CEO complaints : employee not motivated after being fired (linkedin.com)
After firing a person for no good reason, CEO (Inge Geerdens) expects person to be oncall 24-7 after having told him he's fired. This, of course, despite there being no mention of any oncall in the contract she signed with this person.
329 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 278 ms ] threadHappens all the time.
And now they need to hire a communications person to review their social media posts as well as figure out who's going to be mercilessly on call in place of the employee in question.
How bad do you need his information?
It's amazing how little empathy this thread has for people that create companies and struggle through the employer's side of trying to be decent to people while trying to run a thriving business.
This yes, of $2000 would surely be beneficial to everyone.
And empathy has little to do in business. Where was the empathy in firing someone? Answer: "It was business".
This gives employees time to find something else, and is also beneficial to public finances : the employer effectively bears the cost of the first 3 months of unemployment of this person, after which the state will cover.
No. This is Hacker News. You'll find that the majority of posters here are apologists for entrepreneurs and employers. When you can't even hold this crowd, that's a pretty good sign the employer's thoughts are so tangled up in their skewed perspective on labor that they can't even be badly rationalized into something approaching reasonable.
Notice how you didn't even qualify which entrepreneurs and employers.
There's also no indication he was doing nothing during his notice period - surely if he'd been doing nothing, she'd have known already, and not expected to be able to reach him even outside of his contracted hours.
Honestly, I would much rather be treated this way than walked to the door and told to wait for security to come by with a box of my stuff.
The heat is coming from how she disavows that decision (and process), and is somehow surprised that he's not enthusiastic to not just put in the contracted paid-for time but won't go above-and-beyond to provide free services for her sole benefit. That's not "trying to be decent to people while trying to run a thriving business", that's expecting people to consent to be taken advantage of.
BTW: being shown the door with a check for 2-3 month's pay (not unusual in the USA) is quite palatable. Shows due appreciation without expecting someone to labor under a dark cloud when they should be out looking for work.
Does this apply to CEO as well? As JWZ wrote nobody of higher management had to sleep under their desks.
It cuts both ways, several times I worked over weekend, just to see deployment postponed by couple of days for some paper work.
As it was, they just didn't act, treated the suffering as a badge and pretended they were in the foxhole with us. If they could handle it, why couldn't we? Why were we bitching so much? They were right there next to us! Needless to say, I don't work in those kinds of places anymore.
At the time I thought that's not needed go home, but with retrospect I respect him a lot more for that.
That might sound dumb, but that's one of those things that stick with you when evaluating how you are treated by someone
Sure they can. They can fetch pizza and drinks, they can test the product from an end-user perspective, etc., etc.
UK companies do it all the time - sounds like this Belgian needs to move to the UK to get the desired outcome of slaves on standby.
Thankfully I've yet to see this in IT.
No real full time customer service assistants. Staff are placed on 16 hour contracts with single, double or quad hours randomly placed throughout the week.
If you don't come in, you get fired.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/19/zero-hours-co...
Reminds me of Passion Versus Professionalism http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6523/the_designers_not...
The SaaS in question (I think) http://company.cvwarehouse.com Do we know one that's run by technical founders that can compete?
He's technically still employed until the end of the notice period. How does "firing" work in the USA? Do you literally pack up your desk and walk out the moment you're "fired"? That sounds, well... illegal?
In most larger companies, I agree. Typically, you have to leave the same day and they must (by law) pay you through the end of your current pay period.
That seems incredibly unfair. Sure, by law neither party is required to give notice, but a sufficiently ingrained social more can be just as much of a burden (for the employee, in this case).
It's brilliant, though - lull employees into an informal gentleman's agreement, then pull the rug out from under them if things don't work out. If verbal agreements aren't legally binding, then the employee can't even appeal to the law, since the law is fair. And maybe the former employee blames herself for not agreeing to get this in writing, instead of blaming the overall culture of this kind of asymmetric relationship.
The employer can say You wouldn't walk out on us now, would you? That would be a dishonourable thing to do (probably in a less direct way). An employee doesn't seem to have that same kind of social more leverage.
