Ever had to take part in a lynching?

[sgeeeee]

Crying used to just piss me off, but I have mellowed since.

Let's see, my worst termination was...................OH, I remember!
An assistant accountant I hired about 1968 -69.  I interviewed him and
then ran him by my boss, The Controller.  We agreed he was the guy.
Once on board, the guy couldn't do anything.  It was as if he never
did any actual accounting in his life.   He was gone quick.

Another time I interviewed 3 guys for an important management
position.  I hired one, promptly fired him and hired my 2nd choice;
also a bust.  After about 3 months I tracked down the 3rd guy.
He was still interested so we hired him.  The guy turned out to be absolute dynamite.  Terrific.  I interviewed in an office next to my home
and when I told my wife how great he was, she said she had seen all
3 candidates arrive and he was her first choice.  Why?  "He had the
best looking ass!"   

JG

This story just makes it sound like you were incompetent as a hiring manager. If you had worked for me I would have demoted or fired you for this kind of costly debacle. . . seriously.

 

[sgeeeee]

As a manager and director the part of the job that made me most uncomfortable was when I had to tell people I was dissatisfied with their performance. I used to stall and fret about confronting people for days before I would finally meet them to let them know I was unhappy. I never had to confront someone I chose to hire with a performance problem. I would have considered that a personal failure. And I never had to confront a direct report more than once. I think most people want to please their boss. A very honest and frank discussion always solved the problem -- even if it were uncomfortable for me.

In the last full-time full-time position I held, my job was to commercialize the technology developed by another organization. In the process of trying to do this, I discovered that the technology was pure research fraud . . . there was nothing real to commercialize. As I dug into the details it became clear that the fraud had been supported by the CTO and 2 of his VPs. They and their research staff had been rewarded highly with raises, bonuses and promotions for their fraudulent claims.

Because I had signed a 2-year contract that wasn't complete, my only viable option was to expose the fraud. It was an ugly political battle. By the time I was finished, two VPs, the CTO and 40 researchers lost their jobs. (In fact, the CEO also eventually lost his job, and while I don't think my effort was completely responsible for his ouster, I do believe it contributed.) Thirty or so of the people who lost their jobs were probably innocents. I felt awful. The experience had a lot to do with my decision to retire.

But as I've re-thought my experience since then, I've grown increasingly comfortable with my actions. I didin't start the fraud. I didn't hire 40 people to support the fraud. I did my best to place all of the people who I saw as innocent victims. (I was able to place 16 in other companies or organizations). And I did save the company several $100M, chasing a product that would never exist. I also helped them purge several worthless executives from their ranks. Today I feel like I did a good job in a difficult position. It was unpleasant at the time, but any other options I can think of were probably worse.

 

[Mr._johngalt]

This story just makes it sound like you were incompetent as a hiring manager.  If you had worked for me I would have demoted or fired you for this kind of costly debacle. . . seriously.

Don't be silly. I hired hundreds of people. You couldn't expect them to all work out. Now, living with a hire who was not cutting it might have justified showing me the door. FYI, in my entire working career
(long time, going back to high school) I never lost any job due to
my performance at that job. When I had a boss (meaning I did not control everything myself) I reached officer level in 1973 at age
29 and stayed there until I quit for good in 1998. I listed a couple of failures. What................ you expected me to bat 1.000?

JG

 

[Mr._johngalt]

Ah, she has discovered the optimal path to early retirement.   Stay employed, but don't work.

That is a good deal. I came close a couple of times

JG

 

[Mr._johngalt]

vic, nwsteve-this lady works in the department I'm leaving (refer to "I got the job" thread).  I won't have much input in the future on her issues.  Totally agree, people should have a chance to flourish.  I definitely hear where you are coming from.  But I need to shed some light on the nature of task "x".  For example:  she needed to get a letter from a vendor with a name correction for our security records.  Not rocket science.  It involves a phone call.  But she feels because she sent one email six months ago that she has done all she can.  What could you possibly do except make the phone call for her?  I don't want anyone to think she is being set up to fail with tasks involving setting up distributed processing networks over an encrypted WAN through ten time zones or something....she just has no ability to prioritize, to see what's important, even when it is spelled out for her.

