Commandos are people who love challenges and hate structure. They'll happily take on missions that other people think are crazy or impossible, because doing things other people think are crazy or impossible is what turns them on. They get you your critical early beachhead by swimming in at midnight with a knife in their teeth and slitting throats till morning.

Infantry are what most people are. Most people are not Rambo; crazy suicide missions don't turn them on. But at this point you have your foothold on the beach, so suicide missions are few; what you need now is lots of people to take that foothold and widen it into a big enough space to sustain yourself on indefinitely. This work is kind of a grind, so it doesn't appeal to the commandos, who start falling away looking for a new beach to storm. But it's critical for turning the company from a proof-of-concept into a real, going concern.

Eventually the fight for the beach ends, and the battle moves inland. But you still need to have some people there to maintain order, which is where the police come in. Police are even more risk-averse than infantry; they're caretakers who see their job less as expanding the market the commandos and infantry have won then as making sure it doesn't fall apart. Commandos and infantry fight to win; police fight to not lose.

All of these personality types are important at varying stages in a company's life, he writes, but the big challenge is making sure you have the right ones at the right stages, and that you manage the transitions between those stages well. A mostly-commandos startup that takes off but tries to still keep itself mostly commandos will choke on its own success. A larger company that still has growth opportunities but phases out its infantry in favor of police too early will miss those opportunities and get ground down by more aggressive competitors. A company that's grown as much as it can grow but resists bringing on police will run itself down launching futile new products that the market isn't asking for. Etc.

He also posits that as organisations evolve from left to right, they still need teams in the previous states for the business to work effectively. Sometimes these are outsourced, sometimes they're not done at all.

If companies outgrow anyone it's executive leadership that for whatever reason can no longer motivate and inspire their workforce.

I've been in this situation before. I couldn't take direction from anyone who thought they knew what we did better than me, since I had been there from day one and saw the thing through. Also there's resentment that they're jumping on late and riding coat tails when you've already done the hard yards.

I don't think executive leadership is actually about motivating staff per-se and more about building little fortresses to further their career ends.

But it's not just that it's specializing, it's that there's more accountability. If you're supposed to be adding function X to module Y, that's much different than "fight the hottest fire".

Sometimes people get fired because they insist on acting the way that things that started. From their viewpoint it's even reasonable: they haven't change, the position has.

Sometimes people recognize the situation and quit.

Being employee number 40 is quite a bit different than 400 or 40,000. Or number 4. Some people are able to negotiate the changes. Some bosses or CEOs can. A lot can't.

Startups on the other hand tend to think profitability and scale as some sort of fairy land they might get to after all their problems are solved, but right now they need X.

In other words, if you swap out "company" for "product", then you can use this as a lifecycle without ever actually losing the employee.

If you have a culture where everyone thinks they're either commandos, infantry, or police, it's possible you're going to have some customer relationship issues.

Who's the enemy in this model? If people don't fit, do they become traitors?

Language and metaphor matter, and IMO this is a dangerous and rather dumb metaphor.

I can understand why it's going to be popular with certain kinds of business people, especially the kind who like simple stories that make them feel more important than they really are.

But over time I think it's as likely to cause as many problems as it solves.

Some sibling comment mentioned "settlers" as a metaphor, which I can get behind.

But for sure, Its important to recognize that this is what the growth pattern looks like, and does highlight that needs and roles change; if you can't or won't, you gotta go - not because you're a horrible commando, but because they only need infantry now.

    Stay hungry, stay foolish

    Only the paranoid survive.

What terrifies me about being fired is:

* I have a family to support, and even though we're well off enough to have a 6-12 month cushion, I've seen job markets where it takes longer than that you get hired

* The number of unprofessional or biased hiring managers is vastly greater than the number of professional ones (I was disqualified for a sysadmin position based on a background check showing a city ordinance violation from tenants I had who left garbage on the front lawn when I attempted to be a landlord in my early 20s in a small Illinois farming community)

* Just like in personal romantic relationships, you can do everything right and still get fired

I'm fine with that, but make sure that I know it's likely coming well in advance. Make sure I understand that I'm not pulling my weight. Make sure I understand that the company is moving in a different direction and you'd rather part ways with me than let me retool. It's all good, just don't drop a bomb on me one day.

