
Ask HN: Should I fire half of my team because their performance is terrible? - firingtest
Sorry for the throw away account for obvious reasons.<p>I've a small startup,all telecommuting,8 technical guys. Most of them with the team for a year or more now. Their performance is generally bad, it's sometimes good sometimes bad, but I have to nudge them to get things done,constantly.<p>I've tried lots of things to motivate them and didn't succeed. I'm part of the core technical team which means I end up working extra, covering for them as well as  working with all other business related stuff. Put it this way,I'm fed up with them.<p>I'm planning to fire 5 problematic ones and hire new guys slowly and carefully.<p>2 Questions;
 * Shall I fire, and how should I proceed?
 * How can I hire new telecommuters and ensure that their performance will be good? (I know many thinks performance is nothing to do with an office, but my experience in several companies makes me think different)<p>FYI: All getting well paid, happy with business and if you ask them all performance problems are personal and they do accept that their performance is bad and unacceptable.
======
bartl
I have been on the other side. I'd like to think of myself as an excellent
programmer, but occasionally I'm hard to motivate myself.

The main reasons for that is that the job is boring, and the feeling of
getting nowhere, being stuck. The thing that motivates me the most is the
feeling of getting things done, fast.

In other words: it's a vicious circle. People are demotivated because they are
in a rut, and people work fast because they get results, fast.

The best thing to do now, to get them out of the rut, is to stay on top of
them. Deadlines are meaningful only if they are real deadlines, like "this
feature must be done by next week", and not some artificial goal like "work on
this for 30 hours". BTW 30 hours for a single task is much too long, it should
be broken up in smaller tasks. Set real short term goals. And if they are
getting nowhere because there is _something_ that they cannot finish, you may
switch tasks, so they get something new to do, instead of just continuing
working on the same old. Let a few people work on one task together, I've
noticed that often that is a motivation booster, myself. But always: small,
meaningful goals.

And, yeah, I agree with the others: switching to new people will not help,
though it might seem to do so temporarily, for as long as those new people are
new to the tasks. Once they get in a rut, it's back to the old situation.

~~~
bmj
I agree. My current project was turning into a bit of death march (due to a
number factors), and I was finding motivation hard to come by. My manager
decided that we would begin doing "pre-releases" to QC in order to give them a
chance to kick the tires before writing all their test cases. This has been a
huge help to my motivation. Now our goals are "get these bits of functionality
into the weekly build" instead of "get this massive app done by the end of the
quarter."

------
Robin_Message
(FWIW, I have no management experience, so these are just some ideas and
questions from the other side. Good luck whatever happens.) If 5 out of 8
people working for me were sometimes good and sometimes bad, I'd worry I am
not leading them right. Also, with so many people performing badly, is poor
performance now part of your company's culture? What contact do your employees
have with each other?

Before you let them go, have you analysed what makes the difference between
their performance being good and bad? What have you tried to motivate them?
Have you asked them if there is anything that would motivate them and if there
is anything that is demotivating them?

One suggestion though: Are they being given enough direction? No-one likes a
micro-manager, but having a couple of clear goals for what to get out of a day
does wonders for my productivity. The thing is though, _I'm not great at
setting that for myself_. Working with someone to set that kind of daily
target is great. You say you have to nudge them constantly, but I'd argue you
are probably an exceptional person (e.g. starting your own company and
employing 8 people.) Setting goals and direction is what you are good at. If
your employees were good at it, they wouldn't be working for you, they'd be
your competition!

~~~
firingtest
> Before you let them go, have you analysed what makes the difference between
> their performance being good and bad? What have you tried to motivate them?
> Have you asked them if there is anything that would motivate them and if
> there is anything that is demotivating them?

Yeah I worked on this for a while now, and if you ask them it's all personal
problems (stuff I can't help unless I'm willing to take their mother to their
aunty's). I think one of the reasons we are in this shape because I don't want
to micro-manage, I don't want to make it company culture. Although we do have
task tracking and everything so basically everyone knows what they supposed to
do. We hold regular teleconferences every week (for all the team) and as much
as required through out day between individuals.

I've listened stories of other companies such as 37signals how they mange to
work telecommuting, how they don't need to nudge people to work and stuff
which makes me wonder whether I'm an incompetent manager or most of my team
are incompetent workers.

> If your employees were good at it, they wouldn't be working for you!

Interesting point maybe you right, but to be honest I don't want to spend half
of my day to keep nudging people :) Also I had these 3 guys who works
perfectly fine, so what about them? Are they just exceptionally good? Somehow
much much more motivated than others?

~~~
berntb
>>if you ask them it's all personal problems

I did a double take when I saw that. I have to ask:

Five of eight _really_ say that personal problems influence work that much for
so long?!

You do realize that is statistically unlikely?! (Unless they are in e.g.
Pakistan, with natural and man made catastrophes.)

~~~
calibraxis
Yes... to hazard a guess, the team members may be coming up with superficial
reasons. They may be correct, but not touching upon the more relevant
underlying problems. Maybe there's even unnecessary self-blame occuring. If
the OP's assessment is correct, that they're "talented guys", then parts of
the problem may be solvable without resorting to firing.

BTW, are the coworkers talented in the context of the company's technical
goals?

In this situation, I might ask what these coworkers think about working away
from home. Like at a nice nearby coworking facility. (I'd offer to mandate
this for X days in the week, in case they need to externalize the blame to me
in front of spouses who've come to expect their presence.) Working from home
is often psychologically difficult, due to whatever upbringing or natural
predisposition.

Having a short daily stand-up could help. I think some of the idea behind it
is that people want to have something to say in front of their peers.

