I think anyone that survived the dotcom boom and crash has stories like this. Pud's F-ed Company was full of them.
We had the meeting where only half the company was invited and the half that wasn't invited was let go. We had the VP that found out he was let go when his card key stopped working in the middle of the day. We had the employee lock himself in the office and refuse to leave. We had the contractor that was "let go" that laughed and just kept showing up for work. My boss that "let him go" was fired 3 weeks later. We had the guys that were let go but slipped through the cracks and nobody told them until HR sent them a packet. I saw the CEO fly into town just to fire my boss but she panicked and left before he got to the office and refused to answer her phones. Most of us kept all of our stuff packed in cardboard boxes, ready to walk out the door or change offices whenever people left. One friend kept a wall of ex-employee nameplates in his cube. The day I quit, I handed him my nameplate on my way to meet with my boss to resign, so everyone else knew by the time I walked out of his office.
The winners were two I didn't get to see. In some customer crisis, we hired a new guy with some special expertise on a platform and put him on a plane somewhere with a VP / Director of Development. They start talking on the plane and by the end of the flight, the VP realized he was so full of crap that he fired him, told him to not even leave the airport and go rebook his return flight back home.
The same VP hired another new guy but on his first day he went to lunch with other developers and somewhat joked about how he realized that it isn't what you do but what they think you do that gets you ahead in this business. He was fired 30 minutes after lunch.
>>VP realized he was so full of crap that he fired him
That's strange, because VP's are themselves full of crap. Its exceedingly rare that you can find a good VP.
Most VP's haven't done anything 'real' in years. And generally never have context on what they are doing, why they are doing, or even why its necessary. Two to three difficult questions in a row and they many not even be able to explain why they or their title should even exist.
Most VP's get hired through their network and survive by means of their network. The middle to senior level management is generally the most hopelessly inefficient part of the whole hierarchy chain, while being the biggest money sink in terms of the compensation and benefits.
This is completely opposite of my experience in the industry.
Stephen Sinofsky is famous for sending people bug reports with the line of code that was causing the windows bug. My presentations to Harry Shum were the highlights of my time in Bing, as he was both interested and insightful. My conversation with Satya Nadella about incentives and alignment of the OSD organization taught me a lot about how the businesses operated.
I've met and worked with vice presidents in Microsoft, Google, and Facebook and every time I been impressed with their levels of interest, insight, and passion for the product.
There may have been a time with being a vice-president was a parking title and reward for a lifetime of work, but that time has passed.
I never said every single VP ever was like that. But exceptions only prove the rule.
>>but that time has passed
Hardly!!!!. You have worked at nearly every outlier company, there is. And you think culture you've seen there is the norm.
If there is any famous company with awesome executives, you will hear about them. You will never hear about those that crash and burn because of bad executives. Which are far more common than the ones that win.
Now sure when you were at Microsoft, but Sinosfky and Nadella were division Presidents, not VPs. It is much easier for a VP to get away with being full of shit.
As he alludes to there used to be a website called fuckedcompany.com that chronicled the first dotcom collapse. Very entertaining, and a good way to find out where lightly used aeron chairs could be found to boot.
I'm sure nothing like that will happen again, this time is totally different.
I've thought about it a few times, but there are too many people that would take offense, even if I changed names and details, that I might still need to go work with. The longer I'm out of that industry and running my own startup, the more I think about doing it though.
Or having a remote office drive 4 hours to the HQ for a meeting, but some VP could fire all of them as soon as they got there and then made them drive all the way back to clear out the office and ship the equipment back.
I was expecting something like F-ed Company to reappear in 2008 or 2009. Dealbreaker.com was the financial equivalent. It's too bad that someone didn't keep it running. Then again, it embodied the Point of View of the founder too much to survive without his enthusiasm.
"We spent 100s of millions of dollars the board is committed, I am committed"
Choo-choo, everyone jump on the fail train. No really, this is what is wrong with big companies. They pick a failed direction and they can't stop. It is a giant rusty ship heading to its grave, the captain waving his big dick around "Doesn't matter what everyone says, this will be successful!"