What's missing from the equation is what it does to others. Sure one person got fired, bam! easy peasy.

Well not so easy because everyone else in the company witnessed that. It becomes a message to everyone else. "As soon you hit the first bump, or maybe you are sick, or have a family emergency we'll throw you under a bus". Everyone pays attention to that message.

Actions speak louder than words is a cliche, but it is true. Especially because management is used to talk in superlatives and in market-speak. "We are doing great! We are a people's company. We value our employees. We are a meritocracy. We are here to help you grow, blah, blah,...", but then they fire Steve because his code hit a segfault in production twice that week.

Which message will people listen to?

> Erik Wolpaw, a writer at Valve fell ill (diagnosed with ulcerative colitis) in 2004. He knew he couldn’t fulfil his duties at work and made the choice to leave Valve. Erik tried to quit, Gabe refused to accept his resignation and said “Your job is to get better. That is your job description at Valve. So go home to your wife and come back when you are better.” On leaving Erik turned to fellow Valver Chet and said “Well, I guess we know where we’re working for the rest of our lives.”

So she did, and they did.

Guess how committed she is to working there now.

If you work at a company where you believe this is the case, you should leave so you are leaving on your terms and on your timeline.

The way I think of it is this. On the day you are fired, when you get called in a room, if I ask you, "why do you think you're here?", you'd reply: "I think I'm getting fired". Because I want us to have had so many conversations about it, and been so direct, that the actual firing is incredibly unsurprising.

I think any manager owes this to their employees, as a matter of basic human decency.

Personally I'd prefer a place where I could do X and X+1 so it'd be a bit of a negative in choosing where to go, but I can live with it. OTOH I'd be extremely pissed if I walked in one day and was told "we think you're awesome, but you don't konw X+1 so see ya later"

But they think they can because they got VC money and they are high on their own fumes.

Fire fast if someone is clearly not a right fit, but "Fast" should be after giving them plenty of warning.

Ideally both sides are on the same page at any point of time as to what the situation is.

I'd like to think (and try to only work for) people would be professional enough on both sides to realize that not everyone (either side) is going to be happy 100% of the time but a) both sides can work on it to make it better and b) if it doesn't work out, try to be supportive of each other so that both come out stronger overall.

But some companies aren't great at feedback, particularly young ones where the mechanisms for regular, structured feedback aren't really in place yet.

That said, I was laid off once at a company that was not doing well and had to make cuts across the board. They were very sad to have to let me go, but did one of the classiest things I've seen a company do in my entire career...as part of my 2 weeks severance, they let me continue telling companies I was currently employed there still. I had three competitive offers in a week, and I feel I was in a much stronger position because of how they handled that.

1. This person is having to fire a lot of people, something is up that needs to be investigated.

2. People are surprised, this person may not be the best manager.

The specific details are everything in this case, so it really depends. It can definitely come back and screw the manager though if it is indeed their own fault. Often times it may not be theirs alone though.

Beyond that it creates a morale problem. People who work together form social attachments and get upset when a coworker disappears. People who are in no actual danger of being fired will assume they're next. People who make mistakes or miss deadlines will start looking for new jobs because job-hunting is easier when you have a job. And good people will start to leave because it's just not a fun place to work with the black cloud hanging over the office.

That is not to say you should never fire someone. Sometimes it's unavoidable. But it's not something you should do lightly.

I guess I meant "the one thing that bothers me from the perspective of someone who might be fired at any moment" :) - I could survive in a fire fast iff they were open about everything, although I probably wouldn't choose to work there in the first place, if that makes sense.

The amount of months's notice you get changes with your age and years of employement as well. Sometimes you have to sack entire departments just to defeat the LIFO policy.

Now I think Sweden's laws can be a bit too strict, companies are deathly afraid to hire the wrong people (after the six month trial period) since they can't get rid of them, and companies should be able to get rid of underperformers, but living in a country where your boss can go Donald Trump on your ass on a whim isn't exactly ideal either...

If you're leaving a company, you might not have told the manager that you were interviewing around, but you certainly should have talked to them about being unhappy.