[http://howwework.thinkrelevance.com/stakeholder_narrative.ht...](http://howwework.thinkrelevance.com/stakeholder_narrative.html#daily_standup)

Maybe more from that page could translate into this telecommuting situation.
Teams frequently don't learn from their mistakes, beause they're not
institutionally accustomed to thinking about them. (Like with
retrospectives/postmortems.) Especially if they're mentally stuck in the
leader/follower model, where they don't stray far from The Way Things Are.

There's another red flag: "I don't want to micro-manage". In my view, this
often means, "People should independently work on their things, at least as
far as I'm concerned." I suspect this frequently happens when you have an
individually competent person with weaker team skills. To use corporate-speak,
maybe the synergies of working in a team are under-utilized.

------
1gor
I had a small telecommuting team once, and what helped us a lot were two
pieces of technology around which our development process was built.

The first one was a simple issue tracker. The 'nudging' and 'motivating' bit
became almost redundant. There always was a list of issues that needed to be
addressed one by one, and the employees could work on the simplest ones, or on
the complex ones, depending on their skill level and personal energy level at
the time.

The second piece was the idea of short 'sprints' we borrowed from the Scrum
process. Each week we aimed to deliver something that worked, so there was a
set of issues that needed to be addressed as a matter of a priority. In this
way the team stayed motivated and saw results of their work, i.e. there was an
(almost) instant gratification.

Interestingly, one of my developers was a 'star', and another was a 'rookie',
but they found a happy balance under this system. The experienced one tackled
complex/architecture related issues and avoided the boring simple tasks which
the less experienced employee was happy to do because that kept him feeling
productive and contributing.

The management process consisted of a weekly skype conference call where we
would agree on a issue set for the next 'sprint', and then we simply
communicated through email to check on the progress during the week and to
address problems. Obviously, I had to write up the requirements (in the form
of issue tickets) as well.

Again, a simple issue tracker (we used Roundup) was the single most useful
management tool for that project.

~~~
charliepark
Do you know if there are any screenshots of Roundup? Hadn't heard of it before
this, and am intrigued, but the SourceForge page doesn't list any images of it
in action.

~~~
bockris
<http://bugs.python.org/> is running a customized version of Roundup.

Source is here. <http://svn.python.org/view/tracker/roundup-src/>

------
jpluscplusm
"I've tried lots of things to motivate them and didn't succeed." "I have to
nudge them to get things done,constantly."

Sounds like the managerial and systemic failure is all yours, dude.

If you've not introduced automated systems to track what's being done and
/help/ them (e.g. redmine, tracking relatively highly decomposed tasks, etc)
keep on top of the work and the deadlines (and know why each deadline's
important; i.e. who they'll be screwing over if they don't deliver) then
you've only got yourself to blame.

Why would you think it'll be different with new people - because you'll just
"be better" at hiring this time around? Unlikely.

J

~~~
firingtest
> If you've not introduced automated systems to track what's being done and
> /help/ them

I'm not quite sure why you think we don't have these but we do have all. So
everyone knows what's been done, what's need to done and what are the
deadlines. (although generally we don't have strict deadlines).

> Why would you think it'll be different with new people - because you'll just
> "be better" at hiring this time around? Unlikely.

Well this is fair comment, I simply don't although it was my first time hiring
people for me, so I'm sure I've got more experience on that now and secondly I
know what our company culture and what's the good fit, based on good employees
I've got in my team. So I've good reference points this time.

------
pmjordan
As others have said, it does sound like a management issue. One thing that
might be interesting is figuring out why the other 3 are doing better. Do they
work on different parts of the project (or even a different project)? Do they
communicate more amongst each other or with you, do they have a personal bond
beyond the "colleague" level? Do they have equity or some other motivating
factor? It could well be that they do just naturally have a lot of drive, but
if that is the case you're doing pretty well at 37.5% self-motivated
employees.

------
clueless123
5 out of 8 bad apples? Have you considered you might have a leadership issue
here ?

Regardless if your team is local or telecommuting, treat them professionally,
be clear, honest and shoot straight with no politics.

Also, be sure that you are asking people to do things they can actually
achieve and that the tasks are "around" their skill level (so they don't get
bored to death)

------
DanielBMarkham
Telecommuting has real problems, especially when it's a larger team (8+ is a
large team in this situation) There'e a real danger of an "us versus them"
mentality setting up, from everyone involved.

First, assume the team is intelligent and wants to produce.

Second, establish a backlog and have clear weekly items that need to be
completed. The team gets to decide which ones they can complete -- or not.

Third, make it clear that they can screw it up for a couple of weeks, but no
more. There will not be a third week of dissapointment. (But you may be
dissapointed with what they say they can do for each week. Different topic)
The team will be judged as a group, not individually.

Then get out of their way and let them work it out.

At the end of the day, however, you're probably best off sacking just about
everybody. The ones who are not performing are in a rut, the ones who are
performing probably have copped an attitude, and your ability to interact and
work with a telecommuting team has probably developed some seriously bad
edges.

Can't sack yourself, though. But whatever you do, heck if I'd start right back
up with the telecommuting. Bring the new team in for 90 days of intense
working together. Stick with the weekly goals thing. Get a development rhythm
going. Learn who is good at what. Learn how different people communicate when
there are problems. Get a pattern of folks helping each other out. Then slowly
transition folks out to telecommuting status.

I trust the team above everything else, but you can get teams into places they
don't come out from. Assuming you're writing the checks, this is serious
stuff. I sure wouldn't be asking HN for advice (including asking me. Although
I do this for a living, there's a tremendous amount of contextual information
I do not have) If it's as bad as you say, you've got some tough choices ahead.
I also wouldn't put a lot of money on your perception of the problem -- you're
just as mixed up in whatever problems there are as the rest of them. [insert
long discussion about the benefit of using outside eyeballs, which,
unfortunately, is a conflict of interest for me to give. I apologize.]

------
arethuza
Have you ever sat yourself down and considered whether you aren't the problem?

If you know someone who you regard as a good manager, try and persuade them to
come in for a couple of days (pay them for this, obviously) and do a sanity
check on your management style.

I had management coaching years ago and the results were pretty hard to take -
but it was an invaluable experience for me.

------
pvg
I think at 5 out 8 it's not a mere firing, it's a bloodbath. If you've built
any kind of team cohesion, you'd be throwing it all away. Obviously, if
they're all critically detrimental to your business, fire the lot and eat the
hit. Have you considered firing maybe 1 or 2 and seeing if it improves the
performance, overall?