But you are right, the PIP is a legal ass covering for getting her fired.  No doubt.  At the same time she's spent two years in the position making over 70k and people can't point to one thing she has done.  She was hired in for this job specifically.  Sure she may not have gotten management support, or the proper training or whatever.  But she never asked for it either.  I understand the world takes all kinds, but this is no job for wall flowers, shrinking violets, etc. 

You'll have to forgive me, Coctail hour at Waikiki beach (looking at Diamondhead as I type this) and I guess I've become a little impatient with her.  I'm sure I'm suffering from a common personality flaw, where if a particular task comes easy to you, you have difficulty understanding why it isn't easy for others.

I have empathy and totally understand why terminating someone
(or even reprimanding them) is gut-wrenching for most people.
But, it comes with being in charge. I honestly believe that my
naturally confrontational personality helped me a lot. People above you
see that you are not afraid to make tough decisions. Everyone
can respect that, sometimes even the dumpee.

JG

 

[TargaDave]

This story just makes it sound like you were incompetent as a hiring manager. If you had worked for me I would have demoted or fired you for this kind of costly debacle. . . seriously.

As a manager and director the part of the job that made me most uncomfortable was when I had to tell people I was dissatisfied with their performance. I used to stall and fret about confronting people for days before I would finally meet them to let them know I was unhappy. I never had to confront someone I chose to hire with a performance problem. I would have considered that a personal failure. And I never had to confront a direct report more than once. I think most people want to please their boss. A very honest and frank discussion always solved the problem -- even if it were uncomfortable for me.

In the last full-time full-time position I held, my job was to commercialize the technology developed by another organization. In the process of trying to do this, I discovered that the technology was pure research fraud . . . there was nothing real to commercialize. As I dug into the details it became clear that the fraud had been supported by the CTO and 2 of his VPs. They and their research staff had been rewarded highly with raises, bonuses and promotions for their fraudulent claims.

Because I had signed a 2-year contract that wasn't complete, my only viable option was to expose the fraud. It was an ugly political battle. By the time I was finished, two VPs, the CTO and 40 researchers lost their jobs. (In fact, the CEO also eventually lost his job, and while I don't think my effort was completely responsible for his ouster, I do believe it contributed.) Thirty or so of the people who lost their jobs were probably innocents. I felt awful. The experience had a lot to do with my decision to retire.

But as I've re-thought my experience since then, I've grown increasingly comfortable with my actions. I didin't start the fraud. I didn't hire 40 people to support the fraud. I did my best to place all of the people who I saw as innocent victims. (I was able to place 16 in other companies or organizations). And I did save the company several $100M, chasing a product that would never exist. I also helped them purge several worthless executives from their ranks. Today I feel like I did a good job in a difficult position. It was unpleasant at the time, but any other options I can think of were probably worse.

Wow SG!!! You are simply perfect in a highly imperfect world, and quite modest I must add, . . .seriously.

JG, I agree, pretty silly.

BTW the most wildly successful people I have met (mostly business owner-founder types I have met through my VC's) readily admit, and even laugh about the many mistakes they have made over time.

 

[haha]

Wow  SG!!! You are simply perfect in a highly imperfect world, and quite modest I must add, . . .seriously.

And he is not alone. This board is full of perfect people. Some, like JG are perfectly constituted, even though very occasionally their results don't quite make it.

Ha

 

[sgeeeee]

Wow  SG!!! You are simply perfect in a highly imperfect world, and quite modest I must add, . . .seriously.

Well, thanks. I've never claimed to be perfect, but I never had a job where rapid hiring and firing of three people for one position would have been tolerated. Most companies understand that recruiting and starting a new employee is a costly event. And making a wrong decision also brings on potential legal issues. Hiring managers are expected to understand what is needed to get the job done and to effectively choose from amoung the available candidates.

BTW the most wildly successful people I have met (mostly business owner-founder types I have met through my VC's) readily admit, and even laugh about the many mistakes they have made over time.

Well . . . that's a strange statement. But I will tell you that this kind of performance and attitude would not have been encouraged or promoted in any company I ever worked in. These "wildly successful" people you talk about would have failed in the places I worked. Maybe I was lucky to get to work with more competent hiring managers than you and JG.

