Hacker News Reader

Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

Fire quickly but take responsibility!

Don't spend months torturing an employee that you know is very unlikely to work out. Fire them quickly and compensate them for the situation you find yourselves in.

New hires should be be given 3 months of severance. Old hires should be given 6-18 months, depending on how long they've worked at the company.

Take all that time, energy, and money you were going to spend on the Performance Improvement Plan and hand it to the employee on their way out. They will thank you for it.

It's not just a gentler and kinder way to behave, it's also saves money and improves productivity.

View on HN

How is that supposed to help team morale?

Perhaps it's just me talking, but I like my work. I like my co-workers. I have no kids nor debt, and I would be pretty sad working at a place that says that they want to fire quickly.

The hiring process sucks, and employees are human beings. Perhaps you mean to say that you should be fully transparent when someone underperforms? If that's the case, I would agree with you. No need to beat around the bushes, just be honest.

Not firing quickly means you fire slow. Which means the person who should be let go continues to stick around and potentially cause problems for the rest of the people. This can be just as sad, if not more so, for the other employees who are impacted by what the person who should be fired continues to do.

Firing quickly doesn't mean not to offer regular feedback, or not letting people improve, or not setting expectations well, or not being transparent. It means that it's better to rip the bandaid off instead of picking at it weeks or month ignoring the employee with the hope that things will turn around.

Oh well, in that case it kinds of makes sense, as long as you are also transparent during the hiring process that this is the state of affairs in your company.

I guess I jumped to conclusions too quickly, but I can see how firing fast could maybe work paired with regular feedback to avoid surprises. I don't think it could work for everyone (particularly parents with young children), but under certain circumstances what you say probably makes sense.

If you are concerned about the impact of firing an employee with other financial responsibilities (not sure why specifically having young children factors into it anymore than any other responsibility), that is solved with a severance package, which is often still cheaper than keeping an underperforming or toxic employee around.

If you're firing quick and firing often, yeah you're going to have bad morale. If you're firing quickly, learning from the experience, and then making sure you never have to fire again, the morale won't be an issue.

Firing quickly doesn't mean fire someone for their first offense, it means as soon as you realize the person will never be a good employee, don't waste time trying to fix the unfixable.

As TFA states, firing quickly fails when you abruptly fire people seemingly for no cause, and works when you set clear measurement goals with deadlines and show that the person being fired isn't meeting the standard. In short, that being fired quickly should never be a surprise to anyone involved, and should be a relief.

If founders are quickly firing employees who are popular then the founders are doing something wrong, and hopefully have inculcated the kind of culture that allows them to hear negative feedback on the firing. If founders continue to fire rashly then it's a bad sign for the company in general.

18 months of severance? Like, their monthly wage x 18, to let them go? What startup could possibly afford that?

Agreed! 18 months isn’t feasible. Even well funded Fortune 500 would refuse that.

At the end of the day you have to think of this as an employee benefit to convince people to jump ship from their current employers.

I personally think 3 months + 1 month for every year they’ve worked for you is attractive enough.

You can make exceptions if you’re trying to poach some high level exec.

So I haven't had to fire that many people yet.. but you think someone that worked for me for 3 months should get 3 months severance?

I think something like 2 weeks is "fair", and unemployment would kick in past that.

In any case, firing stinks and is super hard. Agree it's important to get it done sooner rather than later though. Interviews are imperfect.

Sure, if you can find talent that’s willing to do that.

But trying to convince someone who has a cushy day job at a more developed company is going to be way harder without great severence packages.

> you think someone that worked for me for 3 months should get 3 months severance?

Remember that they may have turned down another offer to take yours -- and then the other position may have been filled too. I've seen this kind of thing happen once, though I wasn't directly involved and don't recall the details. Okay, maybe three months is more than necessary, but I don't think I'd make it less than six weeks.

have you ever run a startup with a limited bank account?

If so, did you pay 6 weeks of runway for a brand new hire that didn't work out?

This is not to say that if you have not been in the shoes you have no valid thought.. but as someone in those shoes right now I cannot imagine operating that way. Happy to be up front when I hire someone, if this isn't working then it is best we part ways quickly...

Obvious US vs Euro expectations are very different in regards to job security.

My well funded Fortune 500 would pay out 1 month per year worked (above 2 years), so you could get to 18 months eventually.

I guess that technically means you could retire 4 years early if you had been working there all your life.

Any company that waits months or years to fire bad hires and unproductive employees could afford to pay it, by definition.

Being overly generous on the severance can create more problems than it solves as employees looking to move on can milk it. It is pretty easy for a smart person to get themselves fired if they want to without totally trashing their reputation.

In my experience it is best to fire as soon as you are starting to think about it (people can’t change even if they want), but don’t be a dick. If you have been a good manager and your expectations have been clear then an employee will understand why they are being fired.

If you want to be generous be generous with the hiring bonus. This way everyone is rewarded, not just the bad performers.

I've seen the argument that you offer someone enough on exit so that

* the leaving person doesn't raise a stink that hurts morale,

* you signal the labor market that it's worth taking a risk on your startup (low pain if things don't work out),

* you signal other employees and managers that decisiveness is a core value,

* the opportunity cost of misapplied talent is so large that you'll pay a bounty for people to "fire" themselves from a role or their job and make room for a better-fitting person.

I think giving a large payment (bribe to go quietly) sends all the wrong signals. It shows you are weak (can't handle conflict) and it destroys morale by showing that those that leave are valued more than those that stay.

If you want to take out the risk of joining a startup then give a large hiring bonus instead. This rewards everyone and shifts the risk onto the managers rather than the employees.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com