~~~
firingtest
Actually I wasn't considering this but you and many others in here pointed out
mass firing would be very bad with very good reasons. Now I changed my mind
about this, even if I finalize my decision on firing it'll be worst to better
in every 2 months (unless they change in the middle).

~~~
Goladus
I actually think dragging it out over several months would be even worse. I
wouldn't fire more than 2 that way. Your good employees will be wondering if
they are next and if they should be polishing their resume (which they'll do
instead of work you need done)

------
sleight42
I've worked remotely for about four years now: two as a part-time remote
worker, one as an employee telecommuter, and one as a freelance developer and
manager.

Yes, it truly does take a special kind of person to be successful working
remotely. <b>It requires a strong work ethic<b>: an internal sense of
accountability that persists in the absence of coworkers.

However, let's be realistic here. Most people that you will hire don't have
this.

Those people who have that internal drill sergeant can get be successful by
themselves. They don't need you. If you have people like this, you need to do
everything in your power to enable them, make them happy, and get out of their
way.

Management "tricks" that you cite in the comments (e.g., "time tracking, semi-
micro management, constant reporting or leaving them more space, trying to get
excited with new technical bits, giving them bonus, cutting their salary etc.,
pep talk, pissed-off talk") just aren't going to work.

Here's why: you don't understand what motivates these people. This is not your
fault. Understanding people is hard. I'm no guru either. ;)

About a year in, this is where I found "Agile Retrospectives". This is a
technique to actively engage the whole team in solving the team's problems.

Essentially, these are brainstorming sessions, sometimes emotionally charged,
that give you and the team the opportunity to air tough problems and feelings,
come up with plans to resolve them, and check on the progress of their
resolution.

Management is a skill; it takes time and many errors to learn how to do it at
all well. Can you afford those errors with this team and this project? If not,
"fire yourself" as the manager, as you suggested at one point, and find
someone who can do it for you.

If I wasn't completely booked right now, I'd love to help you and your team on
an ongoing basis. Still, if you want someone's brain to pick, feel free to
mail me at evan AT tripledogdare DOT net.

------
Goladus
I couldn't offer advice on whether or not to fire without criteria more
specific than 'performance'. Presumably, you aren't hiring people to perform
you're hiring them to get a job done-- and what specifically about that job
has not been done that you need done?

Unclear expectations and confusing priorities can make motivation very
difficult. You use the term 'performance' 5 times and I still haven't the
slightest idea what these guys are supposed to be producing except that they
are "technical." I understand you don't want to be identified and that's fine,
but if you use this kind of imprecise language with your employees, they'll
just nod and vaguely agree to get through the conversation. Five minutes later
they'll realize the conversation was completely pointless.

~~~
firingtest
I used bad performance to define:

Not doing their job which is tickets assigned them (coding, testing, building,
buying groceries etc.)

So we do have a clear definition of what needs to be done, and it's also clear
that who's doing it and who's not. Only question in here might what's the
accepted amount of tasks done. Like does this ticket takes an hour for X and a
day for Y. In either case (Y is slacking or it takes a day for him) he's an
incompetent employee and needs to go. Am I missing something?

~~~
Goladus
_Like does this ticket takes an hour for X and a day for Y._

Out of context, comparisons like this are meaningless. Maybe the ticket took a
long time for Y because he was assigned 30 tickets and spent most of the day
suffering paralysis of choice, maybe that particular subject is difficult for
him but he has other strengths. When you blamed him for it his knee-jerk
response was to get defensive and make excuses (eg personal life problems).

~~~
firingtest
Either way that shows that the employee is not good, if a person can't handle
to do his/her own tasks one by one that person should not be work as a
developer. BTW generally assigned person decides how long will it take to
finish a task (a task can't take longer than 4+ hours if it's needs to be
split into smaller chunks)

------
charliepark
Perhaps, rather than firing all 5 of them, you should hire a really good
manager who can work with them. Or, fire the worst of the lot, and use his
salary to hire a manager.