I think most people there know it is failure that is why the explicit warning not to joke about it (there is probably enough of that to warrant that comment). Critics who don't believe in the failed cause are pushed out as non-team players. It leaves the desperate and the brainwashed. ... Yes, patch will be the next Facebook if you just work an extra night no matter if your daughter fell of the stairs and broke her leg.
Well, this is the first I've heard of Patch, so I went and had a look at http://www.patch.com/
...
Er, is this supposed to be a news site? There's not a lot of actual news, but I can go and see what's happening at "Propwash Junction". Which isn't actually a real place but a Disney ad. Real news is at least two clicks deep.
I visit patch pretty often and actually had no idea they were owned by AOL. While it often misses activity going on in my area (Brooklyn, NY) it's still one of the easier ways of finding out what's going on nearby. I check Police & Fire a couple times a week since it's a high crime area and the local editor does a decent job of summarizing the things I'd miss otherwise.
Edit: I don't actually navigate the site much, instead I just visit area.patch.com/ and the rest is easy to find.
The problem is local news on a large scale means finding thousands of people who for some reason want to write for pennies about what's happening locally. On top of that advertising isn't exactly easy to get. When Patch first came around they also looked at gaining traffic from an SEO perspective for local queries but as algorithms changed their organic traffic plummeted.
Patch is basically hyper local news. I've followed the one for my town in the past (Kensington, MD) and there's a lot of overlap and shared stories with neighboring ones. (Silver Spring, Bethesda, other areas in Montgomery County) The ones around here are fairly decent and get good coverage of community-related news like school stuff. I haven't seen any ads masquerading as stories on the ones here, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened elsewhere.
Having a Patch operation in my town, I can speak from experience.
They put papers in the most affluent communities only to attract high-buck advertisers. The quality varies, but where I live, they hired away the town's weekly newspaper editor. This editor has since left. Essentially, the editor is required to personally produce a high, minimum number of articles per day. Everyone else but the ad sales person works as an independent contractor on dollars per piece or photo. I have sometimes seen good journalism from these contractors, but most of the good ones seem to have left.
Patch attempts to bring in outside bloggers and letter writers from the community simply to increase clicks and controversy. Initially, they tried to pay these bloggers, but that ended very fast.
Most of the articles are designed to be timely pieces about the schools, town sports, weather, traffic, politics, or local views about current events. In fact, it seems like they believe the most important thing they do is spin national news by interviewing locals about controversial, state or national news stories like PPACA or gay marriage decisions since it creates lots of clicks. On the plus side, they have done more to cover local politics than any other outlet.
If your little small town has a patch site, it's great. They actually have stories about what's happening in the town, not just violent crimes. Stuff that used to be in the local newspaper before they fired all their staff or merged or went out of business. Of course they are generally one person operations, so quality varies I'm sure, but I really like it.
Yes, I think Patch's 'point' was local news for smaller communities - if I'm remembering right, with a focus on affluent areas that could support ad sales.
I believe that's the idea, yes. Small communities tend to be underserved for news content and local businesses don't want/need to advertise in their region's metro news sites, but may be interested in something more local.
My friend started there couple weeks ago in a dev position. They gave him a 30% raise. Tomorrow morning or this week he finds out if he gets to keep the job. Most likely he should given he's a dev.
Reminded me of this quote by Steve Jobs (talking about Gil Amelio): "Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water. And my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction."
I used to work for a high level executive that would throw around the words "you're fired" as a joke sometimes during all hands meetings. The fact is, using those words on someone in public (joke or not) is embarrsing and cringeworthy for all.
I've also had the "get on board or leave" speech thrown at me. More times then not, those words are a sign to run away as fast as possible.
Never been a fan of power trip humor. If you actually have the authority to fire someone, you should never ever say "you're fired" to them, even as a joke, unless you are actually firing them, and that should be done in private.
Well this guy was in a league of his own. He openly made jokes about a fellow employees lazy eye in public and once made a semi-racist off color joke to begin another all-hands. I'm pretty sure he was left off of the investor quarterly calls for being such a loose cannon. Amazingly enough he left on his own and didn't have any openly public HR complaints or lawsuits against him.
Sometimes my former boss would tell me I was fired if I made a bad joke when we were out drinking . . . but in general, I agree that it should not be done if there is any ambiguity at all in the situation.