EDIT: This includes the circumstance that you mentioned - the employer is being somewhat unreasonable - since they can still guilt the employee into pushing through it. Another thing to consider is that, while the employer might not be treating the employee worse than he used to, the fact that the employee feels that he has to stay for the extra two weeks may be an inconvenience to him. He may have things that he want to take care of, etc.
I have responded by not giving notice when I quit. I see quitting as "firing my boss". Notice is for suckers. I do not give where I would not receive. I only gave notice at one job in the last ten years, and that was because the only reason I was quitting was because I was moving.
I find that pretty favorable to the employers.
You can't fire a guy and then expect him to be 100% motivated, but you can even less expect him to keep doing the little extra on the side just for you ...
Oh really? I'm not an expert on Belgian law here, but are they really claiming they offered to pay people extra and/or give time off in lieu for optional overtime, but they didn't agree to it? Or is it just mandatory free overtime that is banned?
Belgian law probably makes it hard to require employees to work more than reasonable hours for no extra reward or choice. Which is a good thing. If you want 24x7 support, you need to pay for 24x7 employees. This person is wishing they had the right to specify in a contract that your working hours are "whenever I call."
Since they don't get that, I'm not surprised they didn't realise firing someone^W^W, sorry, "agree[ing] to terminate your collaboration" might make them stop responding beyond the call of duty.
Also, I was reading something the other day that pointed out that, whilst seeing things in black and white reduces you to only two perspectives (moral and immoral), the attitude that everything is a shade of grey (and the implied attitude that this makes moral comparisons impossible) reduces you to a single perspective (amoral). If you think two perspectives is too few, how is going down to one perspective supposed to help?
[1] http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/05/15/googl...
I've seen a lot of googlers put in 60-70 hour weeks and claim it was 40.
The very short, very inaccurate summary is, you get 50% for outside of hours (after 19h, weekends). You get another 50% for working on weekends. And you get 50% for working on official holidays.
Meaning you get 3x your normal hourly wage for working after 19h on Easter or Christmas for example.
Needless to say, companies don't want to pay this, and will lie and cheat to get out from under this. Problem is, if they get sued, the maximum penalty is 2 years' wage, paid out on the spot, and it's up to the employee to decide whether to continue working there or not (if you fire an employee, and put down as reason that you've lost a court case against them, that's likely to result in another 2 years pay for the employee).
"hire people who share your passion, willing to 'volunteer'"
In other words: this douche wants people to work for free.
It is not uncommon to get fired for not voluntarily giving up your time or even weekend sometime although they won't tell you why you get fired it's pretty obvious.
Happend to me a few times when i was young.
In addition I have a small business in games industry, and am having plenty of stories of game developers.
If you ask me, why such an abuse of staff? I believe it is the games - great opportunity of having endless pool of motivated and experienced youngsters. Just like a fashion journal for women.
Inflexible , huge employer costs (highest costs in the world for employment),...
Because of the taxes, employers don't want you to work extra hours and as an employee, you don't have much benefit of it (governement taxes that A LOT if you do overtime).
Some things that are forbidden (or pay extra taxes)
- Only normal hours (5 days a week, ...)
- Don't employ people outside of their working schedule
- forbidden to work on Sundays
- forbidden to work on Holidays
- Don't work at night
But there are exceptions (but it's complicated)
That said, I have signed the "I will work more than 48 hours if required" waiver at my current employer; mostly because I know it will hardly happen and if it does it will be extra-ordinary and I will be willing to pull with the team.
There's nothing wrong with a world where :
"We need you to work this weekend"
"No thanks, see you Monday"
Is perfectly reasonable.
I want to work more, but i see no financial benefit from it for working a day in a weekend (eg. when i have a deadline), nor does my employer.
PS. Overhours in Belgum don't get payed a lot or aren't encouraged because of the extra cost. Employees don't mind because their happy to have jobs here... But i shouldn't say that out loud, because it's illegal. But a lot of people work an hour / day for free (from my personal experience here in Belgium)
I'm not sure I understand here. Surely if you're making more money, then you should expect to pay a portion of that in tax? And you'll see a financial benefit as a result?
So even if you work more and get more the current month. You are going to get taxed more on the end of the year.
As a result, you have earned less on the end of the year (because you get in the higher income zone, so you are taxed more).
Edit: below.
I didn't fully explained it, but it's complicated then that. If you get in a different tax bracket (didn't knew the term in English), you lose certain financial benefits.
