote:
| To expand - every meeting should have a clear agenda that is
| communicated beforehand. How can anyone expect to be prepared
| for a meeting if they don't even know what it's about? Spend
| the 60 seconds it takes to put a description on your meeting
| request.
|
| Signed, someone who works at a company with a culture of
| sending blank meeting invites
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| Yeah. At least twice I got called into a higher-up's office,
| shut the door, and then they talked about something totally
| normal that didn't need to be private because the rest of the
| team was also working on it.
| danjc wrote:
| Yeah, I have a close family member who was a manager. Got
| called in to a meeting expecting to present a monthly report
| and basically got fired. Traumatised to this day.
| thrawn0r wrote:
| sorry for folks working under this at-will employment where
| managers can just fire someone. In Germany, it involves
| consultations with HR, workers council etc. before you can fire
| someone. Most tech companies use packages to get rid of people.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| Even for those of us lucky to have a proper processes
| protecting us, it can still be anxiety inducing.
|
| After all, you're still likely to have to spend time and energy
| to defend yourself in some capacity, and you now think your
| manager isn't going to (or might not) have your back, either
| now or if something is going to happen in the future.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| People in positions of authority often don't realize how outsized
| the impact of their words are. As peers, things people would take
| as jokes now are taken much more seriously. Employees will read
| between the lines on anything said, body language, etc from their
| management. It's important to reinforce team security and trust,
| and be very self aware about how you sound.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Likewise, don't attempt to comfort people about their position
| when you don't actually know how likely they are to get fired.
|
| I knew someone who had done this and the person was fired _that
| day_.
|
| I'm sure he believed it, too, or he wouldn't have said it. But he
| apparently didn't have all the facts. He regrets saying it and
| told the story a few times while I worked with him.
|
| On the flip side, I worked with someone who was doing poorly in
| their job (after having done better in the past) and tried to
| help them keep their job.
|
| The longer it stretched on, the worse they did.
|
| In the end, they lost their job and I found out afterwards that
| they thought we were attempting to gather enough data to fire
| them, when in reality there were a few of us that were actively
| trying to help them keep it, and even management didn't want them
| gone, they just wanted them to perform adequately again.
|
| I often wonder if I should have been clear about the risk to
| their job, or if that would just have been seen as a threat
| instead. At this point, I don't think I'd do anything different.
| macksd wrote:
| Yep - a guy I shared an office with walked in and told me he
| had been wondering if he was going to get laid off. I comforted
| him and told him that I couldn't see why there would be lay-
| offs - we had tons of work to do.
|
| He picked up everything off his desk and walked out. Turned out
| he had just been fired, but he had been told it was a lay off
| to soften the blow. I actually thought he _should_ be fired but
| the problem had been going on so long and it was the kind of
| place that just never fired people, so I didn 't even consider
| that possibility.
|
| 11 years ago, I think - I still wish I hadn't said anything.
| But I also wish he had been given candid feedback by his
| manager much earlier.
| ziml77 wrote:
| If he told you that he was worried about being fired, then
| you made the right choice of what to say. Imagine if you'd
| just shrugged. The only reason you'd respond that way instead
| of in a comforting way is if you thought there actually was a
| chance he'd be fired. He'd certainly realize after getting
| fired that you expected it and that because of that you must
| not think highly of him.
| macksd wrote:
| Well what I'm concerned about is that I think he was told
| "we have too many people, so we had to make the difficult
| decision to part with one of our great employees", and I
| effectively told him, "dude there's no way that would
| actually be the reason".
|
| I appreciate the reassurance, though! Maybe I'm
| overthinking it, but I think the parent comment is right
| that it's better to just not say anything when you don't
| know the whole situation.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| There is an old adage- there are hidden truths in humor. Do you
| want to plant that "truth" on someone?
| simias wrote:
| That's excellent advice that many have learned the hard way...
|
| 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...