Focus on what you're good at, and if you have the money, hire someone to fill
in where you're weak.

~~~
firingtest
So I should fire myself :) A fair point but do you really think it's a good
team if the team needs a constant manager to nudge to get things done, do you
think it's a good company culture to setup?

Personally I don't want such a culture in my own company.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>Personally I don't want such a culture in my own company.

Managers manage people. Most (all?) companies have them, how many sports teams
do you know of without a coach? Sure a team works without a manager but
managers definitely get the most out of a team, that's their _raison d'etre_.

It sounds like you're looking for something other than a company - a group of
independently motivated individuals striving for personal goals that happen to
be close enough aligned that some useful product results. It sounds like a
FOSS project in that sense.

Don't be afraid to fire yourself.

------
oceanician
Get an office. Have regular meet-ups.

I heard of one telecommuting company who flew everyone to one location every
couple of months, and he reported great productivity increases.

What are you doing to increase moral?

Are you providing regular thought out requirements? Tied together with some
sort of joined up thinking - not just random whims. Nothing worse than them
getting a part requiremnt, you expecting them to get on with it, and then you
moaning at what they've produced. Either be available to talk through
requirements ALL the time when someone is working on a unit of work, or
provide solid requirements.

Are you having regular releases? Something to celebrate. Nothing more
demoralising than endless todos. Do you have a goal for your current
iteration? Do you have development iterations? (fortnightly or weekly sprints
seem to work well for a lot of people) What are you doing to mark the end of
the week? One telecommuting company I know has a virtual beer together, on a
Friday at the same time, to review the weeks progress. Have you provided an
environment to screen share with ease? Essential for talking through how to
approach a problem, or figuring out why something isn't working.

Hmm. I work in an office. I'm about 2000% (add more zeros) more productive
than at home. I'm sure you'll get plenty of advice off actual telecommuters.

------
lsc
first, you will have to nudge nearly everyone you hire. this is part of
managing people. get over it, and learn how to nudge effectively. Note, each
person requires a different kind of nudge, but nearly everyone requires at
least a little. Employees who don't need those nudges are very rare, and
become expensive quickly. If you have lucked into one, keep them happy. (note,
though, my experience has been that while these sorts make incredible
individual contributors, they generally make poor managers.)

Next, though, you do sometimes have to fire people. this is the way it is. If
you don't know how to nudge those 5 under performers into performing well, and
you are unwilling or unable to figure out how to do so, you will have to fire
them, even though they probably could have performed acceptably under
different management. Let them go and hopefully they will find a place where
they fit.

As others pointed out, this will kill morale at your startup. Do it quickly
and respectfully, and maybe give your best people raises or bonuses at the
same time. The big danger here is that your best people will leave at this
time, so take extra care with the people you want to keep.

Me, when I fire people, I try to frame it as my fault. I mean, I hired the
guy, right? and it's my job to manage them. If they didn't work out, I think
it's best all around if I publicly and sincerely accept the fault. And really,
it's best if _I_ think it's my fault. I mean, I can change my behavior; if I
can learn how to hire better or manage better in the future, that's a big win.
Feeling ripped off by an employee, on the other hand, is almost never
productive.

It's best to remember that in other situations, these people might be pretty
good. I certainly know I'm not the best manager in the world. There is no
reason to make this any more painful than it has to be, and really, there is
no reason to publicly say anything bad about these people. You will meet these
people later in your career, and your employees will maintain personal
relationships with some of these people, so the better you can have them think
of you, the better off you are.

If you can spare the cash, give them some severance. Even a week or two is a
lot better than nothing (and in the startup world, a lot more than the
employees probably expect.)

Now, when it comes to hiring; what I do is that I make it clear it's a
contract assignment, at first, without any expectation of continued
employment. If they don't work out, there's no more work. I pay them and we
part friends. If they do, I can slowly work towards an expectation of longer
term employment.

As for telecommute vs. office, well, it really takes a specific personality
type to telecommute effectively. I recently got an office, and I note a marked
improvement in productivity both from my PFY and from myself, on days when we
both decide not to work from home.

~~~
mattm
OT but as an employee/contractor, I'm interested in what you wrote here:

    
    
      Employees who don't need those nudges are very rare, and become expensive quickly
    

