[SMFloris]

In the beginning, you are on an island, you have an idea to go on an adventure, so you start building a raft with the other guy on the island. The other guy has no building skills, but he procures food, water and wood. The resources on that island are dwindling but you manage to finish the raft just in time.

You begin to sail the raft, you start fishing while out in the open seas. You reach another island and sell the fish, figure out that is the way you can have an easy life since you can pay other people to procure food, water and wood with fish. You build a better boat, hire more people and repeat the process.

You now have a huge rowing boat that goes very far out at sea since there are no fish left close to land, you now fully depend on the people on that boat to make it alive to the next island. There are people who row, people who fish, people to cook, people that are on the lookout for fishing spots and islands.

Your partner notices a guy who eats more than the average rower on the boat, but rows less. You throw him overboard. A fire starts near the rowers, but the rowers continue rowing. Turns out the guy you just threw overboard he always put out fires. You find another rower, tell him to put out the fire. He throws water over it. It is now worse. You figure out the fire is the cook's fault for using too much oil. He only used so much oil because the lookouts thought fish oil is good for their eyes so they can see more ahead. You know this to be only partially true, but they don't seem to understand and even though the fire happened they still demand their food fried in fish oil.

You throw one of the lookouts in the water to make an example. The lookouts stop eating deep fried food. Now the people who fish complain they work too much. Turns out the deep fried food gave the lookouts energy to shout at the people who fish where to fish at. Now, the people who fish need to stop what they're doing and go to the lookouts for information. Because of all the extra effort the people are doing, you are now out of fresh water in the boat.

Congratulations, you now know how a CTO feels like.

[Folcon]

This makes me wonder, considering the cost of acquisition of talented staff why I don't hear about more large companies with lots of capital on hand requiring that people instead of being fired, just asking them to take a period of paid leave.

It would have to be for a while to shake out issues, but if you suddenly discover you need the person, then they're not gone. You also get to experiment with different team combinations to see if the problem was a management issue, or if they would be better suited in a different role?

Obviously you still need to fire people now and again, but this large scale firing followed by huge hiring cycles always seemed a bit odd.

[user5994461]

The bar to be fired in large bureaucratic companies is usually pretty high. Like you'd have to physically assault your coworkers or steal money from the company account.

It makes zero sense to keep people who are being fired, they are being fired for a reason.

If you're talking about normal employees. They can take holidays anytime (what's the holiday allowance in the US?). Large companies usually have a concept of sabbatical, you can take a large break (let's say 3 months) after some years of service.

[barthvr]

> It makes zero sense to keep people who are being fired, they are being fired for a reason.

The problem addressed here was "is my reason valid". If you fire someone for the wrong reason, and then everything crumbles, having them on paid leave for 1 month or 2 won't hurt the company financially, and allow to test "how are we doing when X is not there anymore".

[user5994461]

And that's exactly why middle managers in large companies have zero power to fire. They can't be trusted to fire for valid reasons so they don't get the ability to fire.

Gotta go through HR and due process, that typically sets the bar to assaulting coworker and stealing from the company.

[devdas]

Or you give people low performance ratings repeatedly.

[jokethrowaway]

There are some companies doing this. It is a way to uncover hidden dependencies and reduce the bus factor but also to uncover fraud.

[vasco]

And through it all I bet you wonder if:

1) It'd all be better or at least the same without any external interference from you

2) The positive outcomes to the business are more a result of external factors like market expansion, word of mouth, a new fad, rather than your own contribution

[jokethrowaway]

The impact you can make as a CTO is bringing an engineering perspective to the board and keeping engineers happy (either by doing it personally or by delegating to someone else, eg. a VP).

Both are important tasks because it's easy for business to start thinking of engineering as just a cost centre (which is the easiest way to make sure your company will never use technology efficiently to multiply its revenue) and because hiring engineers costs can be a significant part of your company spend

[czbond]

As an engineer speaking to someone who is clearly also an engineer - you're highly discounting the levered impact proper, high quality leadership makes on a business.

[vasco]

I put myself in those shoes and wondered what doubts I'd have about the contributions I could do. The OP was a great illustration of the chaos it can be. I wasn't saying that leadership has no impact, that's crazy.

[czbond]

I apologize if it took it that way - was an early morning, no sleep day.

[epsilonclose]

Sounds like a bad captain, entirely reactive and not proactive at all. Those people were brought onto the boat to perform these duties but were given no oversight? Why didn't the captain have any knowledge of the fires that were happening so often? The captain had no idea what was being used by the cooks? He didn't talk to the people who bought the fish oil? Never had a meal with any of the lookouts or fishermen?

The captain should be the one to jump overboard in your story.

[alexpetralia]

A wonderful parable on engineering complex systems.

[benibela]

So the lesson is to not throw people overboard?

[ricc]

> people to cook

Are they cannibals? :-D