Literally nobody is arguing against this.
What people are arguing against is how he went about doing this. By his own words, he comes across as immature, overly emotional and unprofessional.
Also, “Legendary Software Developer” is his title on LinkedIn. I know some people that wouldn’t hire him for that alone.
That pretty much falls squarely into titles and bios that are going to make me turn the virtual page very quickly.
Then I read this: > Also, “Legendary Software Developer” is his title on LinkedIn.
And know I would have never hired him in the first place so problem would have been solved before it occurred.
I'm genuinely surprised that people like you and OP's manager exist. You'd want to get rid of someone because they gave a book recommendation that you disliked? Jesus. I get how the book recommendation was a bad move, but holy crap, it's nowhere near bad enough to "choose to not to renew his contract".
Maybe you’re having difficulty imagining someone else’s perspective?
Are you a software engineer? Imagine you demonstrated your new code to the team, it didn’t go well and afterward your manager took you aside and recommended you read Chapter 6 of “Coding for Dummies”?
I’ve been in software engineering for decades and I can tell you a rounding error of 100% of every software engineer I’ve ever worked with would spend the rest of their day looking for alternative employment after that.
I think maybe the other thing you’re doing is skipping over all the other immature and unprofessional things the OP said he did. Did you read where he created a user story explicitly for the purposes of mocking his manager to the team? There’s a lot to unpack in this train wreck.
I've been in that situation more than once, and none of those situations made me want to fire anyone. For example, last fall I was in a project where I implemented some frontend features without considering accessibility. A designer in the project told me what I did wrong, and recommended to me that I should take an "introduction to accessibility on the web" course. I thought it was a good idea. I took the course, I learned a lot of things, wrote down notes, and still refer to those notes every now and then. At no point did I feel like I need to fire someone for recommending I take a course on something that - frankly - I was supposed to know how to do in the first place.
> I’ve been in software engineering for decades and I can tell you a rounding error of 100% of every software engineer I’ve ever worked with would spend the rest of their day looking for alternative employment after that.
Ok, well after this discussion you will hopefully adjust that percentage down a few points from 100%.
> I think maybe the other thing you’re doing is skipping over all the other immature and unprofessional things the OP said he did. Did you read where he created a user story explicitly for the purposes of mocking his manager to the team? There’s a lot to unpack in this train wreck.
No I didn't skip over those. I read OP. But I wasn't commeting on OP here. I was responding to a comment made by kcplate. According to his comment, just the book recommendation alone was sufficient grounds to not renew the contract. That's the comment I was arguing against. Not the totality of OP.
Been there, done that, and it’s just not worth it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.
One organization I worked for about 15 years ago, us leaders and managers had the flexibility by the owner to immediately remove any person we deemed as poison or problematic: employee or contractor. We would deal with any legal fallout after because it was understood that removing the poison was ultimately better and less costly for the organization than any legal fallout related to a termination.
That said, if I ever were in the same project with you, I would walk on egg shells the entire time. You're willing to fire people on the spot for badly delivered book recommendations. Who's willing to present any sort of criticism in an environment like that? You'll end up with a team full of yes-men.
Actually, I said I would likely choose to not renew the contract because it was an arrogant dick move (and was intentionally made as a dick move) and I find in my experience those people are a bad fit for most teams.
I’d fire someone on the spot if it was apparent they were poisoning the environment. I have never let anyone go for constructive criticism.
I'm glad you looked me up on LinkedIn! I have received zero value from that site so my profile there is not serious :)