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points by AdrianB1 1 day ago | 0 comments

"hire fast and fire fast" is great way if you are allowed to. But there are 2 huge impediments to this: legislation (for example in Europe) makes it very hard to fire, sometimes almost impossible and, in many companies, the hiring manager does not have the authority to simply fire someone, especially fast. You need to do PIP for months, involve HR, internal procedures, legal procedures, it is a nightmare.

There is a third, very egotistic reason: for many managers letting go of someone is considered a negative, so they avoid doing it. I saw cases when the direct manager of a very weak contractor took almost one year to be convinced to end the contract, he gave second, third and infinite chances to a lost cause. But this is a case of a bad manager, can be solved.

But when it can be done, it is great.

[–] epolanski 1 day ago

I'm European, you can put in the contract a waiver period, it's generally between one and six months, depends on the role, but worker and company are protected from firing/leaving if they are not happy.

[–] AdrianB1 1 day ago

I am also European and I did a lot of recruiting: in my country, at least, there can be a test period but you must hire the test employee if you cannot prove they are not qualified. For example, you cannot get 2 people for testing with the plan to keep only one, which would be in line with the idea of "hire fast, fire fast".

Also in Europe, more precisely in Italy we have existing employee that we are trying for over 5 years to get rid of; as long as they come to the office every day, HR said we cannot fire them. This is also blocking new hiring because the positions are occupied, even if they don't do anything useful. Also because of that we had to send people to early retirement in other countries just to free up headcount for new people with specific skills we need.

[–] preg_match 1 day ago

HR is far too risk-averse. You can, of course, fire someone if they are underperforming. HR doesn’t like to do it because performance is usually very poorly measured anyway, so it’s risky.

It’s a measuring and risk-aversion problem, not necessarily a legal problem.

[–] epolanski 1 day ago

I'm Italian too, you don't need any reason to fire, in fact you're not firing rather than not confirming during the waiver period.

[–] AdrianB1 1 day ago

I mentioned Italy for the case of an existing employee (with several years of employment) that we cannot let go. It is just another example where "fire fast" does not work.