

The Dirty Little Secret of Successful Companies - petethomas
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/the-dirty-little-secret-of-successful-companies/

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sp332
One of the original demotivational posters: "Sometimes the best solution to
morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people."
<http://www.despair.com/demotivation.html>

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pbhjpbhj
I think there might be an argument for firing all the happy people - something
along the lines of they can only get unhappy and ruin your stats whilst at
least the unhappy ones might get happier, especially after escaping from being
fired.

No, probably not.

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city41
Just about every company I have ever worked for has been very hesitant to
fire, and it's really detrimental to the company, its customers and its
employees. The end result is usually the good employees move on. My girlfriend
works for the federal government and there it's basically impossible to get
fired. The end result for her is a very miserable work environment. She is
actively seeking other jobs.

~~~
_delirium
I can't seem to find the study at the moment, but I recall reading one that
found that, indeed, never firing people can have a detrimental effect on
morale, and firing long-term poor performers can improve it. However, they
found that this was basically a one-time "cleanup" effect, and that attempting
to make it recurring via a regular, institutionalized system of firing poor
performers (e.g. based on annual performance reviews) had the opposite effect,
lowering morale as everyone was constantly worried about the next review,
including people who objectively had almost no chance of falling below the
threshhold.

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gaustin
The thing he doesn't mention is that some companies can be a "6."

What I mean is that a company can seem to be a good enough fit to the
prospective employee but turns out, after a period of working together, to be
a poor fit from the employee's perspective. During the hiring process maybe
they spotted some weak areas or got an inaccurate picture of the work culture
and environment. Maybe after hiring the job is not quite what was advertised.
What matters is that they decided to take the job, even though it's not an
optimal fit, because the potential positives outweighed the potential
negatives.

What I wonder is what's the best way to deal with this from both the employer
and employee sides of the table?

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bartonfink
I keep my resume circulating and go on interviews for a couple months after I
take each new job to guard against this. It has come in handy one time in five
jobs, and I made sure to let the HR director know that I left so quickly
because the work I was actually doing and the co-workers I was around were
completely different from what I was shown in the interview.

People say that interviewing is a two way street, but I don't think that goes
quite far enough. If you get a job you're not qualified for and can't do,
you'll be let go quickly. If a company gets my labor by misrepresenting what
they do, I see it as fair play to let them go and let them know I don't
appreciate a bait and switch.

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tokenadult
A really good take on "I have to look myself in the mirror" and where a
business leader's responsibilities are. Taking responsibility for having the
right employees in the right jobs is a way of helping customers.

~~~
Datasta
I always liked the quote from Good to Great, "Start by getting the right
people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus."

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jeffreyrusso
Someone (Ferriss?) once said that your success is directly proportional to how
many difficult conversations you are willing to have, which is so true.
Something that jumps out at me...

"How would you feel about flying on a plane with a pilot who is a “six?” What
about the nurse who cares for your mother in the hospital? The mechanic who
fixes the brakes on your car? The person who works for your insurance broker
and is in charge of making sure your policies are renewed?"

More like "how would you feel _knowing_ you were flying on a plane..." etc
etc. There are people all around us operating as 5s or 6s, even in critical
roles like the ones mentioned. It's probably closer to the norm than any of us
like to imagine.

~~~
ekanes
Right. Reminds me of the old joke, "what do you call the person who graduated
_last_ in med school?" Doctor.

~~~
gjm11
Here's the thing about that joke: you could tell it _no matter what_ the
standards of people at medical school, and _no matter what_ the difficulty of
passing the examinations.

If medical schools are good at accepting only people who are likely to make
good doctors, and at failing students who turn out not to be good enough after
all, I'm not all that bothered by the prospect of being treated by someone who
just barely passed. (Of course that's a big "if".)

The same goes for the OP here. How do you define that ten-point scale? If,
e.g., "6" means "doing a good job, but there are other better people around"
then firing your sixes may be a lousy idea: perhaps all the better people are
much more expensive and you get better value from a cheaper 6; perhaps all the
better people are off working for other companies; perhaps in this particular
job the difference between a 6 and a 10 doesn't really matter all that much,
and the cost in recruitment effort and training will outweigh the benefits of
firing your 6 and getting someone better; perhaps the person currently in the
job is a 6 who's working his or her ass off to turn into a 7, then an 8, then
a 9, then a 10.

... Or, of course, perhaps not. The original article does specify that it's
talking about people who "cannot do the job". But what sort of scale are you
using where 6 means "cannot do the job"?

I think there's something badly wrong with the idea that Only The Best Will
Do. Because (1) for a lot of purposes, someone who's not The Best can still be
plenty good enough, and (2) there aren't enough of The Best to fill all the
jobs, and (3) if enough companies start firing everyone but The Best you're
left with a large number of people starving because no one is willing to
employ them to do the jobs they could do perfectly adequately if employers
weren't all insisting on getting The Best. Oh, and (4) guess what, these
companies generally aren't keen on paying every single employee a superstar
salary.