 

[Mr._johngalt]

And he is not alone. This board is full of perfect people. Some, like JG are perfectly constituted, even though very occasionally their results don't quite make it.

Ha

Yeah, I'm only human after all

JG

 

[TargaDave]

These "wildly successful" people you talk about would have failed in the places I worked. Maybe I was lucky to get to work with more competent hiring managers than you and JG.

These "wildly successful" mistake making people CREATED the large corporations where you, I and many others have worked at one time or another. They're called entreprenuers.

You're right about one thing, these founders-entreprenuers often don't fit in to well into their own companies in the milking mature stage where much of the original risk taking innovation is also long gone. Nothin new here, all pretty well documented in the business literature.

People who never venture away from the womb just don't get it.

 

[Mr._johngalt]

These "wildly successful" mistake making people CREATED the large corporations where you, I and many others have worked at one time or another.  They're called entreprenuers.

You're right about one thing, these founders-entreprenuers often don't fit in to well into their own companies in the milking mature stage where much of the original risk taking innovation is also long gone.  Nothin new here, all pretty well documented in the business literature.

People who never venture away from the womb just don't get it.

Damn straight!

JG

 

[sgeeeee]

Damn straight!

JG

Oh, I see. It is better to be clueless and inefficient when hiring. Plus the legal risk of rapid hiring and firing is a "good thing" (as Martha might say).

Your comments about entrepenuers are very interesting to me. I work 1/4 time for a start-up company now and surprisingly, these people are even more cautious about hiring decisions than the fortune 500 companies where I worked most of my career. They feel like they can't afford to make any hiring mistakes. In fact, the first company I ever worked for was a mid-sized (about 2000 people) company that was still run by the founders (who had started the company in a garage). The two founders still personnaly interviewed every engineer candidate and were very selective.

I don't doubt that you and JG have a different experience than I do related to hiring practices. But I do find it difficult to believe that any rational and truely successful business person would believe that quick, haphazard hiring and firing to fill a position is better than learning how to do it right the first time. Maybe that's just me.

 

[shiny]

I don't doubt that you and JG have a different experience than I do related to hiring practices. But I do find it difficult to believe that any rational and truely successful business person would believe that quick, haphazard hiring and firing to fill a position is better than learning how to do it right the first time. Maybe that's just me.

I agree, that is just a lawsuit waiting to happen.

 

[Nords]

Oh, I see.  It is better to be clueless and inefficient when hiring.

We might lose a little on 90% of our stocks before we sell them, but eventually we'll find those ten-baggers.

We might have to fire a lot of new employees, but eventually we'll hire the next Jack Welch!

We might lose a little on each transaction, but we sure make it up on volume...

Using Laurence's original post as an example (sorry if it drags us back on topic!), it would seem to be far cheaper to try to improve an employee that you've already hired than it would be to just go get a new one. (That's even been verified by the U.S. military.) Likewise it's far cheaper to spend a little effort, time, & money on the screening process than it would be to rapidly dispose of several candidates (using a flawed screening process) in the hope that blind luck will eventually stumble across an acorn.

When you add litigation to the potential costs, improving performance or hiring right the first time is even cheaper.

But let's look at our vocabulary. If you cautiously use conservative accepted practices in screening & hiring employees, then you're boring. If you rapidly, dynamically, emotionally, yet randomly "venture away from the womb", then you're an entrepreneur!

I wonder which of the two is likely to see ER as a more "successful" career option.

 

[Mr._johngalt]

We might lose a little on 90% of our stocks before we sell them, but eventually we'll find those ten-baggers.

We might have to fire a lot of new employees, but eventually we'll hire the next Jack Welch!

We might lose a little on each transaction, but we sure make it up on volume...

Using Laurence's original post as an example (sorry if it drags us back on topic!), it would seem to be far cheaper to try to improve an employee that you've already hired than it would be to just go get a new one.  (That's even been verified by the U.S. military.)  Likewise it's far cheaper to spend a little effort, time, & money on the screening process than it would be to rapidly dispose of several candidates (using a flawed screening process) in the hope that blind luck will eventually stumble across an acorn.

When you add litigation to the potential costs, improving performance or hiring right the first time is even cheaper.

But let's look at our vocabulary.  If you cautiously use conservative accepted practices in screening & hiring employees, then you're boring.  If you rapidly, dynamically, emotionally, yet randomly "venture away from the womb", then you're an entrepreneur!

