Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People (2020)

That&#x27;s excellent advice that many have learned the hard way...<p>Honestly even as a non-manager it&#x27;s a very bad idea. When I was a junior one of my colleagues was called to the manager&#x27;s office. I assumed it would be for some mundane project scheduling or whatever, so I jokingly said &quot;you&#x27;re getting fired&quot; as he was going there. And he was.<p>This is one of these memories that come back to haunt you late at night when you&#x27;re trying to sleep...

As a more general advice - person in position of power should not joke about causing harm. Whether is is manager joking about firing employee, stronger person joking about beating up weaker one or parent joking about throwing child out of house when they misbehave. This kind of humor works only when it is coming from weaker position and even then only in certain situations.

No one told me this prior to becoming a manager, and I did make this mistake once and immediately regretted it.<p>It seems like obvious advice, but the circumstances where this sort of thing could happen are described very well in the article.<p>I revert to humour in awkward situations, like a lot of people, but I quickly realised that there are some things that you can’t joke about when in this position.<p>Thankfully I don’t <i>think</i> the team member took any offence by it (although how would I know) - we had a good rapport and relationship, but I immediately realised my “joke” could be taken so many different (wrong) ways that I made a conscious decision to be much more careful after that.<p>Like many things in life, it seems blindingly obvious in retrospect but not necessarily when you’re caught up in the moment.

Then there are those bosses who do it on purpose, to just screw with you. I had one boss who was upset because we both submitted to present at a conference (VMworld) and I was selected, but he wasn&#x27;t. He then declined the business paying for the trip, so I paid my own way, then he arrived at the conference, slipped past the guard the day I was presenting (I was first panel of the day and did a dry-run) and stepped up to a group of us talking after I had just finished and said, casually, &quot;whew, what a long call I just got off, we were talking about your replacement.&quot;<p>I remember looking at the VMware guys I was with and their eyes were bugging out like WTF, did he really just say that. By this point I was used to his crap and kindof let it roll off me. After we got away one of them asked if I was okay and said screw the presentation--he&#x27;d go introduce me to some people :D I talked him through it and did the presentation anyway.<p>This boss was definitely toxic--he relished psych games, and at one point handed out copies of &quot;The art of War&quot; so we could all &quot;brush up&quot;--and as much fun as I was having working there (not because of this stuff), I finally did leave within a few months on my own terms. Never have I worked with anybody as toxic as that.<p>(After I returned I asked the CTO about the call the boss was on where they &quot;talked about my replacement.&quot; The CTO scoffed at it, and said that call had no such conversation. In followups my boss backpedalled and said he just meant because I was going away for a few weeks and who would cover me during that time--of course that&#x27;s what he meant).

Likewise, don&#x27;t attempt to comfort people about their position when you don&#x27;t actually know how likely they are to get fired.<p>I knew someone who had done this and the person was fired <i>that day</i>.<p>I&#x27;m sure he believed it, too, or he wouldn&#x27;t have said it. But he apparently didn&#x27;t have all the facts. He regrets saying it and told the story a few times while I worked with him.<p>On the flip side, I worked with someone who was doing poorly in their job (after having done better in the past) and tried to help them keep their job.<p>The longer it stretched on, the worse they did.<p>In the end, they lost their job and I found out afterwards that they thought we were attempting to gather enough data to fire them, when in reality there were a few of us that were actively trying to help them keep it, and even management didn&#x27;t want them gone, they just wanted them to perform adequately again.<p>I often wonder if I should have been clear about the risk to their job, or if that would just have been seen as a threat instead. At this point, I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;d do anything different.

Don&#x27;t Joke &lt;about most things&gt; is a good advice in general for management and leadership. You have to assume people will read into most of the stuff you say as you are their primary information conduit for anything related to workplace.

It&#x27;s weird, I have worked at many organisations - and at almost none of them did my manager have the ability to fire me. Is this an American thing?<p>In most of these orgs, getting rid of someone is kind of hard work, usually involving a lot of HR. A manager would have much more luck getting you moved to a different team.

Ok, that&#x27;s nice. I&#x27;m sure some people do it carelessly but lets at least be honest and acknowledge that many also do it deliberately. It&#x27;s an easy and cowardly way to assert your dominance. If you get called out on it, and you won&#x27;t, you&#x27;ll just say you were joking. When you&#x27;re not called out on it it&#x27;s a easy way of reminding people that you can do it. Maybe not now but maybe in the future when you&#x27;re not feeling so generous.<p>I remember a job interview where the interviewer launched into a story, unprompted, about firing someone. Didn&#x27;t express any regrets or sympathy for the person. That interview was over that second. Maybe that person was the most deserving person in the world to get fired but just the fact that he thought it was something to be discussed with an interviewee spoke volumes.

