You're Fired, Stupid!

What the fuck ever happened to firing people that couldn't do their goddamn jobs? These days, thanks to some product lines being EOL'ed, we're getting all sorts of idiots in our group. In this case, management's heart is in the right place--they're trying to re-assign people rather than simply laying them off just because their product died. I can even go along with trying to train or transition existing developers to new technologies they've never worked with. God knows that if Java went belly up tomorrow and C# became the shit, I'd like a chance to transition to a new group before being laid off. However, I certainly wouldn't expect it and you can be damn sure I'd bust my ass trying to get up to speed on the new technology. This group of shit-wits we have working on my team have been here seemingly forever, and they still can't wipe their own asses. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against stupid people--the world needs Visual Basic programmers, too.

Here's something I think every manager should do. If you know who the truly great people are on your team, ask them separately to pick one person that should be fired. If you get the same answer from each, think seriously about firing that person. They're dragging down your talented people and you can usually hire someone better for the same money. If your talented people balk at the idea of firing just one you might need clean house. I would recommend doing it one at a time. There is something to be said for having even an idiot on staff. However, now that you have identified them as being an idiot, delegate only simple tasks to that person. If you don't really know who the talented people are on your team, then you have no business managing them and probably work at the same company as I do.