There was case like that in Germany. But the guy accepted and company had to pay him three month salary for compensation. He was 'hired' back after couple of days of holiday.
As hard as it is, leaving in the mid-term may be the best option. i can only talk for myself, but when my supperior doesn't think I'm on board I can't go "on board" or fake it realistacally. Well, I can long enough to find something better.
For the meeting itself, not so easy.
Part one: Come up with a plan for the meeting. Best if you know what "on board" means and come up with some believable actions or things you can do in the future showing you ARE. Find some explanations why you were not in the past, even if it means to only find expalnations why your boss thinks you're not "on board".
Maybe you even know what kind of agenda your boss has for himself, this adds a lot of usefull context to the points mentioned above.
Part two: Use the time you bought yourself to find something better elsewhere. There are people that can addopt enough and get "on board" (whatever that really means), but I'm none of those.
In cases like this, it's all about how a situation is percieved and not how it really is.
Hope it helped a little bit. And even if it's not easy, don't worry or even panic, stay calm and polite. Be prepared, but don't argue any points before they are brought up by someone else.
Disclaimer: Had one meeting like that myself, came up with a defense a couple of weeks later, left 4 months later. Teached me to be prepared for meetings like this.
2: Explain why you are not performing - look for the underlying causes for demotivation. Is it that you believe the company direction is wrong? your co-workers are gooding off? your external commitments (family, sickness, another gig), competitors?, a particular senior person who is deflating things? Simple lack of a challenge (a good one), demotivatingly low income?
3: Explain what has to change in order for you to stay. Some challenging work that is focussed at the root of the company's issues is goof. More autonomy, more time spent at the coal face, better targets, training, better air cover - what ever it is. Be genuine and make sure that if these issues are fixed, then so is your motivation and ability.
4: Agree on a "it gets fixed or I leave" plan with your boss. His or her role is to fix the issues, and your role is to respond with results. Agree to monthly check-ins and make sure you each know where you stand at all times.
If the answer to 1: and 2: is "shut up and get back to work" then it's clear where you stand. Shut up, get back to work and start a frenetic job search.
I would not advise you to quit on the spot, as fun as that could be. Make them fire you per the terms of your contract, or (obviously better) negotiate a graceful exit for both parties.
Work on your resume on the flight? It's not an actionable speech, it just gives you insight into the current state of the company. When leadership feels this needs to be said, there aren't many good things it can be a sign of.
I say it is generally a sign to leave because at that point things have got so bad that there is a critical mass of people that don't think the company will succeed. Usually at these speeches no one actually leaves, things proceed as usual for a few months and then the thing fails and there is a huge strategy shift.
It's not really motivational or inspiring when someone tells you "my way or the highway". When "my way" has been a failure thus far.
Although rare, the sign of a good leader is to accept and acknowledge failure and correct the issues.
Ok so a guy named "lenz" got fired for taking a "photo" from a product team at AOL that nobody had herd of and now theres free bad/good? publicity all over the media.
If this does turn out to be a joke its one of the best publicity stunts in history.
Of-course if it is not a joke/stunt. All the best to Lenz
A quote from the Business Insider article linked to in this thread:
This source tells us that Lenz always took photos at Patch
all-hands meetings. He would later post them to Patch's
internal news site.
There isn't enough background to understand why this happened. AOL may have a clause in their employee contracts that makes picture taking at certain meetings a "firing offense". The source says that Lenz "always took photos", but it's possible that Lenz might have been warned not to take any more photos at meetings. Lenz's silence about the matter is also ambiguous.
Nevertheless it is odd that an employee was fired for taking pictures of a meeting when the audio was leaked to the media.
His silence could easily have something to do with a non-disparagement clause in his severance. I'm sure they are giving him a decent one (assuming this whole situation can be taken at face value) in order to mitigate this wave of bad press.
I kinda wonder if the silence was a "shock and awe" one or if the call was muted or something on their end. I don't see why that wouldn't warrant at least a small reaction that would be audible over the call.
Sounds bad. But almost certainly was not simply a spur of the moment decision, but rather that Lenz was on the list of people to be fired later in the day and had done things that Armstrong knew about (like leaking Patch information). Still bad to do it like that on a call where people are getting fired for real, but this gives some context.
