Firing someone is never a pretty business. You can't expect it to go smooth and rational. This is a stressful moment for any employee. The least, as a manager, you could do is give them a sense of dignity and comfort by delivering the news in person. Yes, it may be uncomfortable for you, or people may talk crap behind your back, but this is where your qualities as a leader are tested. Let them speak out, process their grief. It's not about you, it's them whose lives are about to change. Them who have to bring the bad news home. Give them some slack. My advice is to worry less about your image and more about people you manage.
Funnily enough, if you read the extensive replies I've already written in this thread, you'll see that this decision was made out of concern for the employee based on the unique circumstances of our arrangement, and has nothing to do with my image.
If I was worried about my image, I would've fired her in person so that I could tell everyone "Oh me, oh my, I would NEVER fire an employee without a full honor guard and 21-gun salute!", and so that she couldn't tell anyone "Oh, that guy didn't even have the balls to fire me in person." I also wouldn't post about this on HN defending the executives of major multinational corporations, known worldwide for their abysmal IQs and inability to perform basic critical reasoning functions.
I'm honestly not seeing how opting not to do this in person can be perceived as "good for image". Can you clarify?
Like I said, I've fired people in person before and I'm not going to shrink from that duty if it's truly the best course of action. But I'm not going to insist on it at the cost of the employee's dignity just so that I can tell everyone "I have never fired someone in a non-sound-bite friendly manner".
The C-level that fired everyone by pre-recorded conference call most likely went through a similar dilemma, and I sympathize with him. I don't think it's an objectively bad way to fire a group of people. Is the alternative, that your peers start getting called into an office and told individually that they're being fired while you sit there in panic with continued access to corporate resources just waiting for your turn, really that much better just because there's some lackey that can stare into your soul and relay the message from corporate HQ? Or could the C-level be seen as a coward for not delivering the message himself and making a lackey take the blame?
I believe people have romanticized this process far too much. I don't believe a staredown is so obviously superior to alternate forms. I understand that you just said it is and that the only reason I didn't do it this time was because I was worried about my image (again, what?), but I don't find that to be a convincing argument. As I said elsewhere, I'd prefer to be fired remotely. A couple of the other guys in this thread have expressed that too. I felt that was the appropriate course in this situation.
It's not easy to be the boss and make these calls. Everyone is going to have an opinion without the information or perspective and there are people that are going to dislike you for the decisions you make, no matter what they are. It's part of the territory. It'd sure help hacker entrepreneurs if we dropped the PC line once in a while and had some real talk.
In my case, the reason I keep using Firefox is privacy. Chrome is trying too hard to enforce the walled garden on you and collect data. There's also one "little", but very telling point - you can not set a homepage in Chrome. I could not believe when I first discovered it.
> Sometimes we even receive requests to remove content 'from the Internet'
Today Google resembles the once dominating Internet Explorer of Microsoft. Except one thing - it's a great search tool. Which means it's going to be very hard to find a new "Firefox" [1] to provide a viable alternative.
[1] In case someone doesn't know, it was Firefox that spearheaded the break out of the IE monopoly.
It's not that easy. The site will also have to deny to remove the contents. I'm pretty sure SO would remove such content, simply because it's off-topic there.
I'm sure there is sub-exchange on stackexchange, where it's not an off-topic. And as soon as stackexchange share the IP with SO it will be blocked all over. Thanks for the idea.
Then, there's still the question whether SO will comply or not. Given that reports of suicide trigger more suicides than without, I wouldn't be surprised of SO community guidelines which discourage such content, even though it might otherwise be ontopic in that specific sub-exchange.
Maybe we should follow the money? Who profits from it? Those selling VPN access. But maybe the full VPN is not needed at all. See my other messages here.
It can possible be orchestrated by some corporate interests but I don't believe they are powerful enough to overrule entire IT sector interests. It really seems more like a blunder of inadequate policy implementation like it was done a few times before.
Expectedly, tptacek is all over the infosec thread, arrogantly dissuading the public from the notion of a possible involvement of the US intelligence community :)
Russia hijacked the plain, spoofed the satellite data, landed it in Baikonur and then buried under the ground.