I'd wish some Belgian accountant was here to explain it better, although i'm aware of tax brackets. They don't include some financial benefits when you have a lower income.
For example, say there is no tax up to $50000, and a 50% bracket starts at $50000. If you make $50001, you only pay a 50% tax on that one dollar over 50k, the first 50k remains untaxed. This is how pretty much any tax regime in the world works.
So while you may have to pay a higher tax rate on extra overtime money earned, it would be just on that money, not on your base pay. It's impossible for you to make less money at the end of the year because you worked overtime.
Even if your additional income pushes you into another tax bracket, you will only be paying additional tax on the amount made over the lower threshold. In the UK, for example, the top rate of income tax is 45%, and this is charged only on earning over ~£150,000 annually. If you earned £150,100, you would be £55 cash-in-hand better off than if you'd earned £150,000.
For example, in the US once you make over $75,000 (before most deductions), you no longer qualify for student loan interest payment deductions. For someone making $74,000 before who receives a $2000 bonus, they lose out on the deduction--potentially worth significantly more in tax-adjusted terms than the gross amount of the bonus before taxes.
The student loan interest deduction (and this is true of most -- AFAIK, actually all -- deductions with an income cap) doesn't have a sharp cutoff, it has a phaseout -- you get the full deduction up to $60,000, and it is reduced continuously with income down to zero at $75,000.
At $74,000, the maximum student loan interest deduction is a $167 deduction (which, at that income, is worth $42 in reduced tax liability.) Even with a $1,000 bonus that takes you just to the cutoff, its not possible for the loss of the deduction to be "worth significantly more in tax-adjusted terms than the gross amount of the bonus before taxes". [1]
[1] http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch04.html#en_US_2013_pu...
The result is that while you can be taxed more on additional income if it bumps your total income up to a certain tax bracket, you will only ever pay more money on the part that's actually above the lower limit for that bracket. This will never ever cause you to pay more taxes on the money you've already earned.
Well, it would be, if the US adopted a tax bracket with a > 100% marginal rate. But it hasn't, so it doesn't. Though its a persistent myth, because people don't understand marginal tax rates and confuse them with total tax rates. (Or, for a similar problem, as illustrated in another subthread, don't understand the related concept of how deductions phase out before you reach the point where they are no longer available.)
Working harder, under most "progressive" tax systems, provides diminishing returns because of higher tax rates - right at the point when the personal cost of extra work grow exponentially.
I don't agree. Partly the government has to be concerned with the entire workforce. Some people doing more work means that other people may not be employed, or may be under-employed. Preventing overtime, or at least providing financial pressure against it, means that those who don't want to work all hours can avoid it more easily and also helps to make sure companies employ enough workers rather than simply squeezing dry fewer than they really need.
Having 1 full-time employee or doing it all by yourselve is mostly the difference between loss and profit in Belgium (for an SMB).
Also, the taxes are so high, every company with > 1000 workmen is subsidized by the governement (most recent example: 7,5 Million € goo.gl/HluVNB for keeping a company here).
There is not a single car manufactorer, that makes profits here in Belgium without subsidisement. (a lot of them moved away from Belgium the last years)
It's the same in Germany though: http://europe.autonews.com/article/20130226/ANE/302269903/vo...
That's not the same, they stay in Germany...
PS. That also costed € 144,000 per employee for firing them :)
P1. Taxes are based on percentage of earnings.
P2. More work implies higher pay
P3. You work more
Conclusion1: Your pay is higher
Conclusion2: You will pay higher taxes.
vs
"We want you to work this weekend"
But if they said "need" they might actually need you, so you could bargain back with I will need 3 extra holiday days.
I have also heard the sentence "I need a new dress"
The one bit I would partly question would be the response to "We need you to work this weekend". Every relationship needs a bit of give and take, and every now and then an emergency, or an unexpected big piece of work might mean that the company really needs you in the office, and (assuming that it's not a huge inconvenience for you) it would be reasonable to expect you to try to help out - in the same way that a "Boss, I need to shoot off early today to pick my kid up because he's had an accident" shouldn't be met with a "'fraid not, you're staying until you've done your hours" response.