I wonder which of the two is likely to see ER as a more "successful" career option.

I never had much luck in "rehabbing" nonperforming employees.
Losers continued to be losers and winners continued to be winners.

JG

 

[Nords]

I never had much luck in "rehabbing" nonperforming employees.
Losers continued to be losers and winners continued to be winners.
JG

If you had no effect on their performance, didn't that ever make you wonder why you were designated as their leader?

 

[retire@40]

If you had no effect on their performance, didn't that ever make you wonder why you were designated as their leader?

A good leader sometimes does influence others by understanding what makes that person tick and offering the right reward or the right punishment for an action.

However, some people get it and some people don't.  Some people will continue to be losers and some will continue to be winners, no matter how hard you try to rehab them.

It happens in school, at work, and in life in general.

The only time people go from "not getting it" to "getting it" is when THEY decide for themselves.

 

[wabmester]

My guess is that leadership in a military setting with a bunch of average 18-year-old kids has almost nothing in common with leadership in a company where you get to hand-pick demonstrably bright and talented folk. I was lucky in that all I had to do was grant lots of autonomy, enforce lots of accountability, and use a light hand to "direct." Executive leadership is a cake walk (and the compensation is completely out of wack with the challenge). You just hire well, focus on the big picture, and take credit for the efforts of your worker bees.

Anybody who has never had to fire a worker has probably never been involved in an acquisition or merger. In my experience, mergers of companies with radically different cultures virtually guarantee that many heads will roll. Integration has got to be the most difficult management task, and most managers aren't up to it. If you own stock in a company that's about to merge, sell!

 

[Mr._johngalt]

My guess is that leadership in a military setting with a bunch of average 18-year-old kids has almost nothing in common with leadership in a company where you get to hand-pick demonstrably bright and talented folk.   I was lucky in that all I had to do was grant lots of autonomy, enforce lots of accountability, and use a light hand to "direct."    Executive leadership is a cake walk (and the compensation is completely out of wack with the challenge).   You just hire well, focus on the big picture, and take credit for the efforts of your worker bees.

Anybody who has never had to fire a worker has probably never been involved in an acquisition or merger.   In my experience, mergers of companies with radically different cultures virtually guarantee that many heads will roll.   Integration has got to be the most difficult management task, and most managers aren't up to it.   If you own stock in a company that's about to merge, sell!

This is a good one. I did a bunch of smaller M and A deals. The human
fallout can be widespread. Once I sold off a whole division which the buyer
moved from Michigan to Chicago. Not a long distance but I don't think
they took any of the workers (maybe one??). An aside. While I was
negotiating with a serious buyer, a former prospective buyer resurfaced
and informed me they would take my last offer (previously rejected).
Since the acceptance date was still running I was bound to accept.
When my current prospects came back from lunch to resume negotiations,
I had to tell them that in the hour they were gone the division was sold (they had been working
the deal for some time). They left pretty fast but not before making
several comments about me, my mother and my sexual preferences

Hey Martha, I have a thousand of these stories (some with sex involved).
Should I write a book?

JG

 

[Mr._johngalt]

If you had no effect on their performance, didn't that ever make you wonder why you were designated as their leader?

Nope!

 

[Nords]

My guess is that leadership in a military setting with a bunch of average 18-year-old kids has almost nothing in common with leadership in a company where you get to hand-pick demonstrably bright and talented folk.   

Yup, same guess here.  We're equally ignorant of both sides of the question.  Although I wonder how much discretion most mid-level managers have over who joins their team.  When the choice is (1) take what you're given or (2) wait for your turn to come up again, I suspect you choose #1 no matter how much the candidate resembles a Dilbert character.

FWIW most of the sailors I worked with on sea duty were in their 20s.  Nukes & other tech types are the norm on a submarine and "unskilled" labor was only about 15% of the crew.  While you could join as young as 16, most joined after high school (17-18) and spent at least 8-24 months in the training pipeline.  Shore duty implied that most of the staff had been on at least one sea tour, so they were in their mid-20s or older.  

I was lucky in that all I had to do was grant lots of autonomy, enforce lots of accountability, and use a light hand to "direct."