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Ouch!
| MrGilbert wrote:
| 3 years ago, I had a talk with the Chief Senior Physician of
| the hospital my mum was treated. She was terminally ill, she
| was fightiing for weeks, but there was no hope left. So it was
| decided to end all life support measures.
|
| 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.
| gumby wrote:
| I had the same experience, also in German, when I told my 7
| yo son that his grandmother (who had been fighting cancer for
| a few years) "no longer suffering". He was at first happy.
| He's most likely forgotten but that experience will stay with
| me for the rest of my life.
|
| In this case it was a euphemism an adult would have
| understood but a child could not, at least as the first
| statement.
| NortySpock wrote:
| I also try to avoid double meanings and also indicate the
| part of the question I am answering as often times people
| have different shorthand for the question they are asking
| than I might have.
|
| 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?"
| brazzy wrote:
| Oh god yes. I _constantly_ see misunderstandings and
| conversations that take three times as long as necessary
| because people don 't clearly and explicitly say what
| they're asking or answering.
| gowld wrote:
| Covered in Arrested Development:
| https://arresteddevelopment.fandom.com/wiki/Dr._Fishman
| dehrmann wrote:
| He's all right.
| atok1 wrote:
| Yeah, that is pretty rough. I've been in similar situations and
| I tell my self to just try to be a better person today than to
| dwell over the past. I can't change what I've done but try to
| do better.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| I remember the doctor called and wanted to speak to my ex wife
| and I jokingly talled her she got cancer. She didn't though, it
| was Aids. To this day I think my joke softened the blow for her
| a bit.
| etblg wrote:
| I did the same thing to someone after they just joined, figured
| it'd just come off as a joke and no harm would be done. Pretty
| soon in the following conversation I got the nagging feeling
| that it didn't come off as a joke.
|
| I still feel terrible about that to the day, and that guy's
| been working here for years now.
| gumby wrote:
| Since he's still there, he's probably long shrugged it off
| but as you haven't you could consider bringing it up. I doubt
| it would make him feel any better (or worse) but might make
| you feel better. And if he laughs it off it might really be a
| relief to you.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Haha, I did this to myself once. I had no idea, and seemingly
| no one I worked with had any idea, and we laughed a bit as I
| got up to "go get fired" at my meeting. Then I came back and
| had to explain that I was actually just fired.
|
| Luckily I haven't been fired since, but that "joke" stuck with
| me.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Off topic. Do firings come out of the blue though? I was a VP
| for a while (not anymore) - but when the person I had to fire
| was about to get fired, they KNEW it as soon as the door
| opened. Firing someone is the worst experience ever - the only
| reason I had to fire someone was because WE screwed up in the
| interview process.
| indigochill wrote:
| I've seen a couple of mass layoffs. How much you see that
| coming can be a function of how close to the decision-making
| you are and how familiar you are with the process. As I've
| advanced, I've progressively seen it coming farther out. But
| the first one was totally out of the blue to me.
|
| Individual firings seem a bit more predictable.
| foobarian wrote:
| Do you have any tips/signs to look out for :-)
| redshirtrob wrote:
| I've seen a couple mass layoffs. I survived one, but did
| not survive the next one a few years later.
|
| 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.
| SNosTrAnDbLe wrote:
| If your startup org is bought by private equity. Run
| really really fast. Nothing you do will matter, staying
| is a lose lose proposition.
| edgriebel wrote:
| When you have a one-on-one with your manager and the VP
| of Engineering or a HR person is there too, or when your
| team in another site is laid off and you hear it thru the
| grapevine instead of from your manager.
|
| 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..."
| hondo77 wrote:
| At a recent company I was at, there was a lot of data in
| Grafana. _A lot_. The executives were acting weird so I
| created a graph comparing this year 's revenue with last
| year's (no good news there). I predicted that layoffs
| were coming on the following Thursday. On the following
| Wednesday I came into work a little early and the big
| conference room was full of managers. Layoffs happened
| shortly afterwards (40% of the company).
| kingaillas wrote:
| At my previous company, I was caught in a mass layoff
| (best I can estimate is it was ~10 employees at a site
| with ~200? It's been 12 years and my memory is fuzzy).
| The company was known for annual layoffs of a handful of
| people, and the typical timeframe for it was approaching.
|
| 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.
| grillvogel wrote:
| when the free coffee stops being free (for upcoming mass
| layoffs)
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| If you can keep a bead on the welfare of the department
| you're working in if its a large corporation. Smaller
| startups, its usually pretty obvious.
|
| 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.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| I'll add to the list. Be aware of org/process changes.
| For example, I was working for a company who had been
| acquired a couple of years earlier. They were
| transitioning from analog to digital, but were slower
| than most competitors and weren't doing too well. One
| day, there was an announcement that some of the merged
| sales channels were being un-merged. The writing was on
| the wall, the business unit was being separated in order
| to sell it off.
|
| 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.
