
The Worst Way to Fire Someone: I Was There - danso
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-like-watch-worst-firing-ever-paul-petrone?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0
======
choppaface
Is there a _good_ way to fire people? A nice severance package and some
decency are desirable. The fired employee will likely never receive what's
most valuable: a thorough and actionable analysis about what went wrong. In
this case the company failed, and the laid off employees will probably never
thoroughly understand why. In my own experience, I've seen several engineers
fired because they were mis-hired into roles that were obviously bad matches
(often intentionally to meet the VP's head count goals). Those engineers
weren't really given enough info to reconstruct what happened to them.

I guess the message of the article here is that Tim Armstrong dumped the full
weight of failure on his team-- undesirable in the view of almost any
philosophy of management. Furthermore, in light of Armstrong's experience, his
acts were _reckless_ as well.

~~~
tsotha
>The fired employee will likely never receive what's most valuable: a thorough
and actionable analysis about what went wrong.

Your use of the word "actionable" is pretty appropriate here. When I was
managing people my biggest frustration was not being able to sit someone down
over a beer and discuss the situation honestly. Nobody gets "fired" any more.
Unless you commit a felony or break one of the PC rules you get "laid off", as
in "We had a good quarter, and yes we're buying lots of stuff and hiring
people, but we ran out of money to pay _you_."

As a manager I can't very well come along later and say "Here's the real
reason we let you go." Because the lawsuits would start to fly. The over-
litigious employment environment (at least in the US) prevents people from
learning how to be better employees. I've had people call me up months after
we let them go and essentially beg me to tell them the truth. But I couldn't
take that risk.

I don't manage people any more, and good riddance to that shit.

~~~
phkahler
>> As a manager I can't very well come along later and say "Here's the real
reason we let you go." Because the lawsuits would start to fly.

As a manager, it's your job to do that BEFORE you have to can them. There is
no reason you can't take a person aside and have a discussion. Is anything
wrong? Are you OK? In my opinion your performance is lacking in area x,y,z.
It's your job and it sucks to have those conversations, but don't feel bad
after the fact for slacking off until it's too late. Nobody should be fired
for poor performance and not have a clue as to what went wrong.

~~~
tsotha
>As a manager, it's your job to do that BEFORE you have to can them.

Absolutely. And I did so in every case. The problem is the sort of person
who's clueless enough to actually get _fired_ is the sort of person who going
to ignore what you're saying, either because they think your _real_ problem
with them is that their a woman/black/gay/old/whatever or they have a big ego
that won't allow them to consider they might be doing something wrong or
because they figure they have a lot more slack than they really do between
"you need to shape up" and "here's a box for your stuff".

If you're actually going to fire someone for cause you need to need to have a
paper trail, which would make that all official. But. If you establish a paper
trail and then try to pretend you're getting rid of them because there's no
money you're going to get sued. So companies usually don't go the "for cause"
route at all.

~~~
phkahler
>> If you establish a paper trail and then try to pretend you're getting rid
of them because there's no money you're going to get sued.

Wait what? I know you can get sued for all sorts of things, but what is the
reasoning here? Is it that the given reason is money, but there is evidence
that the reason is something else? So what? Would they claim you lied because
you don't really have a strong case for the real reason? I'm just confused by
this.

~~~
tsotha
First off put the thought that the law makes sense out of your mind. It
doesn't.

Basically the outline of the suit is going to be "You always wanted to fire me
because I'm black/Latino/gay/old/fat/thin/sick/whatever, so you tried to
pretend I was doing a bad job. But then when it became clear I was such a good
employee you couldn't do that you pretended it was an economic decision."

Now, this may or may not fly in court, but from the company's perspective it's
a crap shoot, since you never know what a jury is going to do. They'll settle
if they can. Which means lots of people will sue just looking for free money,
even if they know it's all bullshit.

~~~
yuhong
I think anti-discrimination laws are probably fundamentally flawed. I think
they should be killed, but with an exception allowing the EEOC, anti-trust or
similar to order particular sets of companies to stop discrimination for a
period of time if necessary.

------
outericky
Those of use that worked through the first dot-com bubble can surely tell
better stories than that.

There is no graceful way to do it.

One company I worked for, there were probably 200 people, and the CEO gathered
everyone into a big room and started talking layoffs, kind of beating around
the bush. But essentially saying a core team will stay on, while everyone else
is gone.