Me too!  I felt that most of my time was spent defending my troops from the "bright ideas" shining down from above.

Executive leadership is a cake walk (and the compensation is completely out of wack with the challenge).   You just hire well, focus on the big picture, and take credit for the efforts of your worker bees.

Yeah, I frequently felt that my compensation was out of whack with the challenge.  The overtime rate was particularly deficient...

I was extremely fortunate to work with people who volunteered to join the Navy (no draft) and then volunteered again for submarines.  Those who did it for the money quickly concluded that it wasn't worth the price and left (usually for aviation).  Those with flawed characters or a lack of teamwork were usually weeded out pretty quickly by the crew in a vicious Darwinian process.  I was so spoiled with good hires that it took me a long time to realize that a very small minority could be alcoholics, drug addicts, liars, cheaters, or thieves.  Luckily those were few & far between because they occupied 95% of my time for weeks.  We tended to get "polarized performers"-- those at both ends of the bell curve with very few near the median.

I never got as far as "executive", but any executive officer who took credit for the accomplishments of his troops was laughed at by all ranks.  XOs get credit for building the team and setting the schedule.  COs get credit for being accountable, training everyone, setting the priorities & missions, making the really nasty decisions, and keeping as many people alive when possible.  But the credit for the accomplishments goes to the troops.  Anyone can give orders, but someone's gotta want to follow them.

Anybody who has never had to fire a worker...

Firing was regarded as a leadership failure.  If someone wasn't doing (or didn't want to do) their job then they had to be trained.  Then followed corrective training.  Then followed a loss of liberty & other privileges pending improvement.  But the onus was on the leadership to make sure that these people knew what was expected of them and were given enough rope support to be able to do it.

If you had to put someone on report and send them to mast, it was an acknowledgment that either you'd failed at your leadership job or they'd committed a felony.

The Navy has been chronically undermanned for the last quarter-century and I doubt that'll change.  If you "fired" a sailor (heaven forbid you should fire an officer, that was even more painful for all concerned) then you'd have to cope with a "gapped billet" until some newbie reported aboard.  Even the most delinquent & incompetent sailor was usually able to provide some labor to a crew, but a newbie was an absolute black hole for at least a month.  A sub that was hard on their people and "throwing them away" to shore duty would suddenly be 25% undermanned-- and then the transfer requests would start rolling in from the rest of the crew.  Assignment officers knew which boats were "troubled" and gave them no special favors unless commodores or flag officers fixed the leadership problems first.  

In retrospect much of my career seemed to be spent rehabilitating troubled youths, and I'm sure that my first XO felt the same way.  And just when I'd think that my officers were making progress, we'd run into problems with the troops!

Nope!

Uhm, JG, that was a rhetorical question... I would have suspected that the "wondering" was more common among the people who hired YOU.

 

[laurence]

From the flip side, my favorite managers have been those that gave me the requirements and the deadlines and left me alone. If I needed help, they were approachable, and really knew their stuff. Just an occasional, "how's the Smith project going?" would be as far as micromanagement went. I was given plenty of room to succeed and fail on my own merits, no question was stupid, not asking was. Hire the right staff, and I think management would be easy.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

An odd concept that "bad" employees cant be "fixed" or that never firing someone is somehow also "bad".

I fired exactly one guy in my entire management career. I think thats something like .01%.

You see, while he was a good employee, he was commuting almost 2 hours each way to work and one of our customers wanted to hire him very badly, for more money. The clincher was they were a 10 minute drive from his house.

But our customer contract prohibited hiring away our employees.

He had the biggest **** eating grin on his face as he walked out the door after the termination.

My hiring record was pretty good. Many of my hires went on to become senior individual contributors or managers. A lot of folks wanted me in on their interview loops. The best interview questions? Asking someone first to describe their greatest success and what they learned from it, then their greatest failure. A surprising number of people seemed at a loss to come up with their biggest screw up, and a surprising number of people who came up with one struggled to explain what they learned from it. I didnt hire any of them. Want to see a interviewees true face? Ask them to describe their best manager ever and why they liked that person, then their worst manager and what they didnt like. For some reason, even the best poker faces have trouble holding back when describing the manager they hated. You also learn a lot about what kind of manager works or doesnt work for them.

