[rrwhite]

I did not mean to imply that all firings are the result of employee incompetence or poor performance. Because that's clearly not true. There are often other factors that lead to a bad "fit".

And yes, the first thing you should do post-firing is examine your hiring process to see if it could have been foreseen and prevented. But in some cases it does come down to someone just not having the experience, the talent or the work ethic to meet the performance required. It's those cases, especially with tech workers, where founders are apt to ask "do I really need to provide severance to HIM (or her)". Writing at $20K check to someone to walk out the door is never an easy thing to do especially at a startup where that $20K could go a long way. That's what I was addressing here.

[rhizome]

But in some cases it does come down to someone just not having the experience, the talent or the work ethic to meet the performance required

This is all predictated on "some" cases? "On Severance (in some cases)?" From the way you describe it, some cases are those in which the employee was able to rook the entire hiring process despite their inability to do the job, but how did they get an offer in the first place?

This brings up a secondary point: is "the performance required" something that changed between hiring and the decision to fire, i.e. a leadership issue?

Without having illustrated these scenarios, it sounds more like "Ready, Fire, Aim," sweeping employees to the side when it turns out a little-informed guess was wrong.