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.
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