Extremely important advice. Add to that: push upper management for change details, keep timelines and punctuality, define delivery, be up front on status and results, go home at a reasonable hour, take people to lunch or otherwise spend time with them, make your team appointments your number one priority, and praise publicly&#x2F;coach privately.

Here&#x27;s another one that&#x27;s a bit less obvious: anytime you&#x27;re scheduling a 1x1 with a report, ALWAYS mention the reason for the meeting. You might think it&#x27;s obvious or that it&#x27;s just a normal meeting, but you have no idea how the other person will take it.

I think this falls under the general &quot;don&#x27;t threaten the relationship.&quot; Whether it&#x27;s joking about firing, saying &quot;maybe we should just get divorced&quot;, joking a child was an accident etc. When things get stressful people often reevaluate comments in their new emotional state and what might have felt like a joke could become a threat. Subsequently instead of working to solve a problem for a situation they trust, people often work for self preservation.

I run a Mastodon instance and every time one of my users posts a really, really terrible pun there is <i>such</i> a strong temptation to say &quot;oh god that was terrible, you&#x27;re banned forever&quot;. And then I stop and think about how a few of the people on there have some <i>really</i> bad social anxiety, and I find some other way to say &quot;holy shit that was a terrible pun, well done&quot;.<p>It&#x27;s a similar thing, I think. I&#x27;m unexpectedly in a position of power over my friends and I want to efuse it with jokes.

I feel that it&#x27;s sad this even needs to be advice. I&#x27;d think it should be obvious, but we miss &quot;obvious&quot; things, every day.<p>Management is, way too often, treated as a &quot;privilege,&quot; and a &quot;reward.&quot;<p>I was a manager for 25 years. I never felt &quot;privileged,&quot; and I considered it a &quot;curse.&quot;<p>I hated every damn minute of it, but I kept doing it, because I am a control freak, and couldn&#x27;t trust anyone else to do a better job. I also avoided getting promoted, because I didn&#x27;t want to leave my team in the hands of the other managers I knew.<p>Most of my peers and superiors provided object examples in what not to do.

My advice for new programmers: Don&#x27;t use expletives in any log message, debugging alert, or even code comments. The chance of this coming back to haunt you is not worth the momentary satisfaction it gives you.

I always laugh when I remember my old manager calling a meeting where he talked about our product not being profitable and us needing to pull out all the stops to fix that, including reducing the headcount, and then being shocked and angry that someone had started a &quot;rumor&quot; about layoffs. He had meant through attrition, but it was a misinterpretation that I think should have been predictable in context. If you&#x27;re in a position of authority you have to be careful about what messages you send.

It is a very good advice. The general advice is really to be professional in the workplace. Don&#x27;t make a joke, unless it is during lunch and you are trying to tell a <i>real</i> joke.<p>Don&#x27;t use silly variable names, or add jokes or profanity into your code or documentation.<p>Sooner or later it will surface and there is NOTHING quite as embarrasing as showing a unknown third party or a manager something on the screen that screams immaturity.<p>That doesn&#x27;t mean you shouldn&#x27;t be able to have fun at the workplace, because you should. Also it makes life at work much easier if everyone has fun- just be professional and respectful.<p>Also, sometimes you do slip up. Don&#x27;t be afraid to apologize. It is ok. It is human to make errors, but learn from your mistakes and move on.

Watch Band of Brothers for more solid leadership advice. My favorite: &quot;Never put yourself in a position where you can take something from these men.&quot;

Isn&#x27;t joking about firing people (not to mention actually firing people) one of the most common ways that managers assert and reinforce their dominance in the social status hierarchy?<p>In most companies, managers&#x27; greatest power (besides controlling subordinates&#x27; movement, actions, privacy, and access to amenities such as light, heating&#x2F;cooling, quiet environments, restrooms, etc.) is their largely unlimited power to simultaneously deprive subordinates of their livelihood, health insurance, social relationships, and social status.<p>Ed Zitron suggests that maintaining this social dominance and control over subordinates is typically the underlying (and primary) reason why managers want employees &quot;back in the office&quot;:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ez.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;the-work-from-home-future-is-destroying" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ez.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;the-work-from-home-future-is-destr...</a>

Something I learned the hard way at the student newspaper is that the word &quot;Fired&quot; has some very strong psychological implications in US English -- it implies someone no longer has a job because of something bad they did.<p>We got some strong negative feedback about a headline saying that people had been &quot;fired&quot; when the story was that a kind of lab technology had become obsolete and a number of lab technicians had been laid off. I had signed off on the headline, was responsible, and have never forgotten.<p>People take their jobs very seriously; it&#x27;s the thing we choose to do -- or have to do -- instead of being with our families and friends. And &quot;fired&quot; is one of the strongest words in our language. We need to be sure we understand what we are doing when we use it.