A person asked, when will we know if we are on the core team? And he just
blankly answered, "Oh, we spoke to those individuals this morning" \- Yeah,
the collective gasp was something I will never forget. I had only been there a
week but made the core team. 4 months later the company was out of business.

~~~
masklinn
I'm reasonably certain you missed it. The "worst way to fire someone" wasn't
the public way it was announced or the pre-recorded layoff messages, it was
the firing of "Abel" in front of all his colleagues for — as far as they knew
— doing what he was supposed to do:

> I guess my point to CEOs and managers alike is this – don’t fire people in
> front of 1,000 colleagues for no real reason. To put it mildly, it doesn’t
> help morale.

> If you are ever considering doing it, take a deep breath, and at least wait
> until you can meet with the person in private. Or, even better yet, perhaps
> you shouldn’t fire someone for no good reason at all

~~~
cookiecaper
Really the article is not interesting. I think everyone knows that it's
terrible practice to fire someone in front of thousands of their peers. I'm
sure even the guy that fired Abel knew that, but didn't care since he was in
the process of firing everyone else anyway. The discussion this article
generates about _how_ to fire people is much better than the article itself.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Somebody should make "Nominations to Biggest Douchebag of the Year Award" and
people making such decisions should be listed there by name.

------
tdicola
IMHO having everyone call in to listen to a pre-recorded message telling them
they're fired is just as bad as the public firing Armstrong gave. At least
have the decency to have a face to face conversation or meeting.

~~~
cookiecaper
I fired someone via e-mail earlier this week. There were a lot of elements
that went into the "best way" to do it, and I don't think it's an objective
fact that face-to-face is best. I've fired people face-to-face before too and
it's usually not pretty. One benefit of being fired by asynchronous
communication is that you maintain more dignity/privacy and can re-emerge
after you've had a little bit of time to get your composure together. One time
when I fired an employee in person, he immediately started to sob and made
some statements that I believe he instantly began to regret (which were not
personally demeaning and which I don't hold against him). I think he would've
preferred to have been fired by e-mail.

I think people overthink this, and I think I overthought it when I just did it
this week. The fact is that when you fire people, most of them are going to be
upset, and they'll find something to rationalize that emotion no matter what
you do. If you have a face-to-face, they'll say "Can you believe he was
mocking us by wearing his ball cap, or his old tennis shoes, or those jeans he
wore the same day he hired all of us, or that polo with the company logo on it
like the company hasn't already been besmirched? How disrespectful!" or
they'll just completely fabricate something like "Wow, he was so aloof in that
meeting, what a mean guy".

What it really comes down to is that most people are going to look for "facts"
that support their emotional perspective, not emotions that are congruent with
the factual perspective.

The pre-recorded call firings are done that way to make sure the phrasing is
perfect. Most likely the lawyer has already written the script and they do
several takes to perfect the firing executive's inflection, tone, etc. I don't
think this is objectively worse than firing someone in person or via e-mail
either.

For the record, the employee I fired stated that the firing was "classless and
vile" despite the inclusion of a generous and completely optional severance
package, an immaculately respectful email that politely informed her the
position was being eliminated and stated that we hoped we'd work together in
the future, and so forth. It was honestly one of the classiest firings in
which I've been involved, but like I said, to the fired person, there's always
a grudge to find if they want to find one, and she wanted to find one. Her
grudge is that I didn't "give the customary notice period" for a firing, which
afaik absolutely doesn't exist anywhere except in the few cases that fall
under the WARN act (under which companies are entitled to pay a severance
equal to the legally-mandated notice period in lieu of notice).

~~~
jalfresi
I disagree. Firing via email or pre-recorded voicemail saves YOU the
embarrassment of having to sit through the employees sobs. In my opinion,
firing is a failure of management, and one of the consequences and fixes to
ensure a failure like that doesn't occur again is to witness the very real
fall out the error has on real people; that is your failure was so grand as to
have a grown man in tears.