There are jobs for which you absolutely need the very best people you can get.
In, for instance, a new startup, that might be all the jobs you've got. In
that case, by all means insist on hiring only the best people and firing
anyone who turns out not to be. But in that case, you'd better also be
offering rewards commensurate to your demands.

~~~
Estragon

      ...you could tell [that joke] no matter what the standards 
      of people at medical school, and no matter what the   
      difficulty of passing the examinations
    

My Mum (dying of refractory metastatic triple-negative breast cancer in her
lungs) is being cared for by an oncologist who's a six. It isn't pretty.

~~~
gjm11
I'm sure it isn't (and, my condolences; that must be awful for you and even
worse for her) but ... would you rather she didn't have an oncologist at all?
(That's what happens if you just get rid of the sixes and change nothing
else.) Or that she had a seven, who's working 80-hour weeks and working like a
six on account of exhaustion? (That's what happens if you geet rid of the
sixes and expect everyone else to pick up the slack.) Or that she had a seven
but someone else with similar problems got her six instead? (Actually, I bet
you would prefer that, and I don't blame you, but it wouldn't be any
improvement for society as a whole.)

Having everyone be more competent would be a wonderful thing, but that isn't
something you can bring about just by firing all but the best.

~~~
Estragon
Oh, we're firing her, all right, and going with an oncologist who comes highly
recommended. Some kind soul like you can tolerate her incompetence.

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edw519
OP complains about the "sixes" in his organization, but how would others
(customers, vendors, investors, employees) rate him?

Sure, the "sixes" may be holding your company back, but just as likely, the
"nines" and "tens" may be bailing because you're a "six".

OP sounds kinda like a high school jock rating girls in the hall, "She's a 6."
But the analogy fails in one critical area: OP has the opportunity (and
responsibility) to turn his "sixes" into "tens". That's _his_ fucking job (if
he wasn't a six himself). I've lost track of the number of times I've
witnessed mediocre employees become great with a change of management.

That person with great references and potential you hired didn't suddenly turn
into a "six". Something you or your organization did changed them. On the
other hand, that disgruntled, under-performing employee didn't suddenly become
great when the new manager restructured his job and paid attention to him.

Like most stories, this one has two sides. Unfortunately, we often only get to
hear the boss's side because when things to wrong, no matter whose fault, he's
the one left standing.

~~~
johngalt
If the author even knows a six from a ten. I'm continually surprised how often
bosses fall for con-artist employees. I don't mean ones that are just clicking
along and doing the minimum; I mean employees that are actively destroying
your business.

The salesman that games the incentive system or overpromises to make sales.
The developer that "makes it work", but writes code so labrythine and
undocumented as to make it impossible for any other developer to succeed. Or
the middle manager that will sabotage other projects inside the company in
order to look good in comparison.

The easy question to answer is "should you hire good employees?". The hard
question to answer is "how do you determine good vs bad?" Maybe those sixes
aren't trying because they're worried that any exceptional performance will be
seen as a threat to a paranoid senior staff member.

For every one true 10/10 employee there are five con-artists. I'd argue the
con-artists are a bigger threat than someone who's just there to punch a
clock.

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JimboOmega
Hiring and firing is so very hard. I have yet to see any good techniques to do
it. It is nice to see an article that owns up to the fact that even if you
make them write code in the interview and have really good brain teasers
and... whatever other interviewing technique, you'll still get bad apples. So
many articles are written that basically say, hiring a bad employee is so very
bad, you must make sure it never happens. So it's good to see discussion of
what you do when it does.

This article reminds me again of how the whole job process is a lot like the
process one goes through with relationships. When I saw this bit - "What would
your visceral response be if they quit? Relief? I think that says it all." - I
realized it would fit perfectly as a relationship advice column.

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BrianMcElroy
Man, this hits home... his description of a 6 is spot on. I need to let one go
today.

~~~
xuki
Not sure if this is a stupid question. How do you fire people? Do you need to
give them any buffer time (e.g., 1 month, just like you can give 1 month
notice before resign)? How about the potential damage they could leave in that
time?

I'm just curious.

~~~
BrianMcElroy
Not a stupid question by any means- it's an important one!

In my case it's done based on the original contract, which provides for 30
days notice.

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xuki
Then what kind of work do you ask your employee to do in the last 30 days?

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allwein
It's safer if you terminate them immediately and just give them 30 days
severance pay, which is the same thing.

I'm not sure I'd trust some people not to have a negative reaction and try to
sabotage their project.

~~~
BrianMcElroy
Agreed. It's easy to get worked up about paying for nothing, but the potential
downside is often greater.

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dhyasama
When I first started at my job I was alarmed at the number of people that were
fired. Over time I have come to value managements willingness to do what they
do. People in key positions come up with a target when they are hired and
generally receive all the resources they need. If they do what they said they
would then they stay. If not, they go.

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nazgulnarsil
the anti capitalistic mentality focuses on those phenomena where emotionally
negative things are concentrated and the corresponding benefits are diffuse.
the monkey brain can't seem to cope with the idea that the bad employee was
literally hurting everyone else at the company.

