They didn't fire many people quickly, but it had a deeply chilling effect when someone was only at the company for a month or two before disappearing.
One of the unspoken difficulties of firing fast is that the person does a lot of relationship building with people who don't work with their output. It was often the case that someone would become well-liked by people who never saw their code, who would then become distraught when the likable person vanished one day.
The surprise was for the people around them, not the person being fired.
> Totally unrelated people should reserve judgment.
In the real world, they don't.
If so, a question is why they aren't bothered by that. Is the culture then cold-hearted? Mercenary? Sociopathic? Oblivious?
The real challenge was when recent hires would see it and get spooked. One person would get fired and then two people around them would panic and start looking for other jobs. Several people panicked and jumped right back into their previous jobs.
It was also tough when we'd hire someone and they'd discover their predecessor lasted for 2-3 months.
There were also problems with the hire fast part: Often teams would "hire fast" and then lose 3-4 months because they had to deal with someone who lied through the interview, had to be fired, and then another hiring cycle restarted.
What kind of sense of working as a team, and loyalty to the team, developed there? (Among the people who lasted, and how they related to new hires.)
Do you think the hire&fire practices influenced that?
That sounds like a vicious cycle: when people are stressed out, they are less likely to be able to learn successfully, setting them up to under-perform, get fired and then further stress out everyone else around them.
Cortisol has never improved a line of code.
Doing an explicit probationary period could at least reassure people who have been there longer, but it seems like it would be hard to regain trust at that point. The company should probably be praying its employees are unionizing behind the scenes & can save them from the mess they are making.
So I think what I’m suggesting does have precedence and from my research there’s not that big of an opposition to it.
Not sure about everyone else, but to me it's often obvious who wasn't going to make the cut within the first 1-2 months of their employment.
But if they think they need someone who has a secret desire to man a ship or be a touring musician – cool. A good fit isn't a good fit.
Of course. If a company wants to be quirky, that is their choice to make.
> I would probably be one of those people-/absent compelling reasons.
Agreed. A job isn't usually all that compelling – there are jobs everywhere – but for the right business deal you can look past certain things.
There are very few companies I'd fly out for TBH.
IMO Make firing easier, pay people a massive severance if you're firing them for a mistake you made in hiring, and initially start them out as remote so you're not forcing a lifestyle change for them if you realize you made a mistake.