Firing via email or pre-recorded message is a way to avoid looking your
failure of responsibility in the eye

~~~
cookiecaper
I mean, you're welcome to feel that way if you want. I know a lot of people do
feel that way. I also know a lot of people would rather not have those
personal moments visible to their boss just to prove a point that he failed
and that's why he has to watch a grown man cry. I didn't say it's always
better to fire asynchronously, I just said it's not objectively worse.

I also understand that your platitude on firing is transparent propaganda, but
that's neither here nor there to this discussion -- whoever did or didn't do
things that precipitated or mandated the firing, the fact is that it must
happen, and that not everyone reacts the same way or prefers the same style.

I should note I also state this from the perspective of one who has been fired
(in all occurrences, I'm using "fired" as a catch-all for all instances where
a job is involuntarily terminated; this can mean the contract ends, the
company or unit is closing, or performance was unsatisfactory to the bosses).
I think I would've preferred to be fired remotely in all instances except one
(where I wasn't really fired, but my already-turned-in two weeks notice was
prematurely ended). I wouldn't think the bosses were "cowards" for depriving
me of the opportunity to personally and physically guilt them, but like I
said, to each his own.

The takeaway here is that the people doing the firing shouldn't concern
themselves too abundantly about whether the employee is going to appreciate
the atmosphere of the firing or not, because news flash: they won't.

~~~
bad_user
@cookiecaper, you've basically ignored the argument.

> _whoever did or didn 't do things that precipitated or mandated the firing,
> the fact is that it must happen_

Oh, but you can't call that a fact, because it fails the _verifiability_ test.
I mean, firing is a decision made by management, the same management that
placed the company in this position in the first place. And it amuses me that
in big corporations, management almost never gets fired.

> _not everyone reacts the same way or prefers the same style_

This is not subjective, as having the common decency to look a person in the
eyes before stabbing is something one should learn at home in order to pass
for a human.

Truth be told, I would get pretty mad about such things, but fortunately such
companies are usually ran by incompetents and so most of them either go out of
business or become completely irrelevant and for me that's justice enough.

~~~
filoeleven
> [H]aving the common decency to look a person in the eyes before stabbing is
> something one should learn at home in order to pass for a human.

You must have had a very interesting childhood.

~~~
lightbritefight
Its a take on an Oscar Wilde quote:

"A true friend stabs you in the front."

------
jliechti1
_“Abel, put that camera down right now!” Armstrong screamed on the call.
“Abel, you’re fired. Out!”_

You can listen to the actual clip here (I wouldn't say he _screamed_ at him,
but it was forceful):

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/08/11/audio_reco...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/08/11/audio_recording_aol_ceo_fires_employee_during_conference_call.html)

And the HN discussion on this article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6197081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6197081)

~~~
shockzzz
That was definitely not a scream. Maybe it felt like it, but it wasn't.

~~~
jaytaylor
Scream or not, it's still not a defensible way to behave.

~~~
code_duck
True. But based on the situation and the accounts of his behavior, clearly the
manager was under a lot of stress.

~~~
DubiousPusher
And nothing says leadership like cracking under stress.

~~~
code_duck
Yeah, I feel sympathetic for the guy but I wouldn't want to hire him.

~~~
DubiousPusher
That's downright decent. Don't necessarily condone but always seek to
understand. I'm picking up what you're putting down.

------
leroy_masochist
Having worked both in tech and non-tech jobs, I think firing hits people
harder in tech companies, for one simple reason: tech companies spend a lot of
time and effort trying to create an environment where people are made to feel
special and valued. When people get fired, this entire world is upended, often
without warning. The "without warning" part is probably exacerbated in many
cases by the fact that especially at tech companies, most people over 35 seem
paranoid about giving negative feedback to Millenials, or holding them to firm
day-to-day standards in general.

No matter what the company is, when it reaches a certain size it's going to
have HR people and lawyers, and they're going to put processes in place so
even if you want to take the fired person out for a beer and an honest chat
about what went wrong, you can't.

This discussion is centered on examples of the shitty ways people have been
fired, but the really shitty thing we should be focused on is the tendency not
to give people firm, dispassionate, detailed guidance on the company's
expectations for their performance and subsequently give them accurate
feedback on how they have performed relative to that standard. "We want you to
crush it and do epic shit; I'm here as a resource if you need anything" might
feel good to say to a new employee; it's a lot more pleasant than saying, "I
expect you to know how to do X by Y date, while keeping me advised of any
changes in A and B", etc. But the latter will reduce both your and their
stress over the long run.

~~~
avn2109
>> "seem paranoid about giving negative feedback to Millenials..."

I am a millennial, and I can't help but notice that as a cohort we really suck
at accepting criticism and negative feedback. Not sure why this is, but it's
unmistakable.