| worker767424 wrote:
| Unscheduled one-on-one early in the day, possibly with HR
| present, and your manager looks incredibly nervous.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I never know of a case when termination was coming out of the
| blue. I had to terminate a few dozen people over the past 20
| years, it was not a surprise for anyone and many people even
| though "why did it take so long?" in some cases. In every
| single case was a problem with the recruiting (not interview)
| process. 15-20 years ago it was hiring the cheapest people
| possible, in the past 5 years it is hiring any people to meet
| diversity quota, in both cases skills were far from
| requirements and the desire to learn was almost zero.
| worker767424 wrote:
| It happened to me. The only signs leading up to it were
| asking me to use a project management tracker a few weeks
| before and my manager asking me a month before if I was happy
| working on the project I was on.
|
| 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.
| RobertKerans wrote:
| Aye very similar at my last job -- got asked a month before
| that if I was happy, then got given a task with a slightly
| weird vibe about it that noone except the CTO (also my
| direct manager and the HR, was small company...) seemed to
| know I was doing. Same amount of time for me as well, 9
| months. My output wasn't great either (I'd made an error
| taking the job, ignoring a series of red flags the CTO was
| waving in front of me in favour of getting experience with
| a specific tech stack, which was stupid, and I p much hated
| my life by that point). Place had done random firings
| before though (designer and a business support were in one
| day, gone the next), so not surprised, but hey ho.
| lbriner wrote:
| I think it depends on your location. In the US, I think there
| is little to stop people being fired for any number of
| reasons including, "I don't think you fit in". In most of
| Europe, being fired is very rare because it usually requires
| a major malicious or negligent act and even then, you are
| more likely to be warned first.
|
| 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.
| jameshart wrote:
| > Firing someone is the worst experience ever
|
| I mean... yeah, it sucks, but have you tried _being fired_?
| lb1lf wrote:
| -I've tried both, and by a wide margin the worst was firing
| someone. (Doubly so as I was a low-level manager in a very
| hierarchical organisation, so I had little to no sway on
| who got the boot and not - I was basically handed a list
| over the employees who were to be fired and told to get on
| with it.
|
| 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.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I've tried both, and by a wide margin the worst was
| firing someone.
|
| I've done both as well, and I agree. I'll take getting
| fired any day of the week over having to fire someone.
| edgriebel wrote:
| I get that there's a lot of anxiety involved in firing
| someone. But at the end of the day (lol) you still have
| an office to go to tomorrow, they don't.
|
| 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.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, you still have a job. But you also have the
| knowledge that (even though it probably wasn't your
| fault), you just turned someone else's life upside-down,
| and you have no power to do anything about that. The
| person who was fired will probably get resolution in the
| form of a job somewhere else, but you'll rarely ever get
| to share in that resolution.
|
| 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.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Frankly, it can be a liberating experience, releasing the
| ongoing feelings of certainty that things are not going
| right and uncertainty of what's going to happen. Better a
| horrific end than horror without end. Though that's coming
| from a privileged position of IT where it's reasonable to
| find a different job with acceptable (even if lower) pay
| relatively quickly. Of course, if it was a surprise firing,
| then it's bad all around; but firings should not be a
| surprise, they're an inevitable outcome when things aren't
| good, both parties know that things aren't good, and they
| have tried to make them good and it's not working out.
| grillvogel wrote:
| does being laid off count? i got laid off relatively early
| in my career and it worked out well for me. big severance
| for a nice month long vacation, found a new job in a few
| weeks and realized how underpaid i was, and learned to be
| jaded and cynical in all my interactions with a company
| from that point forward
| gowld wrote:
| Being laid off is terrible. Getting fired is like a divorce
| -- it usually comes at the end of a long or intensely bad
| experience.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Is that based on the idea fired means for cause and laid
| off means not? Many people and jurisdictions say fired
| includes both.
|
| The end of an intensely bad experience can be the
| beginning of another.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| > the only reason I had to fire someone was because WE
| screwed up in 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?