The important thing, in both cases, is that it's an exception. An employer demanding that you come in every weekend for the next 3 months would be as unreasonable as an employee doing short hours every day because they continually need to run some errand or other.
> "We need you to work this weekend"
> "No thanks, see you Monday"
> Is perfectly reasonable.
This is likely to lead to another conversation later in the year:
"Why did John get the promotion I was up for?"
"He provided more value to the company by working those two weekends when we were delivering to our most valuable customer."
Do you consider that reasonable as well?
Yes, assuming the employer considering actual output when they talk about "value" and not "seat time". Otherwise the next conversation is:
"Good for him, I'm starting at B co. in two weeks."
Also one of the most reliable ways to get better positions & pay appears to change jobs, suggesting your scenario is just a carrot on a stick that rarely happens in practice.
No one. Ever. And that group numbers in the hundreds. The hypothetical scenario is completely bogus.
I've never worked anywhere that promotions were just not given. And I'm including retail/fast food jobs from high school!
The companies where you can work your way up from entry level to executive are disappearing. The only one I am actually aware of that still promotes from within, even up to the top levels, is Publix.
So this conversation of yours would probably end in an investigation from the labor office to check whether John didn't cross the limits and was compensated fairly for the overtime.
I've been in a country where:
"You need me to work this weekend, and I'm happy to do so with no financial gain. I won't be on this continent for long, so I want to work what time I can to do the best job I can because I take pride in my work."
"Don't you dare work this weekend. If you do, as your manager I risk criminal prosecution and jail time."
That is absolutely unreasonable.
Let's say the tax rate on overtime is 60%. And that you would be motivated/consider the overtime pay fair if you got € X an hour.
Well then the employer needs to offer € X * 1/(1-0.6) gross pay to get the employee the right amount of net pay. It's not difficult, merely expensive, but since overtime like this is rare, I doubt it's impossible.
I was curious about that, but apparently it's not, both Norway and Switzerland are more expensive than Belgium (at least in manufacturing):
http://www.bls.gov/fls/ichcc.htm
But not only that, countries like Norway give you more "bang for the buck", meaning free education, ...
Not only that, but Norway and Switzerland have one of the highest per capita income in the world, Switzerland even has a minimal income of 2800$ / month!
Per comparison, Belgium is on #17, Norway on #2 and Switzerland on #4.
Living in Belgium, i only notice an enormous inefficiency and a complex accounting system, both are hurting SMB's.
- non-disgruntled Belgian
Also I suspect Veep pays a lot better for basically the same idea.
"After my speech tonight one little boy came up to me and said simply, "I'm hungry".
I wanted to take him in my arms and tell him: "I feel it too, champ. I feel it too. I feel the hunger to succeed, to create a product that Johnny Ive would truly appreciate, I know precisely what you're going through."
"But C says that at iTouch we have a no touch policy in case we get sued. Pity, that kid looked like he could really use a hug."
And her employees do the same: They value the wellbeing of what's most important to them over her wellbeing .. what a surprise.
Additionally, it sounds like the employee was treated well. "eventually we agreed to terminate our collaboration as soon as he would have found a new challenge." Maybe I'm misinterpreting the corporatespeak, but that sounds like a "start looking for something, we'll pay you until you find it." Not a bad deal at all.
And it sounds like the employee was still employed (albeit being paid to look for new work) at the time this occurred.
I.e., I had a client about 6 months ago who got rid of me when he no longer needed help with $STOCK_MARKET_STUFF. Then he needed more $STOCK_MARKET_STUFF done recently - I wasn't "unmotivated" as a result of him terminating our relationship previously.
2) It appears that after-hours on-call work wasn't ever actually a part of the employee's contract - they shouldn't have been doing them anyway. When you know you're no-longer part of the team, why exactly would you go above and beyond? Show up, do good work in the hours you're contracted for and don't pick up the phone after hours.
The employee is treating it as a time:money transaction and since there is no ongoing deal why give away your time for free?
One is that the CEO was asking for a bunch of "above-and-beyond" work. The other is that there was an implicit agreement for such work, but Belgian law made it impossible to explicitly contract for. In the former case I have no problem with the employee, in the latter case he sounds like a pain to work with.