My initial reaction was that&#x27;s so obvious that surely it doesn&#x27;t need to be said. Then I remembered the first two people I ever hired (who were friends) and that I made that joke within the first two weeks.<p>Nothing bad came of it, but it does show how easy it is to do.

Better advice - rent The Office and do the exact opposite of everything Michael Scott does.<p>(No throwing stars or nunchucks either.)

There is an old adage- there are hidden truths in humor. Do you want to plant that &quot;truth&quot; on someone?

My experience is, never state your powers. People already know your reach, but sometimes, they don&#x27;t. It happened to me in a multinational ecommerce giant where employees started to feel they were bosses. The relationship with the managers started to scalate badly, there was no respect at all. The feeling back then was &quot;what, are you gonna fire me?&quot; and so on. Projects went crazily bad and devs blamed management, when management was totally crippled. Instead joking or stating my power, I went to my boss and asked the head of the guys causing problems. My boss asked me if I could just let it pass, and I did it, 4 times. Until I said it was me or them. Then my boss asked me to do what i wanted. What I did, instead of firing them, I moved them out of the team to a newly created useless team. They were shocked, because I didn&#x27;t fired them. They bragged about they now have their own special team, lmao, i remember how they&#x27;ve believe they gonna change the company, until 2 months of nothing todo from their side, no other teams wanted them, no other teams wanted even to share projects with them. They came back to my teams begging to join again, they will do everything is asked for, no more nagging, etc. I think it was better than fired them, to be honest.

Oh man, I had to sit through something like this one time. I was at a resort in the Pacific with my spouse. It was on a tiny island, and there were 2 restaurants that were the only places you could eat. One was a moderately priced restaurant you&#x27;d go on most nights, and the other was a very fancy restaurant that only sat 8 people at one large table, so you had to book it the day you got to the resort as it always filled up. The chef made the food right in front of you and you got to meet and interact with a few other couples at the resort.<p>The chef was a young woman of color, and the resort manager, and older white woman who was everyone&#x27;s boss was from the country that had colonized the island. The boss decided to insert herself into the dinner because some friends of hers were staying at the resort and were at the restaurant that night. She dominated the conversation the entire night, and repeatedly made jokes about firing the chef. It was incredibly awkward and made an otherwise fantastic meal horrible. We wrote a letter to the resort about how awful the experience was. I don&#x27;t know what eventually became of it, but I hope it made some sort of difference.

I usually do the opposite. Sometimes when someone I manage asks me how things are going, I jokingly tell them I&#x27;m trying my best not to get fired. I find it helps break the ice, and shows them that other people are struggling with that same insecurities. Reading some of the comments on here I&#x27;m now concerned that such comments might also amplify a general latent fear of getting fired, so I&#x27;ll probably stop doing this.

People in positions of authority often don&#x27;t realize how outsized the impact of their words are. As peers, things people would take as jokes now are taken much more seriously. Employees will read between the lines on anything said, body language, etc from their management. It&#x27;s important to reinforce team security and trust, and be very self aware about how you sound.

&gt; When people get promoted to manager their former peers become direct reports. It’s awkward.<p>Don&#x27;t do this. Promote and put them over another team.

What about quitting? I always joke about quitting

This is excellent advice. I have witnessed this on several occasions, and it&#x27;s always cringe-worthy to witness and harmful, if not to the recipient, then to one or more observers, who more often than not have to suffer in silence. My most benevolent interpretation is that this is just a low-effort attempt at humour, poorly judged and which has gone wrong.<p>It doesn&#x27;t take much thought, really, to consider that the office may provide employees a welcome change of scene from their own swirling domestic situation, and to have one leak into the other like this may be quite upsetting.<p>I have promised myself that if&#x2F;when I witness this again, I will take the opportunity to tell the manager in question that his&#x2F;her remarks were damaging to their own standing, and that they would do well to apologise ASAP, be that in private or in public.<p>Be a leader of people and times [1], not simply a manager of issues and tasks.<p>[1] as in, &quot;experiences&quot;

Oof, I feel this. I&#x27;ve made so many dumb mistakes in management gigs, which is normal and just a part of learning any skill, but it&#x27;s so much more painful when your dumb mistakes are with other people and their jobs. It&#x27;s not like leaving out a comma where you just feel silly for a second, recompile, and immediately triumph and move on. No, now your mistakes hurt other people&#x27;s feelings, create awkwardness, diminish morale... although the upside is that if you can deal with your mistakes skillfully, you (somewhat paradoxically) end up strengthening relationships and your team. But jeez, becoming a new manager is an act of serious courage and humility. (And if it doesn&#x27;t feel that way at first, it will soon whether you like it or not!)