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > or is this assuming that candidates are only as good as
| they are at interview time
|
| 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.
| gumby wrote:
| > the only reason I had to fire someone was because WE
| screwed up in the interview process.
|
| 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.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> WE screwed up in the interview process_
|
| Curiously how did you screw up the interview process?
| gumby wrote:
| Someone has foolishly voted your question down presumably
| because they don't understand either. Look for my reply to
| the GP comment for some reasons why.
| suyash wrote:
| that's the worst thing to say to anyone, why would you do that?
| EasyTiger_ wrote:
| How incredibly insensitive.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| _Maybe_ if they knew ahead of time, but they didn 't, so it
| was just a joke, and in no conceivable way an insensitive
| one.
| EasyTiger_ wrote:
| Being called to the manager's office is stress-inducing for
| most people and presumably the person was having issues in
| their role beforehand and was _expecting_ something
| serious. To make a joke about such things is beyond
| callous.
| mrosett wrote:
| I once had a friend uncharacteristically not respond to a
| couple texts confirming plans we'd made. I eventually sent "Are
| you alive?" and got a call back from the hiking companion who
| had watched her fall to her death two days earlier.
|
| That one gives me nightmares.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| I had some friends texting me after being offline for a week.
| I was in fact alive, but not exactly walking. I had a bit of
| a motorcycle accident. Now, if people don't hear from me
| often enough they start calling. I spooked them a bit.
| Walking and cursing again after physical therapy.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Yikes I'm sorry. In my early twenties I'd jokingly do the
| "finger gun to the head" thing when I got a task I wasn't
| pleased about.
|
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| There are so many jokes we make everyday that are about
| dying or experiencing something unpleasant that it's not
| reasonable to put up such a barrier. You're basically
| saying, "NO JOKES!"
|
| 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.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I tend to go the "make sure everyone is okay with that
| kind of joke first", but there's very little practical
| difference between the results of these two strategies.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| I'm not against dark humour, I think it's grand,
| actually, and helps us get through trouble. But I think
| there is a difference between someone putting up a
| sincere joke and someone in their twenties at the
| workplace. I'm not Mr. PC Police, but when I put myself
| in the shoes of someone else that may have lost a loved
| one in that manner it really shook me.
|
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| And cancer is even more common. Think about heart disease
| too. Yet, we joke all the time about shit giving us a
| heart attack or references to something being cancerous -
| etc.
|
| 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.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| I just think it's different. People at work shouldn't
| have to put up with jokes about suicide via gunshot
| whenever a dumb young kid doesn't like their marching
| orders for the week.
| beerandt wrote:
| This will vary by person...
|
| 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.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I saw someone do that to a man who I knew (but he didn't)
| had lost his teenage son to a suicide by firearm two days
| earlier. They hadn't even had the funeral yet.
| Kuraj wrote:
| I do that all the time and it never dawned on me until I
| read your comment. Thank you.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Thank you for the response. It's these small comments of
| personal reflection that make HN feel like a real place
| of community.
| gowld wrote:
| Her death is of course tragic, but there's nothing wrong with
| the text question -- you were on target.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| I don't believe anyone asking this question expects the
| recipient to have actually passed away though
| argc wrote:
| My god, I don't like that people can die from hiking or
| walking or driving to the store. Those sudden, random, freak-
| accident type deaths really bother me.
| vmception wrote:
| yeah this one bothers me about my interaction with some women
| who take the "never respond" approach to expressing
| disinterest, I don't even know if they made it home okay and
| I'm not even sure if I'm in the place to ask
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Used to work sales for a large corporation. One of the fun
| things the women did on our team was decorate our cubicles when
| people had birthdays. One morning they were laughing and having
| a good time decorating of the sales guys cubicle.
|
| Their manager walked by and said rather flippantly, "I wouldn't
| bother doing that, he won't be here to enjoy it."
| duxup wrote:
| When I had my first stint as a manager (way too young to be one
| IMO) I learned quickly that jokes from manager guy had to be VERY
| innocuous. Puns are fun, but nothing about work that someone
| might be sensitive to. Keep the jokes themselves postive-ish.
| Know the room very well before you tread anywhere else.
|
| It's just way too easy to send the wrong message.
|
| As a manager your words have a great deal of WEIGHT regardless of
| your intention.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > When people get promoted to manager their former peers become
| direct reports. It's awkward.
|
| Don't do this. Promote and put them over another team.
| ludamad wrote:
| Generally this blog has a startup slant - can't always
| PeterisP wrote:
| Only works if you have multiple teams with similar
| specializations. Often even in quite reasonably sized companies
| you have many teams that are the only ones doing that thing in
| the organization and you need a team lead who knows the exact
| thing the team is doing, so you either promote from within the
| team or hire from outside (which has its own problem of
| communicating to the team that they have no possibilities for
| advancement unless they go to work for a competitor).
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