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Comment by insiderknowled | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't really matter that it's everyone's to blame.

Just find the biggest offender who has pissed off everyone.

Make an example out of him. Completely redicule him in front of others and even throw their belongings on the floor. Use most profane language, Steve Jobs style. Make sure you explain loudly why he is being treated like this and leaving the company.

To make it clear, yell at him, "so you want to be a rebellious tech bro?"

Be careful why doing this:

1. Make sure your example person is a man because people sympathise more with women

2. Make sure he looks unfriendly because people sympathise with friendly people.

You want people to comply, be an authority who they fear.

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This advice is so shockingly bad that I'm wondering if this is a deliberate spoof.

This is the kind of management behaviour that erodes trust. Destroys teams. Stops people thinking about what's best for the company and has them thinking only about how to protect themselves. Team members turn on each other. Every bug becomes a blame game. The good people look for new jobs to move on to. People write anonymous blog posts about the company and how this manager had a screaming fit and trashed some guys desk while firing him; every potential customer googling the company reads it and watches the footage on youtube if someone was fast with their phone.

I think you have a slightly distorted view of how firing works in a well-adjusted company.

If someone is slowly eroding the motivation of your other engineers, then you should get rid of them for both your sakes (they probably hate working there anyway).

What you say about needing to fire some people seems a complete non-sequitur, as if I'd been advocating to never fire people; as if my "distorted view" is to never fire anyone. That is not my view.

> This advice is so shockingly bad that I'm wondering if this is a deliberate spoof. This is the kind of management behaviour that erodes trust.

Then what is the behaviour you are talking about here? I must be missing something.

Then what is the behaviour you are talking about here? I must be missing something.

Picking someone almost at random to fire.

Humiliating and ridiculing him publicly.

Yelling and screaming and throwing a tantrum.

Throwing his private property over the floor.

Swearing at him throughout.

That behaviour. That is shockingly incompetent behaviour that causes huge amounts of damage. Everything that "insiderknowled" said. His post is dead; maybe you can't see it? Here's what I see: https://ibb.co/TByZw8J

Ah fuck, I think I missed the fact it was dead, and thought you initially replied to:

> While I don’t think you should fire someone just to set an example, the scarcity of developers is precisely why you should fire those who are negatively impacting the teams and are unwilling to change.

Oh well. Yeah, I completely agree with your post given the original. Hard to think that it wasn’t a joke.

This is terrible advice, and abusive. It will bend your culture towards one of fear, blame, and finger-pointing. Presumably not what you want.

If someone did this in front of me, I would immediately start privately advocating for their removal from the company.

OP here.

Yeah, that's not gonna fly here at all.

Firing people? Or public shitcanning?

Because I think the person above you is just talking about letting people go.

> Firing people? Or public shitcanning?

Publicly shitcanning. It's illegal here.

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