The same advice applies to all managers, not just new ones.

sorry for folks working under this at-will employment where managers can just fire someone. In Germany, it involves consultations with HR, workers council etc. before you can fire someone. Most tech companies use packages to get rid of people.

At my last job there was a chatbot with a !fire command. That would track how many times it had been used on a given subject. &#x27;chatbot fires printers for the fifth time!&#x27;<p>It was incredibly toxic when applied to humans.

One of my favorite bosses joked about everything and was totally irreverent, even on topics of firing.<p>Everyone loved them because they did it with a candor that was always very obviously not serious it was disarming.<p>Given the nature of the work we did was very high risk, the disarming was welcome. Being fired was nowhere near the worst case outcome if we didn&#x27;t do our jobs well, so joking about anything was fair game if it helped relieve some tension.<p>Be careful not to create environments where people have to add walking on eggshells to their already long list of difficult responsibilities.

Along the lines of this advice, I&#x27;ve been trying to find an article I read at some point in the past with advice that sounded like:<p>&gt; On day 1 of a new hire&#x27;s employment, I explain what it will look like if and when I come to fire them. I explain that I will be negotiating their severance and here&#x27;s how it will look...<p>Does this ring any bells with anyone? I have this article lodged in my brain as being a great conversation to have with someone on day 1, but have since never been able to find the article again.

Previous discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23477400" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23477400</a>

When I had my first stint as a manager (way too young to be one IMO) I learned quickly that jokes from manager guy had to be VERY innocuous. Puns are fun, but nothing about work that someone might be sensitive to. Keep the jokes themselves postive-ish. Know the room very well before you tread anywhere else.<p>It&#x27;s just way too easy to send the wrong message.<p>As a manager your words have a great deal of WEIGHT regardless of your intention.

At one of my previous jobs, managers would leak information about potentially not renewing contracts as &#x27;person X has decided to quit&#x27;.<p>It used to be quite awkward to meet person X at a bar and ask them why they were changing their job when this was the first time they heard about it.<p>Turns out that toxification of workplace is better at getting rid of people than going about it legally.

Joke about being fired yourself, never about canning lower level folks unless you get to that sort of banter relationship with them.<p>I trend more for the joking line of &quot;hey once you move onward and upward be sure to send me your consulting rate cause we&#x27;ll still need you&quot;

I think the advice is good but too narrow. The problem is calibration of jokes. I saw managers joke in very bold ways and it was totally fine but also saw managers using humor as passive-agressive initiative of an attempt to downplay someone&#x27;s work.

As a manager you are never allowed to forget that:<p>- different cultures have different meanings for the same things, so you will be misinterpreted lots of times<p>- most people have no sense of humor, so joking with them is a waste of time<p>- anything you way will eventually be used against you<p>It is a very sad world.

I love advice like this - it is clear, easy to remember, and simple to apply.

The few times I have heard a manager joke about firing someone, my immediate though was &quot;oh, this person is completely unqualified to be in charge of anyone and I should start looking elsewhere&quot;.

Weird thing is I worked at a few places and we all used this joke on each other managers, etc and I never felt burned by it- didn&#x27;t seem to bother peers either.

The title reminds me of the office episode.

More generally, never make jokes to colleagues about things that directly effect their income or job security.

I have made this mistake, I think the damage was between none and low but I still regretted it.

Important advice. Often a red flag about other potential problems too.

the cofounder did a joke like that to me and I must say it was one of those shit moments of being an employee. I hate everytime i need to engage with him since then.

Related marriage advice: don&#x27;t joke about divorce.

I don’t think it’s good for employees to joke about either. I worked with a guy that was constantly half joking about getting fired, layoffs, etc. It’s a real drag to hear about all the time.

I think you should be able to joke about literally anything.<p>Context matters though so you should not be doing it all the time or to everyone. But for me personally, almost no joke is too far.