~~~
astrodust
It's not all millennial, but a growing subset of them that has this issue.
Maybe it's a byproduct of helicopter parenting where they're insulated from
the harsh world of mistakes and consequences.

Having a parent call in to complain about feedback an employee receives used
to be pretty much an urban legend, yet now it's rampant.

There's also the ridiculous test-driven culture of schooling, an artifact of
the absurdly misguided "No Child Left Behind", where numbers and scores matter
far, far more than any actual understanding. Criticism in the form of lower
grades can be really damaging to someone's academic career, so no wonder
people hate it so much.

Decades ago you could squeak through into the program you wanted with high
grades and make up the difference in terms of passion for a subject. Now if
your grades aren't perfect, you'll never get into competitive programs. What
kind of a system is that?

When you're conditioned to think that any mistake you make, no matter how
minor, goes on your permanent record and may steer your life completely off
course, you get a bit touchy about it.

~~~
avn2109
>> "Having a parent call in to complain about feedback an employee
receives..."

Wait, seriously? What!!?

------
bane
I've been through a few weird layoffs. At one company, the division director
and a vice president started walking the halls and would stop at a person's
office, go in for a private meeting and lay that person off. News spread
faster than the layoffs and by the time they got about halfway down the halls,
the office was vacant ("you can't fire me if you can't find me"). It "worked"
because it took another week for the rest of the people to get laid off. I
survived, but I remember it as being particularly traumatic, like slowly
pulling a bandaid off. It would have just been better to get everybody
together in an all-hands and do the deed, then follow up with personal
meetings for severance payouts etc.

It only affected about 1/4th of the staff, but it was enough to send me out
job hunting.

At another place, they felt they had overhired for a PM position. So they
called up one of the PMs and let him go -- with 30 days notice. His job, for
the rest of his time was to take the surviving PM around to his customers,
tell them he had been fired and that this new PM would be inheriting the work.
The PM that survived described it as "the roughest professional work he'd ever
done, spending all day with a dead-man walking". The company felt they were
being compassionate with the 30 days, but it was absolutely demoralizing for
both employees. Based on that I decided to start looking for another place
right after that.

There's not a lot of right ways to fire people, but there are definitely wrong
ways.

One "right way", at a small startup I was with, we had struggled for a while
and simply run out of money, the lead investor got everybody on the phone, and
simply announced who was being let go and their severance packages, and who
would be staying behind. I survived, but based on my previous experience, I
immediately started looking for another job.

Layoffs are a bad sign for everybody, and I've found that the people who get
laid off are usually the "lucky" ones. In every case, the people that survived
the culling had it miserable and usually ended up getting laid off anyways
just a bit later. It signals "the company is in trouble, our business plan is
not working" and it's almost always time to just move on.

~~~
cookiecaper
The funny thing about your post is I just made like ten comments assuring
people that sometimes a one-on-one, face-to-face meeting isn't always the best
way to do firings, and your first anecdote speaks to that.

The other funny thing is that an employee I fired recently criticized me for
not giving her notice and allowing her to be a dead-employee-walking with
continued access to all corporate accounts and resources, even though I
offered her a generous severance package in lieu of notice, which a couple
commentators in the other thread seem to find objectionable, and your second
anecdote validates the potential issues with giving notice to an employee
involved in an involuntary change.

Seems your former bosses were HN devotees.

~~~
bane
I think a lot of it stems from the general suckiness of having to fire people
and our desire to try to minimize harm to others. But sometimes trying to take
the approach we think has the most empathy in it ends up being the worst
approach.

I've never had to bulk lay off people before, but based on my experience
surviving a couple, the one that worked out the best for everybody was the
"just do it" rip-off-the-bandaid all at once approach. The one on one approach
just sewed terror into the entire office while it was happening.

It reminds me to this day of how horror stories work, with the long build up
of expectations, waiting for management to make it to your end of the hall was
the worst.

I've also learned, management 101, don't fire people with notice, ever. Not
only was it terrible and humiliating to have witnessed, it opens you up to
disgruntlement as the employee's emotions build up and down. Even somebody you
don't think will do something, might, in a fit of anger at the unfairness of
it all, do something stupid.

I think many of my former bosses were definitely devotees of the kind of HN
"let's build a family and a cool place to hang-out, not a business" mentality
that permeates lots of startup-land.

------
j2kun
The author doesn't describe much of the aftermath of that firing, except to
say that basically everyone lost their jobs anyway. I would have liked to hear
about the remaining 10% of (the last group of) employees who were not fired.
Did they perceive this incident as poisoning the well? I would guess so, but
maybe everyone was just happy with their severance packages and got on with
their lives. The effect was what I wanted to read in an inside story like this
one, but it just wasn't there.

------
DanielBMarkham
I worked with a startup a few years back where the CEO would get upset and
talk about firing people. The first couple of times, I'm sure, he got great
results. And he actually pulled the trigger and fired some people.

But this went on for _months_. Once you start threatening to fire people?
You've got nowhere to escalate past that. You're done. People just throw away
any sense of civility and hang in as long as they think they can get a check
out of you. Talk about ways to destroy your company morale.

You should always fire quickly, gently, privately, and with kindness. You
should never fire publicly and harshly. And you should never drag out firing
somebody because you're too chicken to get the job done. You want to play the
role of hard-as-nails company leader? Fine. People remember that stuff. You
want to be a billionaire prick, good for you. But I'll never work for you.
Life's too short.