And make no mistake, there is an implicit contract at nearly all jobs. Typical clauses might be "CTO filters BS from above so developers can do real work" or "go ahead and take reasonable flex-time in spite of what the official policy is, but be available for crunch time". Even in a flexible place like the US, it's simply logistically impossible to encode everything in a contract. The closest anyone has come to it are union work rules, disaster that they are.
What "find an employee with passion" really means is "find an employee who's attitude fits better with the implicit contract".
Considering Google has a datacentre in Belgian that presumably has 24/7 availability, I find this hard to believe. I presume Belgian has security guards, nightfill and a fire brigade also.
> What "find an employee with passion" really means is "find an employee who's attitude fits better with the implicit contract".
I read this as "find an employee who is too scared, too naieve or too stupid to enforce the explicit contract they signed".
If you want someone to do the work, you need to contract it. Anything else is abusive management.
The relevance of 1) is responding to this in your original post:
"Additionally, it sounds like the employee was treated well."
If Belgian law required say, two weeks notice and the CEO gave the guy 12 weeks I'd be more forgiving of her, but if the bare minimum of law is being implemented then she deserves nothing extra in return.
Firstly, the benefit relationship of all contracts, implicit or otherwise, is asymmetric: the benefits accrued to the employer will be greater than those accrued to the employees: to do otherwise would erode profits, and put the company out of business. Some companies have 'enlightened' opinions about how to extract good work from their employees, but it is still done with the goal of being more profitable. Arguing from the poor practices of other companies is not constructive.
With respect to the particular situation, once the employee had been placed on notice, it seems to me that the implicit contract was broken, unless the employer was just as willing as they were beforehand to offer the 'implicit benefits' to the employee, which seems unlikely. Indeed, the situation really seems to be that the employer is asking for all the benefits on their side of the implicit contract, without offering anything in return.
Finally, for me the implicit contract is not really between the employee and the employer, but between the employee and their coworkers. Whenever I have gone above and beyond, I haven't been doing it for the company, but for the people I work with. However, my experiences are limited to medium sized companies, so things might be different in smaller environments.
Now you might still be motivated in thinking that they'll employ you for future contracts; but if you're not a contract worker that motivation doesn't really work out.
If that's not going to be the case, then trade offs that someone might make to invest in that long term relationship cease to make sense.
And where exactly did you get the impression that the employee was "butthurt"? The employee noted exactly what you said: A job is a transaction of money for work, not a marriage, so: Do what is written in the contract. Not more, not less. She didn't like that.
If she wanted to do the minimum declared by law, she would have just fired him. The severance clock doesn't start ticking until you fire someone.
By just coming to an agreement with him that he would look for a job, she was giving him extra time. If she decided after a month that he wasn't getting a new job and wanted to let him go, then at that point, she'd still owe him the minimal amount of severance.
[edit: You can tell that this issue is all about emotion when a simple fact like what I stated above has to be downvoted]
You can couch it in all the touchy-feely-corporate-PR speak you want, but a firing is a firing.
As an employer, I've dealt with helping people transition out of a job that has disappeared or turned out not to be right for them. I tried to do what this woman did - give the employee some extra time on my dime to find new work. If during that time that I'm paying them to hunt for a job (which costs me thousands of dollars a week, typically), if I need them to lift a finger to do something, I should feel guilty to even ask?
If I took the flip side of the attitude of a lot of people in this thread, I'd just fire an employee with minimal severance the moment he isn't making me money. That would suck.
Employees giving their time for a panic, outside of their normal hours, is a privilege earned by employers through treating people right. Expecting those who've been shown the door to do so is twisted.
A true capitalist would say that the employer was being stupid.
This is my preferred version of "work" as well. I tend to negotiate all my engagements as 1099 contracts specifically so that neither me nor the employer need to feel bad when things end. Assuming you're capable of saving money and finding your own health insurance, it's really the best arrangement you can have.
Need me to work overtime for a couple weeks because it's "crunch time". No worries, and no hard feelings because you're paying me for those extra hours. 18" of fresh powder in the mountains overnight? Nice! You'll find my next invoice with six fewer hours on it.
It's really the most equitable arrangement you can have with an employer. We're both businessmen, trading services for payment. When it's time to part ways, we wish each other well, make non-binding references to maybe working together again some day, and head our separate directions with no hard feelings.
