Comment by jghn
7 days ago
> In the US you can fire an employee for any reason at any time
On paper, yes. In practice, especially in a larger company? It's often a long journey that involves a lot of energy on the part of the manager. And then of course you may not get a backfill rec. So then one needs to ask themselves: is this person truly a net negative when compared to the energy that'd be required to jettison them *and* replace them with nothing?
Often the answer is no.
The trouble is this calculus is being done at the local level despite the mantle of responsibility of management; the manager decides it is not worth their personal effort to lose a low performer, because they will generate more work for themselves. Meanwhile, the company suffers the net negative impact of such a decision - arguably even worse for the manager's career.
That's the main challenge I have coaching management folks - now you have the option of doing work, and often you'll be tempted to take the path of least resistance, but that'll usually lead you astray.
Edited to add - sorry I missed your net negative comment - to touch on that, as it's another thing I see often.. Giving up on the org's ability to satisfy your needs is another toxic pattern for management - it is a lose/lose essentially. Management is often in a position of needing to push for the things it needs and advocate for the people relying on them.
I can't speak to a US perspective but in the UK and some EU countries I've experienced, firing someone is incredibly simple.
In fact every difficulty I've seen is simply that someone didn't follow the clearly defined procedure.
It's literally written out for you. You don't have to think or care how you feel, just follow the process and you're done. If the process says someone should stay then you got something wrong. Simple as that.
To be clear, it's simple for a *company* to fire someone. It often can be a pain in the ass for a *manager* to do it. For instance, a process like this:
1) Need to set up a clear paper trail over a period of time. For instance, a track record of being marked as an underperformed in their reviews with concrete complaints. In places that require this to be tied to the review, and f they only have annual reviews, this can take a LONG time.
2) Bring HR into the process, where they'll do the equivalent of "did you turn it off and on again?" for quite some time
3) If they let you, set up a PIP, which itself will take several weeks
4) Finally the person is let go
Yes, if that's your process then that's what you're being paid to do.
OTOH, why shouldn't your team be able to say you're a bad manager and just get you fired? There is rarely a simple process to do that.
They're the productive ones so this seems a little backwards.
At any rate I definitely don't see why a managers job should be made easier to avoid the realistic implications of firing someone. If they can't cope with the clearly defined rules then maybe they're just not a competent manager.
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As a mediocre person, this gives me comfort.
the answer is always yes but the org pays the costs not the manager, and the manager isn't accountable to those costs, and the manager IS accountable and vulnerable to political costs