[charmides]

To the author:

This does not add up. After they fired you and then had you fight to get your job back, you said they hired a "coach" to help you learn new skills. But at the end of this training, the coach reported to your boss that you "had a long way to go." It certainly does not seem like the coach was hired to help you out. It seems like it was just a backhanded way to get an assessment on you while you had your guard down.

To me, it seems like this company was just taking advantage of you and your youthful enthusiasm until they had no more use for you. By blaming yourself, I feel like you are drawing all the wrong lessons from this experience.

[habitue]

The new CEO didn't fire him, he basically gave him notice that they were hiring a new VP of marketing, and that he could be in the running, maybe with the help of a coach. Then after he didn't get the job, he quit.

It was a foreseeable sequence of events, from the point of view of the CEO, but he wasn't fired.

[sblank]

Yep

[dwd]

Yes, sounds like a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) which usually means they want you out but need documentation of you not meeting an arbitary KPI.

HR is never your friend.

[dba7dba]

When you are called into HR to undergo PIP (Performance Improvement Plan), you should just nod as they tell you about how they will help you improve and grow.

But the moment you walk out that door, start resuming, calling old contacts, and do anything to get a new job.

PIP is literally just a formality HR goes through to let you go eventually, and is just an axx covering move by the HR/company. When you are called into PIP, just consider yourself as let go.

edit: And I would NOT feel any gratitude for the company that they are somehow paying your salary even though you are pretty much an ex-employee. They are simply doing PIP only to cover their bottom.

edit 2: I don't know when this trend started, but HR transformed

BEFORE

It kept list of employees, made sure pay checks were handed out, had new hires fill out forms, handle lay off.

NOW

It sends emails about good sounding fun activities, request for filling out surveys, etc.

What really bugs me is, all the surveys (we want to hear from you so we can do better for you as a company), activities is just a smoke screen to not pay employees more.

Do you know how to make an employee feel happier? Pay more money. You know, the same thing CEO/major-shareholders/owners also like to get more of.

[dwd]

The sad truth is we as developers have enabled management to do away with even the formality of a PIP.

Monthly personal goals, sprints, burndown charts. Management has you agreeing to meet specific targets and performance goals. I can only see it getting worse in businesses that are happy to churn staff.

The surveys are insidious and just a way to gauge if there are people to hunt out and get rid of. Never answer one truthfully - tick the boxes and move on unless you have your exit already planned.

And we need more people to say just give me more pay - too much talk of work/life balance and employee perks. Where's the value of employee perks to my wife and kids? They'd rather more money to do things as a family.

[zild3d]

Agree on PIP, but HR is often your friend actually, it's just a pretty broad field that tends to be behind the scenes. A significant amount of HR is aimed at making a company great to work at - pay, benefits, culture, recognition, career growth, learning & development, etc

[jsjohnst]

> HR is often your friend actually

This is a dangerous POV and is very wrong. A “person in HR” might be your friend “right now”, but HR is never your friend. HR is there to protect the company. All those things listed later in your post are there to protect the company. It might seem like a nuance, but it’s a very important nuance that if you stepped back (like the person in the source article did about a different situation) and thought about, you’d understand.

[zild3d]

I'm not going to try to change your mind, was simply raising the point that it isn't as black and white as "HR is never your friend". I'm aware there are large swaths of companies where HR is simply there to protect the company, and certainly not your friend.

For what it's worth, being a cofounder of an HR tech startup I work closely with and know a lot of HR professionals, my fiance has an HR background, and our academic advisors we work with are doing some great research in the field. Many companies just don't partake in the newer emerging strategic HR practices yet and continue the stigma.

[jsjohnst]

You won’t convince me, so agree it’s a waste of your time. No matter how you try to spin it (“newer emerging strategic HR practices”), it’s fundamentally a fact that HR departments aren’t your friend. They can be very “friendly”, some can even try their best to look out for your interests, but ultimately the company’s interests will prevail otherwise the company won’t stay in business. As someone in HR, you should fully understand the legal minefield out there and why it’s so important for employees to keep a healthy separation.

[test1235]

I'm reading Developer Hegemony - it's quite interesting. The guy states HR is not there for you - it's (ultimately) there for the financial benefit of the company (makes sense). The employee benefits are baubles in lieu of cold, hard cash (with which you could choose to buy your own baubles, presumably).

[varjag]

Only as much as cost/benefit of all this helps the company. HR is not a union. It literally has "resources" in the name, said resource being you. Resources get written off, used up, sold and discarded as a matter of business practice.

[saiya-jin]

As others have written - HR is there to protect company from employees. I've been working in one company where HR people were actually nice, helpful and engaged in various activities and improvement, but those are rare (and I've been lucky).

Standard corporation has lazy, useless HR department that is there to hire you (with minimal effort on their side), fire you, and stuff mentioned above.

[joelx]

I agree completely with charmides.

I'm founder and CEO of a company with over a hundred thirty employees now and I have a strict policy not to hire anyone as a team lead or manager or executive from the outside. I always promote within and always reward people who've been committed. If no one is ready to be a team lead or manager, I have the team operate with that one until I spot someone who is ready.

I would highly recommend to everyone out there to never work for a hired gun CEO. Companies that are run by their founders are far more likely to succeed.

[kaspm]

This is too broad and general of a statement to make. Depending on the size of the organization, the work you're trying to do, the pipeline and network of employees you've worked with at other places, bringing in a leader from outside not only could be important for growing the company in a new direction but also provide an outside and objective perspective on a team that isn't performing. I have seen managers promoted from within with negative results and brought in from outside with great success. Don't remove a tool from your toolbelt as a leader unnecessarily.

[dba7dba]

If no one is ready to be a team lead or manager, I have the team operate with that one until I spot someone who is ready.

I've never been a ceo or a vp or team lead (probably never will be), but to me, it seems if an organization has no one inside being groomed to be the next team lead, manager, vp, I feel the ceo has failed at his job.

[beginningguava]

seems like it would beneficial to occasionally bring in fresh blood from different companies because they might bring ideas and strategies you hadn't thought of yourself

[johnkchow]

I’d caution against jumping to conclusions. The author did say that he was emotionally shut down and wasn’t intaking any of the coaching sessions. It’s very possible that the CEO/Coach knew that it wasn’t going to work out, but it’s also very possible that they wanted to see the author succeed and prove them wrong.