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Comment by picardo

1 year ago

Someone told me FaunaDB the company had a strict "no one gets fired" policy. However, they also hired a few toxic people, and that created a dilemma for some folks because it was either leave or learn to tolerate toxicity.

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picardo

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tysont  1 year ago

I led the engineering team at Fauna and this is false - we had a performance culture and performance managed/exited people when they did not meet expectations. I've managed some outstanding teams/organizations at Microsoft, Amazon, and Riot Games and the team behind Fauna was world-class; on par with the best teams that I have seen or been a part of. There are plenty of reasons that the company didn't succeed, some in our control and some out of our control, but the caliber of people at the company and the company culture are not on that list.

  • picardo  1 year ago

    This was about 7 years ago. Maybe things were different then? But yeah it did strike me as odd so that’s why I didn’t forget it.

jaapz  1 year ago

Black and white policies like this are so dumb

Don't fire employees immediately when they make mistakes, sure. But not firing them at all, even if they are obviously bad for your company? That's just bad management

  • xp84  1 year ago

    Definitely one of the most unpleasant jobs* of a manager is having to hold people accountable for their actions in this way, but yeah. Refusing to address it is the coward's move, and it'll destroy your culture.

    * Second only to having to field questions about and spin upper management decisions that you also disagree with.

  • Workaccount2  1 year ago

    Generally just avoid absolutes as much as possible in your life. In most cases it will benefit you.

andrewinardeer  1 year ago

Shutting down the whole business is the loop hole leadership found to skirt around this policy.

  • nine_k  1 year ago

    If they were making money hand over fist, they would likely just change the policy. Or at least if somebody would acquire them.

    Apparently their VC investors were not seeing the hockey stick growth, so they decided to cut the losses. Taking VC money is a more risky bet than other forms of investment. If your business is profitable, but small and is growing 5-7% a year, and no acquisition is sight, most likely it's going to be shut down.