A few minutes later, Armstrong complained about leaks to
the media. He said the leaks were making Patch seem like
"loser-ville" in the press. He said, "That's why Abel was
fired." "We can't have people that are in the locker room
giving the game plan away."
"I also want to clear up the fact that leaking information or anything around Patch isn't going to bother me. Doesn't bother me. I'm not changing direction."
So what you're saying is, Armstrong also gives inconsistent directions to his employees?
That's certainly one way of interpreting his statement, and I agree with you that it's an offense to the team..
but.. I don't think it exactly helps Armstrong if instead of giving inconsistent direction.. he instead gives unclear and ambiguous directions. He's the CEO.. he should be able to communicate consistently and clearly.
Sounds to me like a reason coughed up a few minutes later when he was trying to rationalize what he had done.
Even if that was the reason, if you fired the employee in front of the entire team suddenly without reasoning until asked for later, it wouldn't help in anyway, not even exemplifying the case.
I would leave that company immediately if I worked there. This isn't a TV show. You don't fire people that coldly and abruptly regardless of the circumstances, especially not in public.
Well done! And especially true in this age of reality TV. Let me add my own bastardized quote: "We're a race so primitive that we still think reality TV is a pretty neat idea."
Off topic, but if Armstrong is serious about wanting people to leave the company if they're not committed, why not offer buyouts? That would remove one reason why people may decide to stay even if they don't believe in the company.
I know Zappo's offers new trainees a cash bonus if they decide to /not/ join the company after completing the training program. That way Zappo's can be more sure that their new hires are not /just/ financially motivated but also are excited about the company itself.
Buyouts are commonly used during downsizing, but any thoughts as to why this isn't more widespread - i.e., used during 'normal' times as well? You could imagine companies offering a cash bonus (or health insurance for a certain # of months, or something) to anyone that quit but didn't have another job lined up.
That, presumably, would have the effect of empowering people to leave their job. So people who were not aligned with the company itself or otherwise dissatisfied could leave, improving the culture of the company as well.
On a more meta level, pleas like Armstrong's, to "leave if you're not committed" reminds me of the quote from North Dallas Forty [0] (A movie about professional sports): "Every time I say it's business, you say it's a game. Every time I say it's a game, you say it's a business." Leaders of businesses can try to pull the same thing; they alternate between appealing to your sense of mission, and then make decisions under a different logic.
> they alternate between appealing to your sense of mission, and then make decisions under a different logic.
When things go sour they also falsely blame a scapegoated 3rd party. "We would give you bonuses and severance packages but those pesky lawyers/accountants can't let us do it", as if those entities are forces of nature outside of CEO's or board's control.
My company was interviewing a candidate once. He was spectacular during the interview, but then he stared taking pictures of our office and our employees, which made us all uncomfortable, and that's the only reason we did not offer him a job.
What may seem like normal behavior to one person may be offensive or intrusive to someone else.
Except: it came right after Armstrong talking about not being bothered by "leaking information". And that according to Business Insider, this same employee "always" took photos during meetings/conference-calls, for internal publishing.
It's possible that in the stressful moment, with his mind on the "you're with the plan or should leave" theme, Armstrong misread or overreacted to the photo-taking. (Perhaps even, the "you're fired" was a reaction to a momentary facial expression from the photographer, in reaction to the first "put that camera down" command.)
Or maybe there's a history, and Armstrong already viewed the employee as insufficiently serious about Patch. Either way, an odd occurrence.
In this case, the guy had just rambled on for some time about how he didn't care if anything "leaked." If I were inclined to take photos, his earlier words in the recording might well have sounded like permission.
This was considered normal behavior.
"We hear that Lenz, based in New York, would always take pictures of people talking on company-wide conference calls so that he could post them on Patch's internal news site."
I wonder if this was a publicity stunt to get people to go check out patch.com?
I'm only half-kidding.. I had never heard of it before, and I went to look at it after reading the article. Anyone else?
I'm not an American so I'm not in the target market, but a lot of these kinds of sites live and die by early adopters and tech influencers who start using them and advocate to their networks.
Crossed my mind. I sure went and checked it out. I've used it once by accident and didn't know it as AOL. But, if anything, this just made it worse. Now it has a bloodstain on it.
