
Firing Employee #1 - kentonwhite
http://battlehardened.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/firing-employee-1/
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joezydeco
_"It was still the same great work he had always done. Just now more people
depended on what he produced. Tom was often fuzzy on his time estimates. If
Tom would say a job would take one week, what he meant was it could be done in
one week if everything went well."_

If I could play that old record-scratch noise here, I would. Let's pause the
tape for a moment and ask a question: What do you mean by _if everything went
well_?

I'm a Tom. I've been with a startup for two years now. At first I was knocking
it out of the park. Made my deadlines and even had time to work on some new
things. Everyone was happy, especially the customers.

Move ahead a year. The customer base has grown, but the staff hasn't. I'm
juggling 12 projects now instead of 3. By the time I get some flow going I'm
interrupted for three other fires. Oh, and we need a marketing demo put
together in an hour so our sales guy can make his flight.

So now _my_ work is suffering. And I know the CEO is looking at me like he
can't depend on me like before. I pad my time estimates by twice what I did
before. Deja vu.

The only difference is that I'll be out of here before _my_ CEO has a chance
to figure all of this out. Did I mention I'm the only programmer in the firm,
and I don't plan on giving two weeks notice? More like two hours.

I don't blame your Tom for stretching out his time estimates. I don't blame
him for not showing up for your project management coaching. Everything you've
written reads like a Rands article without a happy conclusion or useful
advice. You're just fortunate that you had enough staff and momentum to keep
things moving after you fired Tom.

(Am I projecting just a little here? _Hell yes._ )

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snowpolar
Actually it sounds more to me that he should be the one resigning instead of
firing "Tom". But well perhaps as the owner of a company he can't really fire
himself, so someone have to be the scrape goat which is Tom.

However, it is good that he understand that he is partly to blame too, as some
startup founders I seen rather shift all the blame to someone and fire him and
think of many reasons why it's not their fault at all.

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lukev
Kudos in your honesty in admitting some fault... but, why on earth, especially
given your humility about the whole thing, did you fire him in the middle of
the day and make him do a "walk of shame?" A senior employee who has done good
work in the past deserves a little more respect than that.

Not saying he didn't ned to be let go, but there's various degrees of letting
someone go and the "clean out your desk now" approach is by far the most
brutal and punitive.

That's what you do to someone caught embezzling money, not a solid individual
who just proved not to be a good match for the team.

~~~
kentonwhite
You are absolutely right. I'm not going to defend what I did, but the question
deserves an answer. I was caught up in my own emotions. Tom not showing up for
the meeting felt like personal attack against me. That he was flaunting my
"authority", shoving it in my face that he didn't need to do what I asked.

With a bit more maturity and hindsight I know that I should have waited until
those feelings had passed before doing anything. That's another lesson learned
-- never act when in the grip of your own emotions.

~~~
adrianparsons
What would have been the correct approach for Tom? Admit early on that
something wasn't working? Alert you that there was workflow problem?

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moocow01
I've been in similar scenarios (as Tom) and it usually boils down to
inspiration. As soon as someone gets overloaded and piled on its very
difficult for them to feel inspired or at all good about their work. Instead
they feel trapped under an increasing workload and consequently feel
unappreciated by the organization. You can't feel good about your efforts when
your head is always barely above water. From there its a downward spiral.

I've always quit after giving management a warning in the past when this
occurs because I feel it borders on exploitation and usually signals something
wrong with management and the business as a whole. The real problem is Tom
should have quit much much earlier to find a healthier environment.

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coffee
Kudos to the author for being so honest and writing such a post. Obviously
he'll be successful at avoiding this in the future if he's taking such a
personal look at the situation.

That said, I can't help but think about one of the most common statements I'm
hearing out in the industry these days:

"We can't find any good developers."

Is it really that there are no good developers? Or is it that there is an over
abundance of people without the skill, knowledge and experience trying to lead
a company of developers?

I believe this is a good illustration of that point (not trying to slight the
original author in any way).