If you're firing an employee, they should have known (almost as long as you've known) that there was some culture mismatch, or that their performance wasn't meeting expectations, or whatever.

There are of course always exceptions, where you think someone is crazy or an asshole, but most people are reasonable and can handle hearing that things aren't great.

>> there was some culture mismatch, or that their performance wasn't meeting expectations

I had trouble reading this: culture, or performance. If their performance was good, but they didn't match the 'culture' then it is arbitrary in the greatest order. If 'culture; is important, as I agree it is but in qualifiable ways, so culture is qualifiable, and if an organization cannot put 'culture; into its performance expections, it is likely doomed or very very young, but likely doomed.

Zach was there for five years. Why are we talking about "fire fast"?

I am going to hug my country's employment law. "Fire fast" sounds inherently abusive towards employees.

And that's why much of the world has a social safety net.

These are well-paid white collar professionals, they should be saving up emergency funds.

I'm more worried about the safety net for low- and mid-income workers, as well as the fact that health insurance is tied to your employment.

And yes, people should have emergency funds... but when you were a few years out of college, did you have 3-6 months of salary saved up? I certainly didn't.

because as a taxpayer i have been covering mortgage of somebody unemployed. So i expect (due to social contract of safety net) that if i happen to be unemployed than some other taxpayer(s) will cover my mortgage.

ALG1 comes out of the mandatory unemployment insurance (that you and your employer have paid for every month) and they will pay you 60% of your previous take-home salary + health insurance for half of the timespan that you'd been employed. That comes out to 1500-2000€/m in your pocket and insurance taken care of, which is really not so bad (a lot of people working full time make less than that). Can be more if you made north of 50K a year. Unless you have a crazy mortgage, you can make things work for a while. Also, if you hadn't had a pretty solid job for years, you wouldn't have gotten a mortgage anyway.

After 24 months max and still no job you would fall back to ALGII though. That's is taxpayers' money and essentially rent for a cheap place, health insurance and 400 € in your pocket, which sucks. Plus you have to liquidate any assets you may have left (including life insurance) first and they will make you take a shitty job.

Anecdotal, but one of my older buddies was laid off. He's been earning north of $250k for over 30 years. He had savings, but assuming he didn't, his max withdrawal would be $698 a week, and only for 6 months, which is a max withdrawal of ~$18k, which is right around what he paid in to unemployment in a year. Ignoring that he'd been paying in ~$15k for years (or, I guess, half of that for awhile, as the pay-in percentage used to be lower), then he's not taking taxpayer dollars, he's taking his own money back. Or at least, a fraction of it, because the state made a lot more off of him than he made off of the state.

If he shouldn't be able to profit off of the state, then the state shouldn't be able to profit off of him.

Otherwise though, the compelling reason that unemployment should be enough to cover one's mortgage is because it is specifically designed to prevent homelessness, as the taxpayer cost of allowing him to go homeless because he had a few week lapse between employment and unemployment benefits is substantially higher than simply giving him more of his own money back.

That's not how "social safety nets" work. They tend towards being zero-sum in monetary terms, which means that some people will "win" (those worse off, hopefully) and some will "lose". The idea is that such devices help balance and stabilize society, which means we all actually win.

If the caps are so short and arbitrary, unless I'm missing something, the state is pocketing a ton. Perhaps that's okay, because it does definitely defend against the "everybody's out of work" scanario that we haven't really had in awhile, despite the recession. Or maybe it just means that there are more people who need it more than I'm envisioning, or that it disproportionately favors the lower incomes, or any other number of factors.

The point though, which I've perhaps done a poor job of illustrating, is that it still behooves the state to ensure that earners with high wage potential aren't made homeless as a result of those caps.

If the higher wage earners get less benefit from the system, then so be it, but that means that the system needs them more than they need it, and as a result, should probably not be bankrupting those with high income potential, just because "we shouldn't be debt servicing their assets".

FUTA is only paid on the first $7,000 of an employee's income. The state portion of unemployment insurance is generally similarly capped, just like FICA (Social Security/Medicare) tax.

So your point is invalid.

It's to ensure basic needs are met.

If you want to remain wealthy, you should probably not count on unemployment to play a role in that.