Could you elaborate on this? Are these employees just able to take specs and
implement them on their own timetable? I would consider myself in this
category - I currently telecommute and can go for days without any
communication with the manager but still get things done. I just want to see
if I am in that category from another person's point of view or see what else
I can do to improve.

~~~
lsc
yeah. well, you need someone like you, and you need a manager who is good at
communicating specs, and the manager needs to be okay that the end result will
still be slightly different from his or her 'vision'

But yeah, it's pretty rare to have someone who keeps working hard on their
own. it's more rare that the result looks anything like what the manager had
in mind when they drafted the specs.

If you are one of those people, you should be able to charge a significant
premium for your time. You are worth it. Now, the hard part here is that it's
hard to prove you are one of those people without actually working for
someone; still, if you are what you say you are, you should be able to build
yourself a high-priced consulting business.

------
agentultra
Responsibility is key for me. I'm motivated when I can make a decision and the
team is relying on me to follow through on my word. It's a matter of
professional pride.

Give them ownership over their work. Give them responsibility and
accountability. Give specialists control over key components and more
generalized people doing design, issue management, and supporting the
specialists. I find that I perform better when I feel like my reputation is on
the line.

On the contrary, I've been on projects where the responsibility and decisions
were made by the managers. Any criticism, idea, or suggestion I had to
contribute didn't really matter. We eventually did finish these projects
through, but not without a lot of resentment. In these types of situations its
easy (and justified) for employees to blame management when things start to go
wrong. They had no say and therefore have no reason to feel accountable. If
you're a manager and you start firing people in this situation, the rest will
just end up quitting. Those who stay will have nothing good to say and are
probably only there because they have dependants. So good luck with that
route.

Telecommuting generally isn't the issue. It's only an issue for people
inexperienced at it: they don't realize that the wife may ask you to do chores
in the middle of the day or that their pets will continually break their
attention. Experienced people know to keep a separate room as their office and
let the people they live with know that they're not to be bothered during
working hours and especially when the door is closed.

So obviously I recommend shifting the balance of ownership and accountability
to the team. If there are still people who continually fall through on their
promises or whose decisions continually fall short of their expectations, then
you know who to talk to and possibly fire; and so does the team -- so if the
axe does fall, everyone knows why. This will go a long way to protecting
morale.

------
wglb
I once ran a project with four contractors working remotely. My previous
management experience was not remote, and I generally chatted with each person
each day. So part of the setup was that I spoke by phone with each person each
day just to keep the channel open both ways. I also required an email report
from each person each day. Finally, we held a weekly meeting in person, which
worked because we were geographically close.

The other thing I insisted on when assembling a team was that they had a room
in their house that they called their office and that it had a door.

Not everyone can handle telecommuting, and sometimes the bandwidth of
detail/culture/chatter is not enough to sustain the good productive
relationship.

You should strongly consider Campfire. This will support communication
necessary for remote working. Make the presence in the campfire room required.

------
vessenes
You sprinkle your comments throughout, so I'll just shoot my general
perspective over to you rather than reply piece by piece.

In my opinion, you have a serious problem on your hands. The first issue is
that you don't know if the problem is you, your team, or one that you created
with your team.

I think you need to get that sorted first -- the suggestions for a mentor to
come in and spend a day or two with you are spot on. Do this first, because if
you choose the wrong option above, you're going to be in for some horrible
pain, much worse than you are now.

You reference telecommuting and said you thought telecommuting was the 'way to
go.' Here's my experience: I managed a technology startup in an office for
nine years with no telecommuters, and have since done three years of
management of remote teams, working out of an office and at home, so I've been
on both sides of this.

Whatever 37Signals seems to imply on their blog posts, remote management of
knowledge workers is more challenging than in-office management. (And, I'm
sure that they would agree with this statement, by the way). There is one
exception to this rule: it is if the team is self-motivated, self-organizing
and has good chemistry and an excellent remote decision making process.

Something many entrepreneurs miss (or at least that I missed for many years)
is that not everyone wants to be an entrpreneur. Whatever else may be true
about your company, I know from your descriptions that your employees don't
want to be entrepreneurs. They want to be salaried employees, I'm sure with
bonuses and stock if possible.

When you read about how telecommuting rocks, and the team just works really
hard and talks all the time using skype or iChat, etc. etc., and there is no
management overhead and no wasted time, and people are naturally agile, and
everything is awesome, you are reading about a group of people who all wanted
to be entrepreneurs and found each other online.

You're not in that situation; instead you're in a more-challenging-than-usual
management situation where you can't evaluate body language, team dynamics,
emotional affect, work groupings (as in who works well with whom). All that
has to be inferred or discovered or just left as a mystery. In all likelihood,
you have a seriously toxic work environment on your hands, one that is
negatively impacting your 'good' employees as well as the 'problem ones.'

Now, to solutions:

If the problem is mostly you, and you actually generally have good people,
you're lucky! You can work extra hard at becoming a better manager. There are
lots of great suggestions here, including more frequent short one-on-one
meetings, providing better work structure for employees and getting some
management coaching. Do all of these. Also, start reading some business books
about management, rather than just HN, as great as it is. There are many, many
excellent management books (and, sadly a whole load of total crap) at the
bookstore; go browse and buy four or five. Read them. Talk about them with
your coach or mentor. Implement. You'll probably find you need to sort some
things out with some of your employees. Do that. You'll probably find you
can't live with some of your employees, even with your new management skills.
Have them leave, but do so in a respectful way. Things will improve.

Now, if (as seems likely to me), you've participated in creating a problematic
culture, you have some more work ahead of you: you're going to have to manage
your company back around to a better culture, without losing half your team.

Consider: could the half you want to get rid of re-implement your technology?
Since they work in different countries, would you have a legal solution to
that? If the answers are: 'yes' and 'hmm....', tread carefully!

If instead you have a lock on the technology and you know you need a reset,
you should process this, first with your most trusted senior employee. Tell
them you're considering a reset because you're convinced the culture is not
solvable. (Note that you definitely owe it to your employees to work on your
own management needs before you go down this path.) Get their feedback, it
will be instructive. Work together to get a transition plan in place.

I have more thoughts in this vein, but perhaps you get the thrust of my
opinions. Best of luck.

------
olsonea
I am fascinated that in this economy, employees need motivation beyond the
length of the unemployment line.

~~~
firingtest
Tell me about it, IT industry (I know from myself) is so spoiled because
generally it's rather easy to find jobs.

------
skowmunk
I agree with what russell says, systemic discipline or the lack of it could be
a problem here.

Try this:

Have

1)long term deadlines, (Quarterly?)

2)mid term deadlines (Monthly?)

3)short term deadlines (Weekly?)

At least on a weekly basis, review the deadlines and tasks with the
team/functional leaders, and see if there are any issues that would prevent
any of the deadlines from being met. If there are such issues, then brainstorm
for solutions and then follow up.

Keep following up on fixed schedules and keep asking for reasons if any of the
deadlines are not being met.

In fact, a better idea would be to let the team decide on the deadlines and
commit themselves to delivering them. If they are too loose, push for tighter
deadlines (over time anybody would develop a good sense of judging the
deadlines - if they are too loose). That can make them push themselves hard
when required to deliver by their own deadlines and they do get a sense of
achievement.

And do your part to be the facilitator, to help them reach those deadlines. It
could mean to provide hard resources, soft resources, to iron out political
problems, to be a cheerleader, a hard driver/nudger, be a sounding board or
whatever you need to be to help them deliver those deliverables.

Other than the work/task ownership aspect, another reason why I prefer this
approach is, often the ones with hands on experience are the ones best
qualified to estimate the effort required.

At least thats the way I prefer to work. Keeps the management time overhead
low too (relatively)

------
redtexture
Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror has some perspective: "On Working Remotely"
[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/05/on-working-
remotely...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/05/on-working-
remotely.html)

A lead-in quotation: "I have learned a few things about what it means to work
remotely -- at least when it comes to programming. Our current team
encompasses 5 people, distributed all over the USA, along with the team in
NYC."

------
TWAndrews
Do they know that they are in danger of being fired? The prospect of
unemployment is definitely something that can focus the mind.

