Comment by Gualdrapo
19 hours ago
Or the stories about Musk firing people for the smallest nuissance, and then their immediate superior sending the "fired" person to another department the day after - next time Musk would see that person and not remember he "fired" them
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I think the losses you’re thinking of are more than made up by the gains coming from the employees being afraid they can be fired at any moment.
I think employees being afraid they can be fired at any moment also creates a loss of productivity.
It’s really disappointing to read someone describing that kind of toxic working environment as a “gain”.
- Make employees scared to point out flaws.
- Make employees less engaged in the success of the company.
- Encurrage employees to hide or mask issues.
- Encurrage employees to pretend to be more productive than they are.
- Make employees mentally and physically less healthy.
- Make employees shy away from taking on more responsibility or tasks.
- Make employees less happy to train up new hires in their work.
Yes. Gains. All those gains. I can only see gains here.
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> One might wonder where the US could be if the corporate culture wasn't so trigger happy on firing people and if laws against improper terminations would a) exist and b) be enforced.
Probably the labor market would look more like countries that already do that?
> The amount of knowledge cost alone that any company incurs with such bullshit is insane, but almost no one gives a fuck because the lost knowledge reacquisition cost is usually booked under "training costs" or whatnot.
No. Bean counters don't magically skip counting those beans. Hiring managers aren't magically ignorant of effects on their team's productivity.
We would probably have much higher unemployment and slower-moving industries, and might no longer be the economic powerhouse of the world.
When it's simple and easy to fire people, companies are a lot more willing to take a chance on hiring somebody they aren't 100% sure will be a good employee, and willing to hire a lot and grow fast knowing in both cases they can fire easily if needed.
I find it sad that so many people never think about the second and third-order consequences of what sounds like feel-good policies. They often end up being a net-negative for the people they were intended to help.
I strongly disagree. If they're is such a massive difference we would see alot less globally competetive European companies.
> a lot more willing to take a chance on hiring somebody they aren't 100% sure will be a good employee.
Just proof hire them for 6 months to a year.
Your argument doesn't hold for someone that has worked for 10 years. If they were a bad hire; it's on you at that point.
But the improvements are plenty;
- Easier planning life and reduce work anxiety for employees.
- It encurrage companies to invest and train their existing employees since they're hard to get rid off.
- It makes employees less scared to speak up or discuss problems.
- It makes companies more cautious about reckless hiring if they're not sure about their economics.
- Allows older workers to remain productive for longer, reducing the burden on the pension or unemployment system from people 55+ having a hard time finding new work for few years before retirement.
Finally, i must ask what the societal purpose of jobs and companies are. From a pure "numbers go up", there is a cost to worker protection. But id argue the society as a whole benefit much more from it than having a multinational IT company on the stock market. There is a balance to these things ofourse, but dismissing it outright is not fair.
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It's a valid point. As with anything there is balance. Consider the value of being able to plan some aspect of one's life. This generally goes up as one gets older and is responsible for others.
I don't understand the dig here. Is that that Elon is required to memorize the face of every single person he interacts with? That he isn't allowed to fire people he manages when he sees behavior or actions that don't align with what he wants in his orgs?
Also, what exactly is the source of this information? I spent multiple minutes googling for an anecdote of him firing someone for a small nuissance, or firing someone and then not recognizing them later, or firing someone and then them getting surreptitiously moved to a different department.
I'm fine if this actually happened, Elon definitely sucks. But otherwise this just feels like weird middle school gossip.
The dig is three fold. (if the story is true, about which I have my doubts.)
One: Elon instead of cultivating an organisation where the right people are rewarded and the wrong people are selected out tries to personally weed out the wrong ones. That is fundamentally foolish even if he is firing people who should be fired.
Two: His subordinates don't respect his decision and instead of letting go the people he wanted to fire, they "hide" them in the organisation elsewhere.
Three: He is too distracted / stupid / incompetent to then notice that his decision has been undermined.
> I don't understand the dig here. Is that that Elon is required to memorize the face of every single person he interacts with?
That he is required (well, expected) to remember the faces of people he _fired_.
I thought it was a funny story...