This is to ensure that people don't have to sell or move immediately after being fired. Which makes sense.

If someone wants to make the commitments of mortgages or dependents, then that's on them and they still need to have that 3-6 month emergency fund, except the amount will be higher because of the added responsibilities.

Absolutely. This was my first priority. This is personal finance 101 (though I'd replace 'salary' with 'expenses'). I realize not everybody is able to do it, but for many in this forum it would be an issue of prioritization.

Actually, I did and it was a top-priority for me.

We have employment insurance, which is also mandatory (mostly) to pay into, but it only pays about 1700/month and payments only last 15 weeks (after a 3 week waiting period). Yes, it's nice to have some money coming in, but it's nowhere near enough for more than a month or two.

And lastly Welfare only pays about $650/Month not even enough for rent anywhere Metro Vancouver or the Fraser Valley.

I live in the U.S. and recently enrolled my family of two in the cheapest healthcare plan available (high deductible, no dental, no vision) through the Freelancers Union - which I'm required to do as part of the Affordable Healthcare Act - and it's going to cost me USD $814 per month ... for the next 35 years. In today's dollars, that's nearly $350K and doesn't cover any of the out-of-pocket costs that we'll incur should we decide to actually use the damn plan.

I don't know what the BC plan is like, but in Manitoba if I didn't have any coverage through my employer I'd be paying for almost everything except visiting a doctor or ER. And you're still stuck in a line to see specialists. It's not unheard of to schedule an appointment with a specialist a year out.

People with true emergent cases are seen quickly. You may not, but it's probably because it's not an emergency.

Note, this does not include anything beyond medical, ie not ambulances, not vision, no private rooms, no dental, no physio and not prescriptions and in BC does NOT cover things like IVF (Ontario does cover up to 3 attempts).

Those are all extra (to the tune of 200-300/month for a family - usually paid by your employer - there are plans for solo/self employed http://www.coverme.com/ for instance).

EI coverage last significantly longer than 15 weeks if you've been working full time in the last year. It depends on the regional unemployment rate - for BC its probably around 36 weeks: http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/ei/types/regular.shtml#lo... .

I won't repost the list, but you can find the definition and the most common list on their website here:

http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/ei/information/misconduct...

Do you have anything to say that might help people who happen to agree with you but are powerless to change it, and in need of income? Because while it really feels good to find things that confirm that your opinions are correct, being correct doesn't put food on the table and it doesn't help unemployed people find a job.

All I had to do was publicize the fact that the so-called CEO was selling weed on a NASA installation as a side business, which is an extremely stupid thing to do and an even stupider thing to tell your so-called subordinate about (Dude, if I am older than you, bigger than you, developed the tech, and put more money into the business than you - I am not your subordinate. I am your equal, and even that because I am magnanimous).

> (Dude, if I am older than you, bigger than you, developed the tech, and put more money into the business than you - I am not your subordinate. I am your equal, and even that because I am magnanimous).

And so humble!

And yes, if someone just sort of declares themselves CEO in interviews just because they have a famous relative and have an easier time getting invited to talks, me insisting that we are equal partner is humble. This person contributed little else to the business.

I don't have a problem with marijuana (don't want any, but it should be legal), I have a problem with people who steal credit for my work.

I am well on track to pay the mortage in 4 years instead of the standard 20, have probably 6 months of expenses in the bank, plus another 2-3 months of expenses in a different account because the wife has begin to have funny ideas about what to do with the extra cash. (I have already threaten that I will rather quit before she goes and blows up the war chest in some stupid vacation or something, but still so much for constant vigilance). While I am nowhere near as ready to be let go as of today, I know I will be landing on my two feet if that were to happen.

I am Mexican, living and working in Mexico. Interest rates for a house are in the ballpark of 10%. This can be either very bad (on a 30 year mortage, you end up paying back about 3 times as much as you originally borrowed), or very good (early payments go straight to capital and have a disproportionate effect on the total amount paid, specially during the first few years). We also have a government mandatory housing fund, paid by your employer, at 5% of your salary (meaning everybody's salary is 5% less than what otherwise would be, but still).