Your argument seems to be that since the employer is giving him time to find a new job, the employee should work beyond the scope of his contract.
I don't think this holds up. First of all, I doubt this is 100% altruism. Destroying morale in a start-up can destroy the company. But even if it is completely altruistic, altruism on the part of the employer doesn't need to be reciprocated. (edit: added the two paragraph above before parent's reply, I think?)
After all, "Employment is a transaction of money for work, not a marriage".
(fwiw, you shouldn't have been downvoted.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7639711
Still, I don't find strange that an employee who knows his days at a company are counted is not willing to respond to an after-hours phone call.
From the story it also seems that after-hours work is based on "volunteering" and thus not paid extra compared to regular hours, so it's not a surprise that an employee that got fired is not motivated to volunteer for doing work after-hours.
Apparently it's a big shock for some people that employees have needs and obligations, like a family to take care of. Receiving a notice that you've been fired can be very stressful, even if your skills are very in-demand.
Banks do this quite often on employees, who could create huge damage for the bank. For example traders.
They terminated him and made him come in to work to sit in a featureless room with only a table and chair -- no computer, nothing. He'd rather stay at home and garden or whatever, even it meant finishing up early, but they wouldn't let him. He always said that he must have seriously pissed someone off in HR.
Threw up in my mouth a little bit. My 'passion' is making money by providing services you need. You pay me, I do sh*t. That simple. Let's not kid ourselves.
I love the mental gymnastics she goes through to paint herself as having done no wrong in her mind.
Or are you saying it's morally wrong to terminate an employment contract when the business no-longer needs the employee?
Amicable separations aren't quite as rare as unicorns but they make California condors look ordinary. No matter what people claim, it's remarkably uncommon, one party always gets the bad end of the deal. If what I've heard about work in Belgium is true, unless this guy was an elite contractor, short of finding another position there is no way this was going to be amicable.
Humans aren't inanimate objects to be used and discarded and retrieved as your personal needs change, and this CEO is getting some faint glimmers of that if not fully realizing the entire scope of this implication.
My old boss gave me a call and said "Hey, Spooky23, we're in a bit of a jam with <system z>, would you be willing to do some consulting for a few weeks?". So I did. Worked about 30-40 hours fixing stuff, and spent a few hours training the guy they hired.
This happens all of the time. Some CEOs/VPs/etc have class. Others don't.
https://twitter.com/ingegeerdens
Then how does anybody take her seriously? Is it the lack of women in IT and business that make people more tollerant of such clear shortcommings, like that twitter post and her major snafu in people managment skills this article outlays. Especialy for somebody who proclaims to be some kind of staff recruitment expert.
While the post was certainly beyond ridiculous, let's not get ahead of ourselves and most definitely don't start any pointless and damaging witchhunt here.
Anybody who is easily lead by such a clear conspiracy is also the type to be in denial of the facts as indicated by this post about not understanding why a sacked employee did not jump thru hoops out of hours later on. We see it, anybody reading it see's it and she did not until after it went viral and enough comments enabled reality to set in that she eventualy realised her mistake and instead of admitting it, she just deleted it and pretended it never happened.
That is the relevance, and indicative that for some this person is not very credible. Employers go thru social media all the time and way it against you, it works both ways.
No witch hunt, rememebr this is instigated by her, everybody is just stating the obvious that she failed too see and then when she did, delete/denaial mode. no witch hunt, just trying to understand the type of person who would make such a post in the first place and if it was out of character or indicative of there mindset.
But any debate can be deemed a witchhunt, just does not distract from the facts. So more a facthunt.
What amuses/occupies people outside of work should be largely ignored insofar as it has nothing to do with work. Most people who are interesting/talented hold views others find ... weird.
I considered moving back there and freelancing after university, but the hoops you have to jump through (and tax you have to pay) scared me off that idea pretty quickly.
Admittedly it's more of a hassle in Belgium than it is in the UK (they treat sole traders really well) but it's still a walk in the park.
Level of taxation: sure, it's a lot, but always less than what an employee would pay. And you get health insurance and are saving for retirement as a part of that bargain – even as a freelancer!
Or maybe this is a commentary on social media -- you don't need to write something every day.