~~~
rhino369
This is true even for rolling layoffs that are purely financial. Better to rip
the bandaid off than go through round after round of layoffs. Nobody feels
safe and everyone is looking for a life raft.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Some of the worst morale I've ever seen is in companies after they've gone
through multiple layoff rounds. And it's a bitter thing: survivors are hard-
working, political, and very cagey; the kind of place where everybody is
friendly and out to help everybody -- but not really. In reality nothing is
going to get between them and their personal goal. And it's very rare that
everybody's personal goals line up.

------
hackerboos
I suppose only in the US it's this easy to fire someone. Here in the UK this
would, more likely than not, be taken to an employment tribunal.

~~~
slgeorge
You are _probably_ right, but the law has changed a lot in the UK in the last
two years or so as I understand it.

It's moved much closer to the US system for employees during the first 2 years
of employment. The situations under which a Tribunal can be called, and the
amount of support available to an individual has decreased. And, the total
amount of money that an employer can be hit with is at a fixed level.

------
facepalm
I am amazed by the idea to let people call a number and have them be fired by
a prerecorded message.

~~~
jacquesm
Total cowardice.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Could be worse. I'm now imagining _individual_ calls all greeted with the same
prerecorded message: "Hello SUBJECT NAME HERE. As of this moment you're no
longer employed at SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE branch of the company. Thank you for
helping us help you help us all. <click>".

(of course without substituting values for the template variables)

~~~
facepalm
Sounds like a Twilio project for an afternoon :-/

~~~
lightbritefight
YC summer 15 is looking for start ups, so....

------
gadders
Offtopic: Abel Lenz (Able Lens) must be the best name for a photographer ever.

------
Lagged2Death
_I guess my point to CEOs and managers alike is this – don’t fire people in
front of 1,000 colleagues for no real reason. To put it mildly, it doesn’t
help morale._

There's an assumption here that Armstrong wanted to _boost_ morale, because
that's what a good person would do, or because that's what other effective
managers do.

And really, one very simple explanation for what would otherwise be a howling
blunder like this is that it was damn well intentional; that it was exactly
intended to provoke stress and anxiety. That destroying morale was explicitly
the point.

Is that so unthinkable? Fear and domination are popular management strategies
when times are tough, and times have been tough in the journalism business -
as the author takes some time to point out - for quite a while.

------
lordnacho
I've been involved in letting people go. Sometimes it's surprisingly pleasant,
sometimes it's predictably unpleasant.

\- Somewhat predictable. One of my devs just didn't want to do the work. You
could tell he just wanted to be something other than a dev (which he admitted
to afterwards). I mean he knew how to do it, it wasn't a complex task (read a
file, compare it to a DB, show the differences). But after many weeks of zero
progress, I decided enough was enough. I think he was relieved.

\- Pleasant: I call my remaining dev into the office.

Me: "So, you know what's going on in the company, right?"

Dev: Smiling, almost laughing his head off: "Yeah haha, I can't believe the
boss blew that much money in a few weeks. It would take me ten thousand years
to make that amount. Of course I know what's up."

Me: "Glad you understand. You're right, I just worked out the loss comes to
far over the total of everything everyone in my family (parents, grandparents,
...) has ever made in all of history. Times ten. Well at least you have the
experience in finance now. More than happy to provide a reference. Anyway,
gotta can everyone else now..."

