You fired the most talented employee. I hope you are satisfied now

Original author: Tony Robinson
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Recently I had a chance to read an article entitled “ We fired the most talented employee. This is the best decision we have ever made . ” [A very popular article that received a lot of positive ratings on Medium - approx. per.]

Let's sit down, you and me. Need to talk. If you have not read the article by reference, then take 10-15 minutes and read, soak it in its entirety.

Ready? Excellent. Now we will analyze this text, because it means much more than what is written there. If you read the article, then you understand that the author describes the problem employee under the assumed name “Rick”. Rick is a local genius with a huge amount of knowledge in the subject area, he is one of the key developers of the product.

At first glance, this is a story about a techie who imagines himself to be God's gift to the company. He decided that executives should worship the land on which he walks and be grateful for his presence alone, and management kicked him out the door because his reputation cashed checks that the talent could not pay for.


TL; DR - a summary of that article

Star sickness is found in almost any work imaginable. If you are not familiar with this phenomenon, then a person suffering from star fever is a character who is confident that his shit does not stink, that he is the best and that it is below his dignity to cooperate and / or treat others normally. Sometimes he does a good job and delights his colleagues, but in reality they are difficult to manage, it’s hard to control and fit into the dynamics of a group work process. Like real rock stars.


In information security, there is an unbearable problem with rock stars, but this is not only an information security problem.

Personally, I think that if you find such a person and conduct an interview with him, regardless of the level of his talent, you should not waste time on him, due to the loss of morale and the decline in teamwork that he will bring to the team. This is exactly what the article said - how Rick ignored the gliders and belittled his colleagues. And how labor productivity took off when Rick was fired - all together made efforts to save the situation! The author tells all this so that you hate Rick and say: “Yes! Down with this guy! It looks like management has finally grown eggs and sent this rock star away! I would work with such guys! ”


Look at my story! I will use pop culture character names, memes and all sorts of crap to hook the audience! Uiii!

But if you carefully read the article, then pay attention to several problem areas along the way:

“Every time someone had questions about the code or needed help with solving a problem, they went to Rick. Rick had a huge white board in his office especially for this purpose, always mottled with not completely erased remnants of old discussions.

Every time a particularly difficult problem arose, Rick dealt with it. ”

That is, from the very beginning we can say that the company developed a culture of dependence on Rick. Here is our superstar who solves all problems, and everyone is well.

Where is the documentation?

Where are the meetings to discuss these problems and how to solve them?

Oh, they don’t tell us anything about this, probably because management was too short-sighted. After all, if the staff is a superstar that solves all the problems, then why bother with documentation and / or continuing to work, if he dies or is hit by a bus or an earthworm swallows, or he finds a better job somewhere else?

If you read between the lines, then you can understand that the management graciously laid all the problems on Rick’s shoulders and didn’t worry that Rick and / or the whole team did not take the time to document the problems and / or solutions.


Here, Rick is more like Tyrion Lannister. Very smart and able to solve any problem. We hope so far no problems with alcoholism.

“Soon, Rick stopped attending gliders. He did not have time for them, because he had to write too much code.

Rick closed his door. No one else approached the board. "Rick no longer had time to train someone, because he himself had to solve too many problems."

Where was the management during all this? Where are the metrics / metrics? In fact, what I found out for all the time I worked in IT and information security is that the bosses need indicators.

Does anyone care that Rick misses the gliders?

Nobody measured open / closed tickets?

No one has documented the problems and their solutions?

No one noticed that Rick was driving, gaining more and more work?

Of course, they did not notice this, like most bosses who do not care about such things. Everything works, progress is obvious, and our little rock star saves us money so as not to hire outside contractors to outsource, so go ahead in full swing!


What none of Rick’s executives did was not wonder what the hell was going on.

“On the project’s dashboard, the green flags changed to yellow. Yellow turned red. The red lights began to blink. One by one, the status of the tasks changed to “Difficult”. Everyone was waiting for Rick. "
“Rick stamped the code faster than ever. He worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day. "

So, Rick took a much larger load than he could handle, and in addition to this worked on a 12x7 schedule.

No one said anything when he noticed that Rick remained in the office or remotely connected during off hours and on weekends?

The management did not intervene and did not demand that Rick step back and begin to document his actions?

None of the bosses or managers checked Rick’s loading with tickets and decided that it should be distributed among other employees?

And besides everything else, the leadership allowed this garbage to last for two whole years ?

In what clouds was management soaring?

Where were the Timlids?


In such a situation, I always want to ask where the leadership was. But if it is a startup of a silly Silicon Valley [in the original Silly Valley - approx. lane.], then they probably puffed with Juicero sachets, or something like that.