If you haven't given them a clear indication that their performance is
unacceptable and that a continuation of said unacceptable performance will get
them canned, do so. Hopefully in some of the cases, you'll see an improvement.
Others you'll probably have to fire.

~~~
firingtest
Some of them know, couple of them quite new hires who started with a very bad
performance (I've no clue how the hell this is possible! - maybe my fault)

Also I openly discussed all these issues and invite them to find a solution
all together. So far not going well.

In some cases after being informed of possible serious consequences their
performance got back to normal for a month or two then cycle repeated itself.
So maybe every 2 months I should remind them that they very close to getting
sacked.

------
scorpion032
It is your job, as a leader to make sure the team performs well.

No one, themselves want to perform bad. If I am spending my time on something,
or if I am committed to something, I might as well do very well in that time.

But sometimes, performance is bad. Not because one cant or one isn't
interested but because there is some thing preventing one from doing it. It
could be a personal problem, but more likely a communication gap or some
cultural difference.

Most people do something because they feel like it and not necessarily because
they have to do it. It is your job as an employer to ensure that they feel
like it. This is exactly where the company culture, peer performance review
and the like help a lot.

Or you might as well hire self motivating individuals, far too little,
generally.

------
petervandijck
Sometimes you do have to fire people. Have you fired someone before? If not,
fire 1 person, the worst performer. Then have a talk with the others. But be
careful.

Also, it looks like you hired badly. Hiring is hard, consider it a lesson and
work really hard on doing better next time.

------
japherwocky
From the perspective of someone who's been telecommuting for the past year-
ish: if they admit that their performance problems are personal, and it's just
a lack of discipline on their part, maybe they're not cut out for it.

You've got to be able to ignore sunny days and log some productive hours, and
if you can't you're not cut out for telecommuting. And if you've got this
culture of being lazy and not taking deadlines / goals seriously, the 3
competent guys are going to realize at some point that they have no real
motivation for being competent.

I'd make an example of one of the peons, give the 3 a token raise/reward, and
have a chat about what's acceptable and professional.

And if you're looking for a contract guy who can deliver, shoot me an email ;)

------
tablet
I've asked very similar question. Check comments in it as well

Ask HN: Should you fire average devs and have only talented devs in a team?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1634231>

~~~
firingtest
Thanks, but one of the problems I've got talented guys they just don't work
properly, when they do (read: when I nudge them) I've got to give it to them,
they are indeed pretty good.

~~~
berntb
Do they have some other projects they work on behind your back? (An old
project leader managed an outsourced team that did that...)

Speaking for myself, I'm probably like your bad hires. If I do projects alone
at work for more than a year, I start to hate my life. (-: Answer to next
comment: "Yes, maybe that would be solved by getting a social life outside of
work." :-)

~~~
firingtest
I hope not :) and AFAIK they don't.

> If I do projects alone at work for more than a year, I start to hate my
> life.

I know what you mean, that happened to many times when I was working in
companies but in my own company luckily I'm not there yet, and hopefully will
never be there :)

------
dusklight
All getting well paid .. are they getting any equity? Do they make more
(meaningfully more) money if they do a good job? What incentives do they have
to do a better job other than not being fired?