We even did the old Alan Sugar "You're Fired!" routine from the Apprentice on
one guy, causing much laughter.

\- Absolutely shocking. So, the boss has hired a new trader, and he's coming
towards the end of his probation period (3 months typically in the UK). Boss
goes on holiday, and runs into a guy who says he knows this person, and comes
up with some hearsay that is totally not checkable. Calls his junior managers
(I was away), makes us can him right before the deadline. Lawyer tells us not
to say anything at all about why he's being canned. Obviously, the guy wants
to know why, but it's not like the reason makes any sense, and the lawyer of
course doesn't want us sued. Dude goes red, appeals to common decency, starts
shouting, but no. Just silence. I'm still annoyed about this thing. I never
even got to say goodbye or any chance to tell him after the firm went down the
toilet. Come to think of it, the boss had everyone fired through his juniors
(me and a couple of others.)

------
negamax
I was fired yesterday. To be truthful there's no right way of doing it. As
someone who had been on both sides of the table, this is scarring moment for
everyone.

~~~
throwthisdude
I've fired folks and been fired and there is _absolutely_ a difference between
good firings and bad firings. A good firing is one where the manager has laid
out the problem long in advance and given the employee the opportunity to fix
it. (Some will argue that being put on a "plan" is just HR cover and that the
firing is imminent, but that certainly wasn't the case with me. I wanted them
to improve.) In general, my philosophy is that any true firing (non layoff)
should be easy for the employee to see coming a mile away. If not, then you're
not communicating well.

If you've told a guy "look, you're a salesperson and you need to make X calls
per day" and then they don't make those calls, well then you've given them a
chance and they blew it. They knew they blew it and so the subsequent firing
is both understandable and foreseeable.

My own firing came out of nowhere and made no sense. 6 weeks prior I'd been
given a raise. It was so egregious and personal, the manager himself was fired
a few months later. Possibly the most flabbergasting part is that the company
was scared to hire me back due to fears id harbor a grusge, gather evidence
and sue them for something else later (which wasn't true). The whole thing was
shocking and confusing to the point that I went through the stages of grief.
It also shattered my faith that the world works in predictable ways: if you're
a loyal, hard worker with a great performance record, you have nothing to
worry about. Suddenly that safety was just gone. In subsequent jobs, no matter
how well they say I'm doing, I feel I could be axed at any moment. It's a
horrible feeling. I have very real scars from it. (Obviously.)

So in other words, these are human beings. They deserve an explanation. They
deserve a chance to do better (if it's performance related) and maybe they
deserve a sincere apology for bringing them into a position that isn't working
put like both parties had hoped.

So yes, and this is very personal to me, there are good and bad ways to do it.
Anyone who says otherwise shouldn't be employing or managing anyone.

~~~
negamax
I agree with you. My comment was on the lines of 'whichever way you do this
(the act of firing i.e.) it's going to leave bad impact on all involved'.

------
peter_l_downs
Can't read it (no LinkedIn account), is there a publicly-available copy
somewhere?

~~~
houseofshards
it is available for reading even without the account. At least works for me.

~~~
pdkl95
Wow. They took the javascript-only, broken page stupidity even further than
current fad frameworks that only serve up an empty <body> tag. This linkedin
page doesn't even include a body at all:

    
    
        <html><head>
        <script type="text/javascript">...</script>
        </head></html>

~~~
toothbrush
People who design such brazenly idiotic things should be promptly keelhauled.

~~~
ryan-allen
The web embraces random hacks like this, it wouldn't be what it is without
people doing stuff like this!

~~~
emp_zealoth
Oh no! It wouldn't be a mess of glitching, flickering, sliding about "dynamic"
content slots that would actually work better as a plain static website...
There are webpages that cause firefox to need more RAM than AAA games Sarcasm
for (I hope) sarcasm

~~~
ryan-allen
Well, I agree with that in particular. I find it very unsettling when I can't
scroll a website on my i7 and GTX670 at home without it stuttering around.

------
aaron695
> Quick side note. Obviously, this conference call was different than every
> other one we’ve had. But still, Abel was doing what he always did, and as
> far as I know, was given no instruction to do something different.

This is not true. The employee had been specifically been warned about his
behaviour before and told not to do it. [1]

Don't go on about how it doesn't change anything, if it didn't then people
would mention it in the story.

But they don't because readers need that snide, they are better than others
feeling to be clear cut.