So, we did the rational thing. We rented while we were young and our careers were taking off, we tried to avoid lifestyle inflation when we got raises, and when we finally bought a house we threw every spare cash we could afford until the monthly interest came out of our employers fully. That happened last December (after sinking Christmas bonuses into the mortage).

So, while it requires discipline, it's not that impressive. In this country, paying your mortage using the plan designed by the bank is the same as making minium payments to your credit card. You just keep paying interests without making much of a dent on the capital.

(How is he able to do that? By working like a maniac, I guess.)

On a $100k 20 year loan at at 5.7% (I know, example), interest paid would be around $67k (so total $167k). By paying 3.28 times more per month ($2300 per month versus the $700 normal rate), the interest paid ends up being only around $12k.

I have a mortgage through Tangerine (formerly ING) and can pay down 25% of the original amount during any calendar year - assuming I have the cash, and feel that avoiding that interest is better than the return I could otherwise get investing the cash.

Right now I am counting on her being smarter than I am.

No, they're not. In the Western world, this is mostly an American thing. In most Western countries, there's a major responsibility for the employer to prove there is no other way before getting permission to fire someone.

Now there are all kinds of downsides to that, and it's far from ideal especially for start-ups, but I do like the way it doesn't tolerate the immature, irresponsible and downright immoral behavior towards employees that's regularly on display here on HN and considered "normal".

The cop-out of "this isn't working out, you're fired" borders on infantile behavior on the level of "I don't wanna play with you anymore". Firing people can have a devastating impact on the lives of the people it happens to.

Firing people should not be that easy, and in most civilized countries it isn't.

We have a very individualistic culture in America. It has its positives and negatives. But most of the people here (software developers in America) have greatly benefited from that culture - we have a tremendous amount of opportunity in a field we enjoy and do very well financially. So we have no reason to complain. Even when we are fired most of us will find another job quickly that is still several times the median Western wage.

I would say the results speak volumes as well. We are the center of the startup world and our big tech companies disproportionately dominate world markets.

But there's one thing that I imagine has to be universal, which makes me wonder how much industry experience you've had. I think almost all of us have had the experience of working with someone who is a drag on their team. A bad developer does not result in 0 productivity, but huge productivity losses for the team. Sometimes people do just not work out, although maybe in Europe instead of firing them you rubber room them.

You're making a logical leap that this is because of firing people.

Other small factors might include, for example, billions of dollars of U.S. government funding in high tech research, sustained over many decades, the fruits of which are directly transferred to Silicon Valley companies to bring to market.

Incidentally, lots of that core research happens in the academic sector where the tenure system is common. Which makes firing really hard.

I also disagree with your assessment of our academic sector, which at the institutions that are leaders in research, is as cutthroat and competitive as anywhere in industry... actually, much more so.

You make it seem like tenure is the same thing as European employment protections, which couldn't be further from reality. At the research universities you are talking about, it is very hard to get hired, easy to get fired, and once there, tenure is only granted after years of high stress, intense work, and proven success.

Some govt research is directly given to a particular valley company and no one else, but quite a lot of it is published and free for anyone in the world to use.

As for the tenure system, firing is hard and as a result getting hired is also extremely hard.

The claim wasn't that SV tech is successful because hiring is easy. The tenure system shows that easy firing isn't essential to successful tech innovation.

Startups are the Wild West when it comes to employment. Their nature means that many of the people running the show have never actually hired and managed employees before, and they have no good role models for doing so. Sometimes it works out well, and sometimes it works out atrociously.

Which is exactly why there are very few successful tech startups outside of the US.

> But I do like the way it doesn't tolerate the immature, irresponsible and downright immoral behavior towards employees that's regularly on display here on HN and considered "normal".

Don't cry for SV programmers making $130k+ who get fired, they will get a new job within a week. Fire fast also means hire fast (at least while the VC money keeps flowing).

Possible that this attitude (along with many other factors) contributes to the far less developed startup cultures of many Western European countries.

The way the usual contract in IT (CDI) works is: you can have a 4-month trial period, which you can renew once. Then the employer cannot fire you without "serious cause" (and "bad performance" does not qualify).

Some side-effects of that are:

- Employers are afraid to hire, leading to long-term unemployment.

