Different Perspective on Being Fired

[Krommm]

Somewhat agree, but majority of jobs are really crap and when you get paid to barely live I can understand the whine. If it's constant complaining, then yes even if you aren't trying to pad upper management's salary then it is a great idea, no matter if it is a long time friend or not.

On paper firing the bottom 25% is common sense, but if your whole company is working great but you just want to ensure the higher-ups get paid more it is extremely scummy. (although pretty common since money means everything to such people)

In spite of all of this, you have several business that outright refuse to promote people to force turn over, otherwise they get to keep long term employees working for dirt.

[Sunseeker]

She is talking about having someone else from management in the room with her when she fires someone so she does not chicken out. Sorry, I just struggle to take people like that seriously.

There are other good reasons to do this. It can be used to better control the situation. It can be used to show that it was not a unilateral decision. It can be used to help create a record of events in case the employee raises a stink over their termination with the labor board.

There's lots of good reasons to have another member of the staff or management present when you terminate an employee. One of those reasons may certainly be that you wish you didn't have to fire the poor guy (cutbacks are a sucky reason to get fired over, since it has nothing to do with the employee's performance) and you want a little backup to help ensure you make the decision you must make even if it's not the decision you want to make.

[brandonsurge]

He fires complainers because he doesn't want them banding together and point out the flaws in his business. What a douchebag.

[Felya]

It isn't if you can easily fill in those 25% with potential better work forces. It depends from industry to industry, but I can see it working in some...just as I can see that fail in some as well.

The assumption is that the worst you can do with new employees, is that they will be in the bottom 25%. I don't know how I feel about that, but it does make sense at a glance.

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He fires complainers because he doesn't want them banding together and point out the flaws in his business. What a douchebag.

I don't think he would be a douchebag for wanting employees that do something about the flaws, other than complain. Complaining about flaws isn't really doing anything about it...

[Raeph]

He fires complainers because he doesn't want them banding together and point out the flaws in his business. What a douchebag.

What would you rather have:

"I dont' like working here. This place sucks."

or

"This process doesn't make any sense. Here is a plan to fix it."

Both recognize an issue. The second encourages input as well as offering to resolve the issue. If I were running a business I wouldn't care if someone pointed out something I missed. The issue is how would they help me fix it, or are they just running their mouth without being useful.

[Forgettable]

My best line for firing a complainer is simply, “You’re not a good fit here, I’m sorry.”

While I appreciate most of her stance on employees, this is just selfish. If you're going to fire someone, at least tell them what they did wrong and don't feed them some bullshit excuse like this. Anyone who makes a statement like this to cover up the real reason they're doing something is extremely cowardly - I have no respect for dishonest people like this.

[Puri]

I definitly can see this working for a few industries, but not for many.

First to be able to determine the worst 25%, the work of all people needs to be comparable. This could be true for example for call centers - but even there you would have to differentiate between levels of experience. But even there for example could be some that are better suited to deal with more "challenging" customers. They may produce worse numbers than their collegues, but they can bind customers that otherwise would not have been available at all.
On the other hand comparing the work of programmers is quite hard. How do you do it? Produced lines of code? Elegant solutions don't have to be long. Number of bugs? There are different parts with different requirements, some better defined, some worse, some may lead to a greater source of errors, and some may simply be more obvious. I realize there are ways to compare programmers, but it will never easily evaluate to a simple undisputable comparable number.

And second you have to be able to replace the 25% that left. That may be easy for industries that don't need well educated or specialized people, but those for sure are the minority in the today's world, as those are usually the jobs that get replaced by robots anyway. And if you continue to do it, you will even get a bad reputation within the qualified people and nobody will want to work for you.

And third, loyality to the company is a great asset. You won't find much loyalty when you might get fired anytime.

And forth, you place your own people into constant competition. Teamwork as an essential part of today's worklife gets heavily undermined.

[Collegeguy]

Wrong interpretation, she drops the bottom players if they threaten the other 75%.

Not how I read it. She fires bottom 25% each year and described it as firm policy. That sounds strict regardless of sales or anything else.

Pretty retarded concept considering the new people your bringing in are not guaranteed to be near as good as the 25% you just shoved out the door, so you put yourself in a death spiral of constantly throwing out the bottom quarter of your workforce. A self-fulfilling prophecy and certainly so considering a quarter of your workfoce is a big number. I'm not surprised this came from a shark tank member; they're kind of overconfident, confirmation biased retards.

[Afrospinach]

There are other good reasons to do this. It can be used to better control the situation. It can be used to show that it was not a unilateral decision. It can be used to help create a record of events in case the employee raises a stink over their termination with the labor board.

There's lots of good reasons to have another member of the staff or management present when you terminate an employee. One of those reasons may certainly be that you wish you didn't have to fire the poor guy (cutbacks are a sucky reason to get fired over, since it has nothing to do with the employee's performance) and you want a little backup to help ensure you make the decision you must make even if it's not the decision you want to make.

Unfortunately non of those reasons are the reasons she gave. She simply has an issue enforcing her own policy, one that is absolutely a unilateral decision.

I am just not sure why people are impressed with this woman from this article. Here is a point from the comments that also really bugs me:

No where in this article do you state what you, as the leader, do to support your under performing colleagues.