“We sat down and talked with Rick about his role in the company ...”
“How did he react?

The only possible way: Rick exploded.

Rick did not want to participate in this farce. If we do not appreciate his genius, then these are our problems, not his. "Rick suggested that within a few months, we crawl to his knees, begging us to return and save us."

Imagine that for months, maybe years, you have been considered the main and reliable developer of the company. Maybe even responsible for a key product. It is not known how long you work on a 12x7 schedule. This is hardly reflected in your salary. Nobody appreciates this, and the load continues to grow and grow, until the grotesque monster of terrible hacks and undocumented code threatens to get up and strangle you, like a Frankenstein monster.

However, you are coping.

You are in control. You can then come back and fix these hacks. You can remove these patches, improvisational patches - and replace them with a strong quality code that you will really be proud of. After all, already some parts of the code that you once wrote become incomprehensible to you. We will come back later, disassemble it and correctly document it. All that is needed now is to deliver the product to RTM / GA, and then you can return to it and how to process it. They need me. My work is important. I have to finish it. I have no right to make a mistake. We are ending funding. I can’t lose this job. Living at $ BigCity is too expensive for me to fail at work.

What if it doesn’t work out?

How can I rise?

Will I be able to?

You do not know the answers to these questions, and now you are invited to a meeting with the leadership and they say that all your work is scrapped and everything starts from scratch. What will be your reaction? And do not make a fool of me that you would accept the offer with self-control and courtesy. That you have nothing against the fact that all your work is thrown into the trash, all these days of continuous hacking with 12-hour shifts are thrown away in a couple of hours. That everything was in vain.


The caption on the illustration: “The guard looks at you with a worried, disturbing look, like that man who must explain to his paralyzed daughter that her dream of becoming a ballerina will never come true.”

I can’t say for you, but personally, I would explode with the fury of a thousand supernovae. I could express what I do not mean. Could make comparisons and use epithets that are ... not entirely accurate. Wear work can become unbearable for a person’s mental and physical health, and instead of solving problems like adults and can hint to Rick that he should not be the only supporting core of the organization, you immediately announce his dismissal, because it is easier for the company .

How many days and weeks did he work in 12-hour shifts?

How much did he miss family dinners, birthdays, weekends, and so on?

Does he have a family?

Are there friends outside of work?

Beloved?

Children?

The culture of startups does not intend to ask such questions, because the culture of startups (and most IT culture in this regard) does not involve worrying about your well-being. Only about the results of your work and about limiting your liability in case you have to be fired.

I was fired earlier in situations that I think are not entirely fair. And although it’s a great feeling to break out of an environment that doesn’t like your work and / or where people do not what you think is right, there’s also a not so pleasant feeling of inadequacy and a terrible brand - the need to explain at the interviews why left their previous place of work on such unfavorable conditions.

The feeling of freedom begins to slowly disappear as the balance in your savings account decreases (given that the author and his company are in California, where the cost of living is absurdly high, account balances decrease much faster than we would like) and quickly turns into fear, then when you begin to be haunted by those issues that arose while working in the company:

Can you find a job in a timely manner?

Are these the very events that will break you?

Why did they fire you if you gave them everything?

Why didn’t anyone fight to save you?

They describe what happened to Rick as the story of the transformation from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde , his gradual degradation. Obviously, colleagues noticed this. Maybe they even informed the management about his statements and unwillingness to work with others. Those could nip it in the bud. They could tell Rick to step back and share tasks with others.

The article does not specifically indicate what management did or did not do after difficulties, but judging by the tone, it continued to put problems on Rick. This led to an increase in pressure. At the same time, they did not allow or advise Rick to take time to rest in order to recover and / or redistribute the load.

Instead, they drove Rick like a horse, squeezing all his talent and abilities out of him, and when he considered his work to be harmful, they kicked him in the ass for the benefit of the company's performance. How brave! How heroic!

The original article states that dismissing Rick was the best decision they have ever made, but in the end the company lost a person with a lot of specific subject knowledge who worked with clients to prototype their requirements. In the end, they will have to release the worst quality product with even greater effort, because they need to reinvent Rick's work by complaining about shitty code. All this time they completely did not pay attention to the burden that a man wore to keep all this together.

And this is instead of an article about how they prevented an employee from falling into permanent burnout through timely intervention, outstanding teamwork and competent management - something that IT employees, info-security specialists and developers REALLY wanted to hear, they decided to concentrate on the toxic environment and problems that seem to stem from Rick. Instead of looking for the root cause (hey man, what's bothering you?), They chose a quick and easy method (hey Rick, get the hell out of here!). As usual, as far as I can tell.

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