Also they have been accused of dark patterns before, like that would result in people getting e-mail that purports to be from you, when you think you already unchecked the box and asked not to share your contact list.
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140328120354-44...
And I quote:
"A while later (hopefully a few years), you tell me it is time to talk. You are not happy anymore and feel it is time to change things. Of course I’ll try to convince you. See if we can change something in your job description to make you happier, see if I can get you motivated in different ways. But if we can’t work things out together, if it is simply time to end the relationship, let’s talk about it like adults. Don’t come into the office one day telling me out of the blue that you haven’t been happy for a while, found someone else and will leave me as soon as possible. And now that you brought it up, why should I pay your full wage if you are only working at half force since you aren’t motivated anymore?"
Consistency doesn't appear to be Inge's strong suit.
I think this is the reason why "openness" is tough to achieve. Most of the time, the stakes are much higher for the employee than the company-- the business can probably continue operating after separation, but the employee might not be able to pay rent without a paycheck. All information is power in the relationship, so I don't think an employee should ever feel obligated to share more than what is necessary. I wouldn't expect to be informed that my department's budget for salaries is $X or that I'm going to be let go, effective three months from now.
> Don’t come into the office one day telling me out of the blue that you haven’t been happy for a while, found someone else and will leave me as soon as possible.
Some people just prefer voting with their feet.
The fact that she finds such "out of the blue" IS the problem.
As for "why should I pay your full wage if you are only working at half force since you aren’t motivated anymore?": you pay full wage because he's doing full required work, demonstrated by the fact that she didn't notice anything was wrong and was content to pay him for it. Maybe he's unhappy because he wants to do more but she's not making it worth his time/effort to.
And obviously the disclosure is "out of the blue" precisely because her first reaction is to cut his pay.
Seems like the PHB still does not get the idea
In Belgium, employees must be notified in advance before they are let go: you send them a letter stating "your contract will end in 12 weeks", they keep working for you for 12 weeks, and then they leave.
Employees are usually expected to pass on their knowledge to other team members and wrap up their current projects before they leave. And they are getting paid for it.
This is not the story of a CEO who fired out an employee on the spot, then tried to get back in touch later because they found out they still needed him.
This is the story of a CEO who told an employee that they would be let go three months from now, then asked them to help after hours---something that they had done previously---only to find that they were not motivated enough to do it anymore.
And this is what makes the story interesting: it's not a ridiculous caricature that you can point and laugh at ; it has all the real-life ingredients that you can easily find in the average company.
- Employers and employees who assume that "professionalism" means volunteering to work beyond the scope of a work contract.
- Employers who forget that loyalty is an essential factor in the motivation of many employees.
- A CEO who made the tradeoff of not having a dedicated 24/7 support team, and whines when the inevitable outage happens and there is no one to handle it.
I believe the original author herself said it best: "So your best bet is to hire people who share your passion, willing to 'volunteer' on such occasions."
No one is passionate about staying long hours to fix a production server. But they might be passionate about building a product that can make them proud. Their product. And once they feel it's not their product anymore, the passion is gone, and they'll be home by 7pm with their cell phone turned off.
Hard to get people to go above and beyond the call of duty after you tell them they aren't needed.
In fact, it is actually much worse for an employee to have such long notice periods. The most obvious one is already mentioned - boredom and low morale. But it has an interesting side-effect: Most companies have immediate requirements and cannot wait for months before it is filled. So they hire from a pool that is limited to people who have already been laid off. And obviously the employees are in poor position to negotiate any salary increase.
Really? In most countries? I'm not so sure, even if we exclude "most countries" to mean "most First World Countries".
Do you have a source?
I'm Australian, and it's also one to four weeks notice here, depending on how long the employee's been employed at the company[5].
1. http://www.mom.gov.sg/employment-practices/employment-rights...
2. http://www.chinalawandpractice.com/Article/3142351/Issue/850...
3. http://us.practicallaw.com/6-508-2342?q=&qp=&qo=&qe=#a612243
4. http://www.jetro.go.jp/en/invest/setting_up/laws/section4/pa...
5. http://www.mondaq.com/australia/x/183150/Contract+of+Employm...
I know that HN core audience hasn't really seen that side of outsourcing, so the experiences might be different.