So if it was meant to be a publicity stunt, it sure as hell backfired. But then again, if they were good at marketing and publicity stunts, they probably wouldn't be firing people on the spot or extolling how great it is for employees to sacrifice their nights and weekends for the cause even after their children break their legs falling off the stairs.
It does not matter what the circumstances, to fire someone in any sort of public setting is a since of profound ineptitude and immaturity. I was surprised that AoL even still exists, I do not know who this person is, but if he is in charge of AOL then it is only a matter of time before it is no longer in existence.
If Aol is still making most of its revenue by charging monthly fees to people who have forgotten it exists, I find that more reprehensible than anything on this call... and I'd be happy to see them go out of business.
They've been trying, and I believe most of their traffic is from acquisitions but all of their money/revenue is from old subscriptions. I think if you look at their financials, they actually lose money on ever part of the business except the old subscriptions.
A lot of people are on an in-between plan, having cancelled the dialup portion but kept the online service through a cheaper plan. AOL made that free in 2006, but only if you notice and change your billing.
My parents had AOL dialup in the '90s, and when they got cable broadband around 2001 or 2002, they switched to AOL's $10/mo bring-your-own-access version, because they wanted to keep their email addresses and some stuff they used in AOL's client at the time. AOL made that free in 2006, but didn't switch you automatically: you had to call up and ask to switch to the free plan, which had become identical to the pay plan except for the $10/mo fee. I'm sure many people are still paying that $10/mo, either because they don't know the free plan exists, or don't realize it's identical.
1. People are stupid.
2. There's a lot of the US, land-wise if not population, that still has no broadband alternatives. Dialup is all there is.
3. See #1. That bundled set of applications which sorts out the wild, scary Internets for you is comforting to some.
Only some crappy "security" software for broadband users (I wouldn't call their subscription model for broadband users scam buts it is a bit shady to take 12 bucks a month for some discount coupons and "$750 Extended Computer Protection").
I have on occasion used Patch (I live about 30 miles outside a metro area on the border of suburb vs farming land). I don't read the site, but instead read a twitter feed of the local corespondent. She happens to be fairly good at filtering good community news. I'll be keeping her in my twitter stream (assuming she isn't let go) but I will think about that recording every time I start to click a link to patch.com from her feed or anywhere. I will probably just query the main terms from her tweets in a Google news search from here on out if I want to know more. Somethings should be handled privately even when the opportunity may be presented publicly. There is no value to any point that was presented by firing someone in that manner.
To me this is just arrogance and probably even irresponsible. If I employed someone in my company and if I could fire the person at a moments notice, then I believe the employee and his skills were not leveraged to the benefit of the company in the first place. I agree company's shouldn't create exclusive dependencies with employees but if nothing is affected by letting an employee go suddenly or if the employer didn't have to think twice before doing so, then the employee probably wasn't needed in the first place. Both the company and the employee should be invested in each other in terms of skill, effort, time and compensation. Not to mention that you just burned a bridge that you didn't have to.
I doubt that this call and the exchange that we're shown is all that there's to it. Having said that, if you're on a conference call and you say such a thing without context, you can expect it to get interpreted in ways it might not have been meant.
I jumped into another thread and said this already - the guy that was fired was responsible for a poor UX that was hated amongst all and ended up failing.
Contracts protect you in cases where the company doesn't want you or doesn't want to pay you as much. This can only happen when your value is marginal or the labor market for your work is oversaturated. This is not the case for most jobs.
I know I'm speaking in broad generalizations here, but I think this is largely the case.
How about if you're a psychotic asshole looking to spread terror in order to quell opposition? Random violence is a staple of terrorist tactics, and random firings is certainly comparable.
No. Never - never seen any advantage in it and it seems like a rotten thing to do.
I mean one response is just that if I'm managing a team of 100 people, I haven't delegated effectively. That I shouldn't be making decisions to fire anyone who I don't directly work with in some capacity. With 100 people, I don't think I can give them individually enough of my time to treat them fairly with that sort of decision. That's a call their more immediate manager should be initiating. Then I'd be able to look into it with time set aside for that person, to give them a much fairer treatment - but by its very nature that ensures that sort of approach excludes it just happening out of the blue.