I also "inherited" a lot of problem employees, and even a good number of problem groups. Made hay out of that by turning them around.

Most of the "problems" with "problem" employees are readily solvable. If they feel like their boss "gets" them, is willing to stand behind them, gets them fun work to do at least time to time, gives them enough leash to run and gets them credit for their successes...a lot of "problems" stop being "problematic". In other cases, you have people trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Find a dang square hole and put them in it.

Laurence...I dont know all the details, but my advice would be to let these guys do their own dirty work. Be brief and factual in answering their questions and leave it at that. Unless you've been directly supervising her daily activities, it'll be hard for you to do more than that anyhow. There is little upside for you in this task and you may end up with some poor peer perception as a result.

 

[wabmester]

(), I don't want to push your buttons (right now), but let me ask you something. Was this "find a square for the square peg" management style sort of a cultural thing at your company? I only ask because I used to interact with several different groups there, and I got a sense that they had too many people and not a lot of that "agile, mobile, and hostile" kind of attitude. I suspect it was cultural, and you'd kind of expect that from a monopoly with a fast-growing cash-cow product.

Really, I'm not trying to disparage your company or your job. I'm just curious about the management culture there.

 

[TargaDave]

Oh, I see. It is better to be clueless and inefficient when hiring. Plus the legal risk of rapid hiring and firing is a "good thing" (as Martha might say).

Your comments about entrepenuers are very interesting to me. I work 1/4 time for a start-up company now and surprisingly, these people are even more cautious about hiring decisions than the fortune 500 companies where I worked most of my career. They feel like they can't afford to make any hiring mistakes. In fact, the first company I ever worked for was a mid-sized (about 2000 people) company that was still run by the founders (who had started the company in a garage). The two founders still personnaly interviewed every engineer candidate and were very selective.

I don't doubt that you and JG have a different experience than I do related to hiring practices. But I do find it difficult to believe that any rational and truely successful business person would believe that quick, haphazard hiring and firing to fill a position is better than learning how to do it right the first time. Maybe that's just me.

I can only speak for myself. Perhaps an unlucky string of bad hires is cause to go back and rethink the hiring process, but your comment about JG deserving to be fired along with your comment below just came across as pretty arrogant. Then there was the bit about helping to get your CEO fired but I won't go there.

I never had to confront someone I chose to hire with a performance problem.

I don't know anyone who has done any quantity of hiring, be able to make that claim. I've done megacorps, startups through IPO's, brother&brother, one man government contractor, and for last 6 years sweating out my own startup company. I know all about being ultra-cautious with new hires, carefully screening and watching cashflow like a hawk. Startups sometimes have to act quick in hiring just to keep the operation going. Sometimes you have to delegate part of the hiring process to someone in your company you trust, especially in fields you are weak in. Sometimes hiring for out-of-state positions (we have several) requires a different strategy. Sometimes you can't afford to hire the person that is perfect for the job, or even be able to afford relocation expenses. Sometimes people with a big company background just don't fit in with the startup mentality. Sometimes you have to hire a personality type that is somewhat anti-social (programmers are a great example and no offense meant to the many talented programmers on this site). Almost all the people you bring in must be highly motivated self starters since there is very little time-resources for training when everyone is focused on sales-support-development. I have brought several people in under contract before I even offered them a full time spot.

My turnover rate is extremely low because I pay well once people prove out, I never micromanage, the numbers are transparent, we have a lot of fun inbetween the madness, I never take the big office or put myself above the dirty work, and I am always happy to say "I don't know the answer". We would never survive otherwise. But I have had to let a couple of people go (quickly) and I have had to keep a couple of people in line personality wise. I've even smacked myself upside the head a couple of times since there is no one to smack me. I get better as time goes on but I would never ever claim that every person I hired not only wasn't fired but never had a performance issue. I would never have made that "firing" comment to JG just from what I know of his posts. When you really live and survive in that world you get a much better appreciation for those who have gone before you and you tend to cut them some slack because it is one tough, imperfect world where you never get it exactly right the first time.

Too much said. SG, You can have the last dig if you want it. (BTW, the three laughin smilies are gettin kind-of old, try something new.)

A quote from Teddy Roosevelt: "Those who aren't making mistakes usually aren't making anything."