Are you sure of the reasons why their performance is bad? Are you sure it is
not the case that you are giving them bad instructions, and they are following
them as best they can, but because the instructions are bad the overall
product is bad, and when you ask them about it, they decide to agree with you
that their performance is bad, rather than telling you the truth that it is
all your fault, because they don't want to anger you and risk getting fired?

~~~
firingtest
> are they getting any equity? Do they make more (meaningfully more) money if
> they do a good job?

No, I understand this can be a problem but at the same time I don't see a good
reason to give them equity. I might give them equity and then get the bad
performance again then I'll be a total idiot.

> Are you sure of the reasons why their performance is bad?

No I'm not but I've tried hard to figure out and so far couldn't pin point.

> because they don't want to anger you and risk getting fired?

I don't think so as I openly discussed the matter and tried to change how we
work to fix this problem by their suggestions. So they know if they think
something will work better I'll go with that. For example with one of them we
were doing daily reviews then he wanted to weekly and thought it'd be better.
I agreed and didn't bother him for a week. Result same.

------
skowmunk
Somehow I see some red flags. If they are getting well paid, happy with
business and are honest about their own negative performance evaluation, I
doubt if the problem is on their side, unless they were technically not upto
the mark to begin with.

Even if thats the case, where they are lacking in technical competency, if I
can afford, I would love to have such a honest team and would rather work with
them to help them reach higher levels of performance. It can result in an
inspired and loyal team - please note, it is 'can' and not 'will'.

Even the best team will fail, if the system and expectations in which they
work is not set up right. By 'system' I would also include, the goal setting,
delegating of responsibilities, method of checking accountability, the method
and tone of communications, etc.

I consider its the leader's personal responsibility that the 'system' is set
up right and keeps getting fixed and mended when required.

Though I would prefer a non-telecommuting team as I think it has some strong
inherent advantages, a successful telecommuting team is not impossible. I have
been running a telecommuting team (programming team + testing/requirements
team) for around 8 months and am very happy with the way they work. Now I
don't even have to intervene, just tell them what feature to work on, and they
coordinate with each other and get it done real fast. (Partly, luck is
involved, was able to get some really good programming lead and testing lead)

But, there was this instance soon after the testing lead came in. There was
this exchange of emails between him and the programming lead over some
misunderstanding and they were going on back and forth on whom to blame
between the two. I could foresee it screwing up rapport between them with long
term ramifications for me, stepped in right away, took the blame for the
misunderstanding ( I think I did have some responsibility for that), so that
they can focus on fixing the problem and move forward. It worked.

A bit later, I wrote up and sent some philosophical crap to both, about all of
us being imperfect and all the great things in the world getting built by
imperfect people and systems. ( I do believe that crap though :) ). Its been
more or less smooth sailing since.

If the problem is indeed with the people then firing may be a good solution.
But if the system is the problem, you will be having the same problem again.
So do check if the problem is with the system.

If you do have to resort to firing, try one at a time but for a definite and
solid reason and communicate that reason to others. That single firing itself
can bring about positive changes in thinking, actions and performance for the
rest, provided the system was not the problem.

Mass or in-explained firings will bring down the morale and can also bring
down your credibility with your remaining and new employees. I have seen it
happen.

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to share my perspectives and experiences
in case it helps.

Good luck.

------
brixon
Firing 5 out of 8 people is an indicator that you are not good at hiring or
not good at managing them.

Try these podcasts, they talk about both topics. <http://www.manager-
tools.com/>

------
backroomcoder
Is there an opportunity to get everybody in the same physical location for a
day? Either way, maybe it would be good for you to have a clear the air
session, communicate vision/direction/expectations, allow them to communicate
their issues with you etc. In my experience as a manager, when I see team
performance start dipping etc.. then I start to identify why and maybe
introduce new ways of doing things, i.e. keep reinvigorating the team.
Communication is vital in your team; have short audios on a daily basis if you
can afford it. Keep track of issues. Inject some spirit into your team.

------
willheim
Read "Making Ideas Happen" by Scott Belsky. I am in the same position as you
and have picked up some wonderful ideas from that book.

First: Nag, nag, nag! You say nudge, I say NAG! Nagging works as people just
want to get you to shut it and they know the only way to do that is to get the
task done.

Second: Are you absolutely clear in your goals and have you assembled a team
which is aligned with those goals?

Third: There's the old adage of hire slow and fire fast. If you have done
everything with one of the team members to get them on board and they still
refuse to align with the team goals then you must let them go.

------
A1kmm
Nudging them to get things done is to be expected for many employees - it is
considered good management practice by many. They are employees, not founders,
and you should expect them to need some nudging - the solution is to develop
processes to give them the nudging they need to make them worth what you pay
them to you.

I'd suggest calling all 8 for 5-10 minutes a day (it's less than an hour of
work - if you don't have time for that, appoint someone else with the skills
as manager). Ask them for a brief verbal description of how they are going,
what problems they are facing, and what worked. Make it mainly positive -
praise them for what they have done, guide them on what needs to be done, and
if needed, gently reprimand them if something isn't so good. Keep it short and
focus on the needs of the business and give them autonomy when possible,
unless they need more help.

If you find that, even when properly managed as above, performance means they
are not worth what you pay them, schedule an in-person meeting or if that is
impossible, a call. Tell them their continued employment is at risk, and let
them bring a representative if they want. Make sure you observe all employment
law and contract terms applicable to you. At the meeting, explain that their
current performance is making them a drag on the business, and explain exactly
why. Give them plenty of time to explain themselves. Then, ask them how they
can improve their performance. Set achievable milestones at the meeting for
them to step up their performance to a reasonable level that everyone is happy
with. For coders, that could be a list of tasks to finish, with times they
will finish them by. Ask them if there is anything you can do to help them
improve - and if it is reasonable, do it.

If they don't meet the performance targets, and don't have a good enough
reason, then you can think about dismissal (in accordance with their contract
terms and applicable employment law).

Dismissing so many people is going to kill morale at your startup - if it
looks like you have to, you might be better off trying to start a new one,
sell assets to the new one, hire the good ones, and wind up the first startup
making everyone redundant (to the extent that is legally possible). If the
first startup is financially solvent, you can sell assets (e.g. your codebase,
trademarks etc...) to the new one.

If you do hire people, the most important thing is to get someone who knows
the field the potential hiree is in to assist with the interviewing. Ignore
bits of paper like qualifications or resumes, except to screen out candidates
who don't even claim skills you need. Don't believe anything in a CV or that
any qualification means they know anything you need - ask them to solve a task
that would take a good employee an hour for you, and rate their work. Also
look for experience that is actually proven - working in a team for a big
company doesn't prove much, even with references. Look for good quality Free /
Open Source code (actually look through the revision history, and check the
quality of their commits), or successful projects where they were obviously
behind it (a history of consulting as sole programmer on different successful
jobs for one business could be good evidence).

------
jhrobert
1/ Install agile process:

issue tracker (fix bugs first),

CI,

weekly deliverable,

daily short conference call: what's up? what's next? any block?

3/

Loop Hire a new fellow, based on github track record Wait a while. Fire the
most damaging.

Repeat until you'r happy

------
auxbuss
How often do you all sit in the same room?

How often to you pair, or simply work together physically?

First thing that struck me was the size of the team. Eight techs is a big
team, especially for a start-up. I'm generalizing, obviously, as we have no
idea what you are doing. It would help to know whether you are building
product or service.

We need more info to offer good advice. Though it does sound like you need
assistance.

~~~
firingtest
To be honest numbers are slightly less I put 8/5 by scaling the current
technical team to a little bit more to keep it anonymous (I might be paranoid
but my team mates reading HN as well!)

But still it's clear that my management skills are not top notch and I didn't
hire right people.

We are building a (fairly expensive) desktop software in a quite niche area,
releasing about 4 updates per year and it's been about 2 years we are doing
this.

~~~
russell
That is a killer release cycle. It is a inefficient as hell. It encourages
people to hide in the long deadline. Switch to 2 week releases, even if it is
only internal. Eventually switch to two week releases to customers. They will
get new goodies every two weeks and they wont have to wait months for bug
fixes. Who knows, the discipline might solve part of your problem.

~~~
firingtest
Internal releases all automated so daily, hourly whatever in every commit and
it's almost forbidden to keep your code more than a day at home! even if it's
broken I force people to commit to keep it alive. If one code takes more than
a day there is generally something with (design, task splitting etc.) unless
we are introducing a big feature.

However based on comments I think focusing on important couple of features and
try to deliver them in weekly of 2 weekly periods makes a lot of sense and
should motivate people better.

------
radu_floricica
Motivating telecommuting programmers is a big issue for startups. If you
manage to do it properly, please come back and tell us.

------
robryan
It's ok to work remotely but I don't know if I could have a case where it was
all remote working and never meeting up, as a long term employee, not sure
about the situation here. Even if it was only every 6 months or a year a
meetup could put everyone on the same page and identify these problems far
better than you can remotely.