I would never consider firing someone who I hadn't had at least one 1 on 1 conversation with about whatever the issue was. (Unless it was something ridiculous, like serious industrial espionage or something, but at that point you're calling the police on them rather than having a 'you could do better with this' conversation.) I've had that approach pay off as well, because sometimes it's honestly the person's manager that's more at fault, or they've some problem in their life that can be worked around - and a bad manager can cause a lot of damage before you find them out if you don't look into things.
#
My general approach to management is that everyone gets at least one warning - preferably not phrased as a warning at first, you should be offering feedback that's not just do this or you'll get fired as a regular thing. But however you set that mechanism up, if you don't give clear signals, then when someone screws up it's all on you in my book. Just bam, 'you're fired,' isn't something that people can realistically work with. Fire people whenever they mess up and by the end of it you're probably not even going to have anyone who was there who remembers what the first guy was fired for any more. That's not an efficient method to transmit knowledge.
Besides, it costs a lot of money to hire people - increasingly so as the skill of the person you're trying to hire goes up.
There's no call to be nasty, even when you've decided that unfortunately you can't work with someone, or they don't fit with the company or something. They'll remember that you hurt them, what good can come of that?
Making an example? If you make examples that your team doesn't agree with they'll just start looking for other jobs - at least if they're not trapped - that just makes you come across as a bitch, and if they do agree with you no example was needed.
You never know when that person's going to be working for a company you want to do business with, or someone's thinking of applying for a job opening you have, or you're thinking of going somewhere else. If you've hurt the person and they're asked, 'So, what was X like' you, probably, don't want them to be all: 'That woman was a total bitch, impossible to work with.' You don't want that sort of rep going around in the industry.
If the worst should come to pass, and someone has to be let go, I think a conversation needs to take place. Face to face with someone who's been working with them for a while ideally, (you shouldn't just get called into some stranger's office and given your marching orders. Barring their not being allowed to talk to you themselves, that's cowardice on the part of whoever's meant to be managing you,) and, most of the time, reasonably private. You probably don't benefit from making people lose face in front of their friends, and you don't want people to think you don't care about them.
There are, admittedly, some trade-offs as to whether it's going to have at least one other person semi-present. There are some people who I've known with anger-management problems, and I wouldn't feel safe alone in a room with them giving them bad news. At the very least I'd want my door open and to know there were some folks around who'd stop them if they decided to take it out on me.
But other than 'are you going to need a witness in case they make accusations?' and 'are you going to need someone there so you don't get attacked?' Yes, preferably in private. Seems like a bad idea to humiliate people if you can possibly help it.
What a dirtbag scum. What can you learn from a leader that loose it because someone was taking his photos. This CEO made a fool of himself and I can bet some people wont work with someone like that in the future.
This was not only embarrasing but unprofessional too. What was the reason he got fired? Real reason?
Wait what?! Am I being thick or something? He mentions several times that he doesn't care about information leaking, then fires someone for taking out a camera.
We had the meeting where only half the company was invited and the half that wasn't invited was let go. We had the VP that found out he was let go when his card key stopped working in the middle of the day. We had the employee lock himself in the office and refuse to leave. We had the contractor that was "let go" that laughed and just kept showing up for work. My boss that "let him go" was fired 3 weeks later. We had the guys that were let go but slipped through the cracks and nobody told them until HR sent them a packet. I saw the CEO fly into town just to fire my boss but she panicked and left before he got to the office and refused to answer her phones. Most of us kept all of our stuff packed in cardboard boxes, ready to walk out the door or change offices whenever people left. One friend kept a wall of ex-employee nameplates in his cube. The day I quit, I handed him my nameplate on my way to meet with my boss to resign, so everyone else knew by the time I walked out of his office.
The winners were two I didn't get to see. In some customer crisis, we hired a new guy with some special expertise on a platform and put him on a plane somewhere with a VP / Director of Development. They start talking on the plane and by the end of the flight, the VP realized he was so full of crap that he fired him, told him to not even leave the airport and go rebook his return flight back home.
The same VP hired another new guy but on his first day he went to lunch with other developers and somewhat joked about how he realized that it isn't what you do but what they think you do that gets you ahead in this business. He was fired 30 minutes after lunch.