I dismissed someone, and it was not because of COVID19

The cadence of delivery.

Last month, I dismissed the employment of a software developer who oversold himself during the interview phase. He turned out to be on the lowest rung of the software engineers in my company.

Not being good enough is not a reason to be dismissed. But not catching up fast enough, and being a blocker to the delivery of the product is one of the many reasons that had me pulling the trigger.

I am not the CTO, but with a system in place to ensure that I, or any managers, know who has been delivering excellent work.

The cadence of delivery

As an employee, you are judged by how quickly you complete the assigned tasks. You are also judged by how often your manager returns tasks to you because tasks are incomplete or that it failed to meet expectations.

Believe it or not, in my experience, the cadence of delivery of every employee is set in stone the day he/she joins the company. An employee that is self-motivated almost always has his tasks done on time. And almost invariably, without any issues.

Bad employees do not. And they will be dismissed.

An interesting effect in dismissing a poor performer always results in an increment in the team's productivity.

Being a boss

One of the hardest things about being a boss is that I am the same person that puts on the salesman game face when I have to convince a potential candidate to join the team; and also the same person that has to tell the candidate that he has to leave the company.

I used to avoid doing that, and the side effect of that is that I end up keeping rogues for far too long. These days, I acknowledge that I am not great at hiring, so I hire fast. And I try to fire faster. It is also why the company has a three month probation period for all employees.

Anyways, good to be back writing again.