- IT is dominated by huge consultancies (because companies prefer to contract out than hire).

- As an employee, it is almost impossible to rent a flat in Paris during a trial period (because we also have laws that make it impossible to expell people who don't pay their rent).

- Acquisitions are complicated because the acquirer needs to keep the whole team. An exception is companies that go broke (in which case they can fire part of the team and then be acquired).

I understand why we have those laws, they are useful to protect some categories of people. But for higher revenue professions, we would be better off with a contract that is more flexible. More and more people are trying to work around this by creating single-person companies instead of being employed directly, but it is a mess (and the state is doing all it can to make it illegal...).

It's basically a court case to fire someone, which makes it very easy for employees that should be fired to keep their jobs.

"The cop-out of "this isn't working out, you're fired" borders on infantile behavior on the level of "I don't wanna play with you anymore". Firing people can have a devastating impact on the lives of the people it happens to."

Sometimes it isn't working out and that person needs to be let go.

"Firing people should not be that easy, and in most civilized countries it isn't."

There is a reason why the US has the most innovation as well as the best place to start a new company and one of the reasons is because it doesn't require a court case to let someone (that isn't working out) go.

These kind of regulations prevent smaller companies from even starting and will create an environment with mostly large companies. It will eventually kill the startup scene that HN loves so much.

I've been laid off a couple times when the company I was working for shifted directions and my skill set no longer met their needs; with smaller/younger companies (especially in our industry) it's to be expected from time to time. To me, though, being fired is what happens when an employee fails to perform their job satisfactorily.

This, in turn, creates a perverse incentive for employers to fabricate a cause, or even to provoke the employee. Fortunately not at my present employer, but I have seen this happen and have also seen managers brag about it.

This this and this. I'm one of those people (didn't work at OpenDNS, but have had similar experiences). The problem is that there's no way to get yourself an exit that gives you a fair amount of money if your brain makes you great for starting a company but mediocre for continuing it.

That doesn't reflect well on you.

Your company should always be innovating-- and the people who got you there should be rewarded, not fired for it.

I don't get this. Are you saying part of the reason you fired them was because you weren't a capable manager, and didn't identify ways to keep a valuable asset as the company changed during growth? And you think these folks would consider working for you again, after you fired them when the company "went another direction," as those conversations always go? I've never worked for you and this comment would give me pause.

I can't imagine what this entails. "Thanks for all your work getting us to where we are. The company has gotten a bit bigger, so some of your habits don't fit in your role any more and it's time to let you go." Can you elaborate? Because honestly, that doesn't sound good without further context. I don't believe in union-style loyalty where the first five years entitles someone to the next thirty, but I do believe someone who helped shape the company and generated a lot of value for you deserves more than "well, we've changed, and you don't fit any more."

It's par for the course that you can write introspection like this and reflect on your shortcomings as a manager, after culling those with similar shortcomings who have now been asked to leave the company they helped build from early days. Meanwhile, your company is wildly successful and you continue to be rewarded despite your shortcomings while someone else has to start over somewhere else. Where's the accountability for your management?

And yes, I am saying I was not a capable manager. Not that I have nothing left to learn, but I think I am more or less at the point of being able to diplomatically handle and resolve 99% of the issues that come up in a way where all parties feel like they are being considered thoughtfully and treated fairly. I have a good mentor network and corporate counsel who help me with the remaining 1% since rarely does a situation come up that they haven't encountered before.

Thanks for your answer, at any rate, though I'm left with more questions than I had when we started.

What I meant is that I have a really good lawyer who has seen a ton of situations before, and usually when something is new and unique to me, it's not new to him or his partners, and I can lean on their decades of experience to help me navigate what represents a new situation for me. It's not about CYA, or "lawyering up" (quite the opposite). It's about having them tell me how they've handled things in the past. Just like a mentor. Good corporate counsel is all about conflict resolution and avoidance. :-)

Mature professionals understand this and if you're fired simply because you are very competent, but don't work well with the new business behavior, it's not surprising that the person who fired you would hire you for a different role. It is just not always possible to find a good role for someone in a particular business.

I'm sure it's rare, but I can certainly understand how it can happen.