An employee going against his boss, while his boss is super stressed and then
getting fired adds to much humanity.

The original OP's story is interesting from a company facing layoffs side of
view though.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com.au/aol-ceo-
apology-2013-8](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/aol-ceo-apology-2013-8)

~~~
eropple
I'm curious when "photographs" (which, as described, were part of this dude's
job) became "recording a private meeting" in the sense that any actual human
being would mean it. Or when a meeting with _a thousand people_ was somehow
"private".

So I won't go on about how it doesn't change anything--though it doesn't--but
I will inquire as to why you'd cape for one of the most universally
acknowledged jerks in the industry.

------
brewdad
A professional services company I worked for once did a massive layoff by
calling everyone in our office at home on Thursday night and telling us to
stay home Friday and wait for an envelope to be delivered via FedEx. If you
were fired, you got info on severance. If you still had a job, you got info on
next year's health plan options.

Of course, some employees missed the phone call and showed up at work only to
be locked out. I was 2000 miles away visiting my in-laws. I called in multiple
times Friday morning trying to find out if I had a job to return to on Monday.
Each time, it became harder and harder to find a manager who was still "with
the company". I ultimately survived but that was not the most relaxing of
vacations.

------
therealidiot
Grrr. Can't view on mobile because I don't have a LinkedIn account.

~~~
leovander
[http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=98g0MVGG](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=98g0MVGG)

------
pmorici
Is he saying that it's ok to fire someone publicly if it is for a good reason?
Or is his point that it's inappropriate to fire someone in that fashion
period?

~~~
tempestn
I think he's arguing against both the method and the (lack of) reason.

------
iN7h33nD
Something I have never understood. Why do employees have to give two weeks
notice to an employer when the employer could fir you today with no notice at
all? I understand that keeping you around for two weeks could be bad for them,
but why isn't it bad when your quitting as well? I guess this could all be
solved by forcing severance packages by law for a minimum of two weeks or
something like that.

~~~
Delmania
Unless it's specified in your contract, there is no obligation to give your
employer 2 weeks notice. It's nothing more than courtesy.

~~~
lostcolony
And it's a -professional- courtesy, whereby you are maintaining a better
relationship with the company you're leaving (because you never know if you
might some day want/need to come back).

The converse, a company letting you go effective immediately, no severance, is
sufficiently discourteous that it will likely prevent anyone from -wanting- to
come back, as well as will build a reputation for them that will likely
prevent a lot of talent from even looking at them as a possibility.

It behooves both employees and employers to keep their professional
impressions positive.

~~~
danielweber
Yes, a company that lays off part of the staff without severance is telling
all the remaining staff "get the fuck out now."

------
AnimalMuppet
I heard (second or third hand) of this layoff at Evans & Sutherland back in
the day. They first laid off a bunch of managers. But then there was nobody to
tell their subordinates whether they were laid off or not. So they mass
disconnected everyone from the network. If you could log back on, you still
had a job.

Full disclosure: Over the years, someone may well have told me that this story
was not accurate.

------
marktangotango
>>Patch hacked salaries, to the point most editors hired after 2012 were
making less than $30,000 a year.

>>You could almost make that flipping burgers. And this job required a college
degree and experience.

So is 'flipping burgers' not "no skill, minimum wage, part time" now? Maybe a
cook in casual dining restaurant can make $30k, but nobody 'flipping burgers'
at the Burger King is.

~~~
morganvachon
He does have a point though: There are many jobs out there that require a
Bachelor's degree and at least some experience, but pay less than $35k per
year. Local government is notorious for this. I recently considered applying
for a job as a criminal intelligence analyst at a local agency. I have 14
years' experience in a closely related field of law enforcement, I have all
the certifications they are asking for plus some, and it's a job I would
likely enjoy greatly. But the starting pay was barely more than I'm making
now. Given all the variables, I'm better off staying here, at least for the
time being.

Another example: Our regional victim-witness program, run by the state,
requires a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and/or Sociology, and previous
experience with courtroom work or social services. However, it starts at less
than most of those social services or court clerk positions pay, and those
jobs have much lower barriers to entry (basically, high school diploma and no
criminal background). It's purely a "do it for the love of the job, not the
money" kind of thing, and that would be fine except it's barely a living wage
around here. Given that you're expected to be on call 24/7/365 on salary (i.e.
no overtime/holiday compensation and no way to have a second, part time job),
it's simply not financially viable for most people.