------
tablet
I am curious what kind of motivation did you try? Also it is hard to work
remotely and many people just can't do that.

~~~
firingtest
Stuff I've tried is mostly about talking, trying different systematic models
(time tracking, semi-micro management, constant reporting or leaving them more
space, trying to get excited with new technical bits, giving them bonus,
cutting their salary etc., pep talk, pissed-off talk)

Many things, not done in exact science although it was obvious what slightly
works and what definitely doesn't.

> Also it is hard to work remotely and many people just can't do that.

That's exactly my point, maybe these 5 guys can't handle remoting but I might
find new 5 guys who can (just like I already got 3)

~~~
tablet
>>Stuff I've tried is mostly about talking, trying different systematic models
(time tracking, semi-micro management, constant reporting or leaving them more
space, trying to get excited with new technical bits, giving them bonus,
cutting their salary etc., pep talk, pissed-off talk)

Did you try to share the vision? Set clear goals? Make sure that they really
understand and share same values?

To me it looks like you tried to make environment more strict, while it is not
the way to go in software development.

~~~
firingtest
We got clear visions and mottos such as "Be the best technically advanced tool
in the field", that's our edge being technically better than other
competitors.

But well it's a software and not like we are saving the world or ending war in
Middle East, or poverty in Africa. All we do is making a cool software and
making something new in the field.

What sort of shared values and clear goals we talking about? To be honest
other than obvious clear goals for many startups -make great software, be
fresh, be better- (I think) we don't have anything stand out.

------
Tautologistics
I know this is a throwaway account and you cannot get too detailed about the
nature of the work but if you do decide to start over, I might be interested
in applying if my skills fit the job.

~~~
firingtest
If you are great at .NET and WinForms please write your email in here and I'll
email to you.

------
Devilboy
Firing so many people is scary for the remaining employees. Just fire the
worst offender and hire a replacement. That might be enough to turn the team
around.

~~~
lsc
the danger is that if you do have to fire 5 people, firing one person a month
is going to be worse for morale than firing five at once, then making it clear
you are done.

Now, I'm the first to say that I might be wrong, but my feeling, from the
original story, is that this guy simply doesn't know how to manage in a way
that would help those 5 people work more effectively. I doubt that just upping
the fear level a little would change that.

Really, I say that without any negative judgment towards the original poster
or towards the employees in question... different people are capable of
different kinds of management, and different people are capable of working
under different kinds of management. It's quite easy to have a competent
manager and a competent employee, and to have a matchup that produces zero
work due to conflicts in style.

~~~
firingtest
We are tech company, we don't even have sales or marketing department. We do
awesome products and people love it. That's how we do and sell.

Normally I'm not a manager just an passionate engineer however setting up your
own company generally makes you an instant manager.

Can't I find 5 more people who can work without nudging instead of hiring a
useless person (read: manager) to just nudge people?

Or do you think finding 5 new people who fits the bill is harder than finding
one manager who can nudge people.

~~~
lsc
>Normally I'm not a manager just an passionate engineer however setting up
your own company generally makes you an instant manager.

If you have 8 people working for you, well, you are a manager. You can also be
other things, but you are a manager. expecting to manage eight people without
any effort is like expecting to code up a complex web application in an
evening. sure, if you are really great, yeah, maybe you can do it? but very
few people can.

>Can't I find 5 more people who can work without nudging instead of hiring a
useless person (read: manager) to just nudge people?

It's possible to find people who don't need nudging. It's just hard. People
who can work without nudging make excellent and very expensive contractors.

The thing of it is, if you have 8 people working for you, uh, you are not only
a manager, but an advanced manager. Hell, just hiring 8 good people without
making a bunch of mistakes is no mean feat.

I'm not sure that hiring a manager as a go between would help you much; there
are plenty of incompetent idiots going around selling themselves as excellent
managers, and like anything else, it takes one to know one.

The thing is, coordinating 8 people is a difficult task. hiring a good manager
could ease the burden, or it could add a 9th personality in there to muck
things up.

------
TheSOB88
This might sound like a cop-out response, but I'm reading Switch by ChipDan
Heath and I think it'd help you out. It's a new perspective on getting change
to stick. One idea I really liked is "focusing on the bright spots" - figuring
out what's working about the people who are performing much better than the
others, and figuring out how to make this happen for the underperformers. For
example, maybe you could ask the overachievers exactly what they're doing to
manage their time, and compare that with the others.

It sounds like the underachievers _want_ to be good employees, but you have to
figure out how to get them in that direction.

------
c00p3r
I thing you should start a hiring process and make it visible and obvious to
everyone. Start interviewing young guys and make it clear, that you will
replace anyone when you will find a better performer.

Make it clear that you want to establish a competition, and reward only the
best performers. Consider a football team as a model.

Then replace just one worst guy with a young and ambitious geek - it will be a
bold and clear message to rest of your team.

------
michaelhalligan
Think of it the other way .. Should you fire yourself for doing a bad job of
recruiting and building team?

------
vegai
All telecommuting? You mean they hardly ever see each other or you?

I'm surprised they're doing anything at all.

Are they from the same country as you?

~~~
firingtest
Different countries.

I'm a bit lost though, I thought in HN many people thought that telecommuting
was way to go and there are cool companies such as 37Signals rocking by
telecommuting.

Am I missing something? Are those all lies, or do HNers generally love
telecommuting because they can slack off as an employee? Or maybe that was
only me and pretty much everyone thinks telecommuting is a bad idea.

~~~
vegai
I wouldn't say they're lies... Telecommuting is great when it works. Here are
some ways to help it not work:

1\. Fail to create a real working relationship while working. This easily
happens when the telecommuting is reaching 100%.

2\. Fail to take into account cultural differences. There are big differences
in how people can handle poorly defined tasks.

3\. Use telecommuting as primarily a way to drive down the prices.