I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, the legal distinction is whether you're terminated "with cause." That's what most people refer to as "fired." The implication is that you can't collect unemployment or severance. At a professionally managed company, termination "with cause" will be the culmination of a "progressive discipline" process unless you do something so egregious that they must walk you straight out the door.

In common parlance, "laid off" means that you are not given "cause," and are eligible for those benefits.

Under some conditions, a company that is planning to lay off more than a certain number of people must announce it in advance. This is a "mass layoff." Also, a laid off person is potentially eligible for re-hiring, and the details are often written into union contracts.

I suspect due to the legal implications of mass layoffs, companies will use some other term such as "reduction of force" for routine business-downturn layoffs.

Naturally, if a company needs to reduce its workforce, they will sack the weakest employees, but it will typically be done without "cause" in order to avoid a potential lawsuit for false termination, and because letting people have their unemployment benefit is the decent thing to do.

http://www.businessinsider.com/microsofts-employee-review-sy...

Laid off. Done en masse. I could do this for every company and it is exactly the same. No, they don't say "your performance sucks! You're fired!" In fact that would be a legal quagmire because "cause" is somewhat capricious when the reasoning is "doesn't fall in the top 90%". Which is why they settle with nice departure agreements.

Are there some people around here who were laid off and are trying to feel good about it? The reality of lay offs in most situations is that someone intentionally put you in a situation where you would be laid off. It wasn't just accident.

The reality is, companies don't hire for fun, they have a plan, and they need people to execute that plan. If the plan fails, then the people get laid off, but it is the management that failed by hiring people they didn't actually need. Or it is unpredictable market conditions. A lot of people did everything right but still lost their jobs when the NASDAQ crashed, for example. People who did everything right are losing their jobs right now because of the oil price crash. That is part of growing up, to understand that you can do everything right, you can go above and beyond the call of duty, you can even be brilliant - and still lose.

Firstly, to repeat, in most cases in this industry it is performance based. Arbitrary or oddball examples are irrelevant.

When you are laid off, even if it was because the project you were on got axed, take a look around -- did you notice the superstars on the team all got pulled to other parts of the company? Strange, isn't it? Did you notice, in fact, that as things started to look ugly that dregs got transferred to the project?

That's the reality of layoffs. That's how performance based layoffs work. I mean, you're arguing with me despite every single tech example absolutely confirming what I'm saying. People who are valuable to a company will be placed internally, and those who aren't will be jettisoned like unnecessary cargo.

You're trying desperately hard to try to load the word fired and laid off, but the majority of people who are laid off (in this industry) were evaluated and considered not worth keeping.

But talk about steel workers or something.

Nope. Because you are just talking complete nonsense. It just doesn't work like that.

I'll tell you a story, I was laid off about a decade ago, along with about 6000 others. The CEO had decided that offshoring was clearly the future of software development. Only it wasn't, many of my cow-orkers got called back as consultants, for way more money, because that company found itself completely unable to ship any working software with its "CMM level 5" offshore operation. Not me tho', because I can't remember if it took me 1 week or 2 to find a new job and start it, with a nice bump in salary too. I'm neither a "superstar" nor a "dreg". No-one got pulled into other parts of the company in this process as you imagine happens, because those parts of the company didn't exist anymore either.

Another good example is SGI, superstars or dregs (I can guess which one you think you are), they all lost their jobs when the CEO bet the farm on Itanium. Google occupies their campus now. One day, they'll lay people off too. Did their fabled interview process suddenly start letting "dregs" in?

That's the reality of layoffs, they can happen to anyone, and they are decided far, far above the level that anyone knows or cares if you are a "superstar" or a "dreg". When it happens to you - and in a 40-50 year career it is a matter of when not if - try to remember my words and not feel all, ermm, dreggy about it. In the meantime, try to curtail your arrogance a little.

However, it is import to realize that just being excellent at your job will not protect you from being laid off. Just because you want to believe that it will, doesn't make it true.

It's actually a little ironic that this conversation is happening because you're trying to load the term "fired". Fired never meant "because you stole" or "because you sabotaged the PCs". It just means you had your employment terminated, often if not usually for banal reasons of lack of fit or suitability. Life goes on.