That much? In Netherland it's just one month.
You'd really prefer "Clean out your things and exit the premises by 11AM" over 2 to 3 months notice?
"Out by 11AM" sucks, but it's _done_, minimizes suffering, and you can move on with life. Trust me.
The social (not legal) convention in the USA is 2 weeks (with 2 weeks pay in lieu of work if the "out by 11AM" happens). That's about enough to, if on good terms, wrap things up for all parties involved and transition accordingly.
Giving someone 2-3 months notice, and expecting performance as though it's going to proceed and end as if it were "out by 11AM" (to wit: work full enthusiastic hours for weeks on end with no distractions, then pack up and leave one morning) is absurdly unrealistic.
But really, it depends on the job market. As an employee, let us say, a specialized laborer, I would prefer the notice period to be as long as possible because there aren't going to be any other jobs for me out there.
Unless the law prohibits terminal paid leave, this is easily avoided.
> Most companies have immediate requirements and cannot wait for months before it is filled.
So? Hire someone immediately. Having notice requirements for termination doesn't prohibit you from doing that. Internal policies regarding positions might, but that's a problem of internal policies, not externally-imposed terminal notice requirements.
Did you want to say something else? Could you please explain further?
I believe the story remains a caricature, for the following reasons:
1/ she terminated him because she determined there was no more need for his skills. Expecting overtime after that is admission that she was at best too early, and probably just wrong. Planning is one of the key competences expected from a CEO.
2/ she's surprised that he won't work more than he's paid for. That's a caricatural misunderstanding of how people relate to their job; from a farmer or a plumber it might pass, but coming from a CEO of HR-oriented companies, that's nothing short of crass incompetence.
3/ basic fairness: during employment, she kept paying him money because it was the only way to get some work done; she should expect the flip side: that he only works when it's the only way to keep making money. And he's not even slacking at work, is just doing no more than what he's paid for. This gives the whole story an "entitled brat" vibe IMO.
> "So your best bet is to hire people who share your passion, willing to 'volunteer' on such occasions."
That line kills me. Seriously, who's passionate about yet another online CV sharing app? Which probably has to be unbearably pushy with its users, since LinkedIn has long eaten everyone's lunch on this market? She's no Elon Musk, and the only things that could foster passion for her business are stock options.
That argument is always used by people in boring businesses, rarely by those who'd be legitimately entitled to use it--I guess those don't need to.
As a result, the CEO probably thought it was reasonable to ask him to help out with an emergency. Although it was after hours, it was hardly "overtime" in the sense of being hour 41+ of work he did for the company. Probably more like hour 2+, in her mind.
I'm not saying her expectation was realistic, I just don't think it was a "caricature". I suppose I think you're not understanding her point of view, much as she didn't understand the employee's point of view.
I think I understand what a workaholic's feelings might be in such a situation, although displays of empathy with her seemed out of my comment's topic.
But there's an asymmetry here: it's not my job to understand how workaholics react, whereas it's doubly hers to understand how employees react, as a boss and as an HR professional.
Outside of that, you hit the point right on and I think a lot of comments echo your sentiments:
- Any kind of "volunteering" for free, outside of working hours is preposterous as it is. Expecting an employee to continue doing so after given a notice is even worse. You're basically expecting favors after you told the employee they won't be able to cash out on those favors.
- And so, when the CEO has a 24/7 support of volunteers and used to it, and then cuts the volunteers, there won't be anyone there to handle it. I understand that Belgium sucks in terms of overtime (high taxes, finicky contracts) but if it's mission critical, you may want to have at least one person on your payroll that can do this. It's a necessary cost.
It seems to be a standard pattern in most start-ups, simply not taking the responsibility for being an employer.
What this CEO did isn't just a misunderstanding, it's very, very bad employer-ship, and detrimental to the well being of the employee. Every day that employee is sitting there, being utterly demotivated and wondering what they're going to do next with their career and life that person is edging closer to a burn-out.
Under Dutch law, if that happens, the company is 100% liable and will have to keep paying the employees salary (for up to two years), and get actively involved in the employees recovery.
In this case, it is very black and white: this CEO is an incompetent employer who on top of it has a serious, near sociopathic empathy deficit.
This is not about "leadership style", this is about simple management competence.