Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

Whatever it takes to lead a team, build a product, and run a business

Tag: firing people

  • The Worst Management Task Ever

    If you asked me to point a single thing, which I hate most in senior management role, I wouldn’t have any problems with the answer. It would be firing people. On my personal hate scale there’s firing, then huge, huge void and only then other unpleasant things and tasks to do.

    Each time I fire someone I feel like a complete jerk. It doesn’t matter that the decision is well-grounded. It doesn’t even matter when I’m proven, after some time, it was the right choice. It isn’t any easier.

    And the next time you do it doesn’t become any easier either. I mean if executing such decisions is easy for you and you feel comfortable firing people there must be something seriously wrong with you.

    Yet I still think firing people is extremely important part of pretty much any management job. If you’re a senior manager you likely have power and authority to make such decisions. If you’re a team manager dealing just with your team of six or something and you don’t have that much of power, you still can convince your superior to make a tough move. Sometimes the latter is even worse as you have to do all the talking as it is you, who started the whole thing.

    OK, why is it so important then? Because this is one of methods of building great teams. As harsh as it sounds: sometimes you don’t have enough resources (meaning: time, patience, money) to make a person act on acceptable level and the best thing you can do is to split your ways.

    Don’t get me wrong, my advice still is: do everything you reasonably can to fix an underperformer. I know way too many people who started shining when given a second chance to say otherwise. But then remember that it’s a manager who is responsible for building the high-quality team, so if you just accept the underperformer in the team you basically harm the team on many different levels.

    What more, sometimes we’re out of luck and we don’t have all the time and money of the world to try virtually every possible thing one could think of. Sometimes our fixing options would be limited. Sometimes constant resistance of the underperformer will make us lose faith faster. Shit happens. We don’t live in ideal world. And then it’s time…

    Well, for many managers I know then it’s time just to accept the fact someone is underperforming. And you know what? I understand them. I understand them because firing people is so damn hard and so freaking unpleasant that I can think of thousands of reasons why I shouldn’t do that. At all. So yes, I can perfectly understand them.

    But I don’t agree with them. We are paid to do our jobs even when the jobs suck on occasions. When we make our developers write boring documentation which just has to be done it works similarly. The only difference is in level of responsibility. But we still expect our developers would deal with crappy tasks, don’t we?

    Having balls to fire people isn’t something which makes a manager. In fact, with a bit of luck we won’t need to fire anyone for years and will be able play the role of guru manager neatly. However, when time comes you better be ready to deal with the worst management task ever. Otherwise your whole team will be constantly taking big hits on morale and you no longer will be considered a rock star manager.

    If you’ve just lived through such situation for the first time I have two messages for you. First, it’s one of the most valuable experiences as a manager you can possibly have so good for you. Second, yes, I know how crappy you feel now and it’s not going to become easier next time you do this, sorry.

  • A Company Which Didn’t Know How to Fire People

    There was a company, which was doing reasonably well. When times were good they were growing stronger. Some people were leaving, as it always happen, but more were coming on board. Since things were rolling fast no one really had time to stop and verify whether all new faces are doing fine.

    Some time passed. Newbies were no longer newbies – they were semi-experienced people or at least their seniority would indicate that. Reality was a bit different. Some new people appeared to be great hires but other were, well, pretty mediocre.

    Then stagnation period came. There were reasonable amount of work but not as much as it used to be yet somehow everyone looked still pretty busy. Incoming stream of new people were limited and the company mostly stuck with these who already were on board. World crisis increased employee retention.

    Then people started telling stories. A story about the guy who was sleeping at his desk during one third of his office hours. A story about lad who was in the office barely 6 hours a day even though he was paid for 8-hour workday. A story about lass who was spending all days long browsing the web. A story about colleague from another office who claims she’s completely overworked yet she was doing about one tenth of what other people did on similar positions. Morale nose-dived. Productivity started dropping. On a side note – no, these examples weren’t made up.

    Where’s the problem?

    The first symptom was not doing much with poor-performers. OK, they were trying to fix their approach but when coaching and setting rules didn’t work there was no another steps. Underperformers soon learned they didn’t have to change.

    A real problem was: the company wasn’t able to fire people.

    They stuck with every single employee no matter how they sucked. And yes, I know they should try coaching, training, finding new role first. To some point they did. But face it: it isn’t possible to have only perfect teams and only perfect employees. It just doesn’t work that way. Even companies which have very strict recruitment process find black sheep in their teams from time to time. And vast majority of companies aren’t very demanding when it comes to recruitment. Especially when time is good and they need all hands on deck and would take almost anyone who can help at least a bit.

    I understand lack of will to fire people. Firing people sucks. But it’s a part of manager’s job and from time to time it just has to be done. Cost of rejecting to do this is way higher than just poor performance of a couple of people. It spreads like a sickness. Yet somehow I still hear about companies accepting underperformers for some reason.

    Update: Since the post received pretty much buzz in my company a small disclaimer: this is true story but not about my current company, not even about any IT company. Yet still it’s about a firm I know pretty well. Anyway I used the example since the case is pretty general.