~~~
commandar
I recently got offered a sysadmin spot with a local agency by an acquaintance
that had taken over their IT department. Fortunately, government jobs actually
post their salary rates so I was able to decline before either of us wasted
too much time.

They wanted someone to run the back end for an 18 county area, including
supporting local offices. Starting pay? Between 26k and a starting cap of just
over $30k/year.

~~~
morganvachon
Yeah, that's an absurd pay rate for that much responsibility. No one properly
qualified would ever consider it, so they will end up with someone who has no
clue how to do the job.

I had a similar "opportunity" come up last year. The county I grew up in
needed to hire a new IT director, and as I had worked at the sheriff's office
there for several years, I had a few friends still working for the county. One
of them tipped me off about the job after they dropped my name in the bucket
on my behalf, and it turned out they were looking at me specifically because
they knew I had worked there before and got along well with the sheriff's
office staff. The previous IT director "hated cops" and was never a good fit
for government work, apparently.

I was interested until I found out the starting pay was just a little more
than I make now, and I would basically be one of two people servicing the
entire county, as well as being on call from over an hour away. Yes, it's a
fairly rural county but it's a job for a full staff, not one or two people.
The county could barely afford to offer the salary they posted as it was, so I
declined.

~~~
commandar
Totally agreed.

Funny thing, and similar story to yours -- and the guy that offered it to me
didn't know this -- but one of my very first jobs while I was still in school
was with this same agency. He was kind of surprised that I knew the building
and their location in it. :)

------
yitchelle
It comes back to the old rule to keep some sort of civility.

You praise someone publicly, but you reprimand someone privately.

This is totally applicable for firing as well.

------
chrisbennet
The last time I was laid off, I was given a couple months notice. I was
working for a 3 person company, all of us engineers. It was handled very
nicely.

Boss/Owner: "Our investor is cutting our funding from enough for 3 engineers
down to 2 engineers."

Me: "Gee boss, we're _really_ going to miss you..." ;-)

------
caboteria
I worked for a company that was constantly hiring and laying off, often at the
same time. The "tell" was if you showed up to work on Friday and there were
Pinkertons at the front door then you knew it was going to be a rough day.

------
fnordfnordfnord
Earlier HN story about the Tim Armstrong fires Abel meeting [ca 1.5 years
ago]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6197081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6197081)

------
aragot
How is it legal to talk about it?

Surely they've brickwalled them in the employment contracts saying "The
employee agrees not to publicize events happening inside the company, with no
limit of time, or the employee agrees to compensate the company for the loss
of image"? How come the OP doesn't mind talking negatively in public about his
former company?

I've already signed a simple _software EULA_ which specified: "You (the
Customer) will not comment about the performance of the product in public".

~~~
nitrogen
Contracts are not laws, and one would have to be very crazy or very well
compensated for a non-disparagement agreement to make sense. I'll take my
rights to free speech and coordination with my peers any day.

------
runewell
I remember the good ole' dot-com days where the writing was on the wall once
Webvan stopped coming to the office.

------
sago
Fired by pre-recorded message? What kind of spineless asshat does that?

------
kuni-toko-tachi
A company exists to make money. It is not a vehicle for comfort or compassion.
It does not matter one bit how much effort you put into it, unless you have a
material stake in it, it is simply a job. You always have a updated resume.
You always reinvest in your skill set and network. And when there are
rumblings in the press, you hit the payment ASAP to secure a new role
elsewhere. Being naive to the nature of these things is foolish and immature.
I'm not being harsh, just honest. Challenge every raise and every bonus you
get to check your value. Leave on your terms, or make them pay to keep you.
When you realize this, being laid off is a completely enjoyable experience. It
means you can travel, work on your startup, and move on.

------
asrfull
I Did find this article interesting.

------
michaelochurch
Tim Armstrong is a Category 5 fuckstain. He's one of the few people for whom
I'd laugh if he got a serious, painful illness.

He singled out two female employees and their "distressed babies" as reasons
for cutting the 401k match, in front of the whole company. He did not
volunteer to reduce his salary instead.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/what-aols-ceo-meant-
blaming-a...](http://www.businessinsider.com/what-aols-ceo-meant-blaming-a-
pay-cut-on-sick-babies-2014-2)

~~~
rayiner
I forgot about that. Class A-DB.

