Hard Goodbyes

The view from the other side of the mirror

I wrote a post earlier this year about being laid off on a couple of different occasions; the difficulties, lessons learnt and resilience gained:

Unemployee

In the light of recent news at dbt Labs and across many other MDS companies, as well as seeing many people I care about and admire affected, I thought it worth resharing this post, and also exploring the other side of the coin.

As I mentioned in my post above, I have been let go twice. I’ve had to be the one to let people go three times. On one of those occasions, it was in conjunction with being made redundant myself, which I had chosen in lieu of making another member of my team redundant. I wasn’t able to save both team members selected for redundancy by choosing to make myself redundant, and so one data scientist in my team also had to be made redundant. As I was in the same boat as the data scientist, and it wasn’t my choice to let people go in the first place, it didn’t feel as difficult to do it.

I arranged for them to meet a couple of interesting organisations, as they were a good member of staff who I liked working with and would wholeheartedly recommend. This was very much in the era where the rest of the economy was booming and hiring Data Scientists aggressively, so they found a role during their redundancy period. I even ended up hiring them again in another organisation I worked at further down the line.

It wasn’t painful to let them go, because I knew they were good and would get a new role almost instantly. It wasn’t my choice (and therefore I could recommend them to anyone) and I was being let go, too (even though that was my choice). The only tough thing was feeling like they’d taken a risk on joining my team and it had backfired…

The other two times were very different: on both occasions, I was joining a new company to lead a new team and members of my team had been hired ahead of me joining. This is probably the riskiest kind of hiring: the person hired hasn’t met their line manager and the line manager joining hasn’t met their new team member. Neither line manager nor hire has had a chance to choose each other.

The first of these two times was someone who, whilst being technically capable, didn’t like to communicate with the team and didn’t like anyone seeing their work until it was completed. I offered on numerous occasions for the team to collaborate or personally try to help with what they were working on, as sometimes it could take days (I could see they were writing hundreds of lines of code for something relatively simple), but to no avail. That, in conjunction with spouting off recommendations based on incorrect work for a business they didn’t know yet, was a final straw for a senior analyst during their probation.

After the exit interview, where they denied that any of the above had happened, my HR business partner suggested that they had thought this hire had been a parting joke left by my predecessor 🤯. I wish this was made up…

However, even with this situation and knowing without doubt that I’d made the right call, it was still really hard. It affected my mood and my sleep. I remember feeling relieved when I saw them elsewhere in the city at a new job.

The second time this happened, the candidate who had been hired as a senior in my team had applied for my role, but had been unsuccessful. However, as there had been a lot of turnover in the team I was joining, my line management there thought it was worth hiring someone they thought seemed good, anyhow. Again, hiring people for other roles into a team when they’d wanted the lead role is risky business. It is unavoidable that comparisons will be made between the two people; dissatisfaction on the part of the person overlooked for the lead role is much more likely. It’s just human nature - if you see someone (even someone good for the role) who you don’t see as obviously a better candidate, bitterness can creep in.

In this case, the person had an OK probation and I was talking to my HR business partner about passing their probation as I had seen some good things, but it wasn’t a clear cut decision. My HR BP advised me to extend the probation until I had seen the abilities and behaviours that I wanted, as the team member was, unbeknownst to me, on the highest possible level they could be and on the maximum of that salary band, too! I had asked for this information a little after joining, but my line manager had forgotten to pass the team over to me in the system…

I felt pretty good about the decision to extend the probation, as I genuinely wanted to see more and I felt they could do well given a bit more time. Unfortunately, communicating that didn’t go as planned: they were shocked and took it as an offence. This was a lesson for me in trying harder to communicate my intentions clearly, especially in a sensitive situation - I could have done better in this regard. However, it’s not certain that this would have changed anything.

I had been asked, by HR, to produce an assessment per skill or behaviour for someone at their level and had tried to do this fairly, based on what I had seen - I’m pretty open and shared with them, too. They spent the weekend in the document, disagreeing with everything I had put in there… I came in on Monday and chose to end the probation, as there was no real chance of seeing any improvement with that level of friction and lack of agreement on anything at all. At this point, they refused to leave the meeting room until they had called a friend who was a union representative elsewhere (we didn’t have a union at this workplace). I remember having to tell the other members of my team to hang out in the social area, to make it easier for them to clear out their desk and leave on their own.

Even though it had become clear that I had made the right call, and other members of the senior leadership team who had interacted with the individual told me as much, it was a really hard decision. I remember thinking about everything that had happened during the night after and thought about every possible thing I could have done better. When I ended up hiring a replacement for this person, this new team member passed their probation halfway through, exceeding everything we agreed to. The contrast was really clear and it took a weight off my shoulders as to whether I had done the right thing previously.

In both of these situations, I did the right thing in letting the two people go. However, it was hard and I lost sleep over it and had plenty of anguish. I really don’t like this part of leadership, but it’s a part of it nonetheless and a part you also need to excel at for the good of your org and team. To be honest, if it doesn’t cause you a great deal of anguish and cost you some sleep, it’s likely you aren’t taking it seriously enough.

This is why I’ve spent so long learning how to hire the very best I can and to manage teams to the best of my ability. I want to avoid being in a position where I have to let someone go, if at all possible. It’s so expensive and draining to hire the wrong people - in a way, I was lucky to be able to learn this from people I hadn’t hired myself. It’s made me so careful about who I hire:

Guardians of the Data

Bringing this into today’s context, I have some level of sympathy for the managers who are being asked to let go of great people who they took care in hiring and desperately want to keep. If it’s hard to let staff go who aren’t performing, it must be even harder when these staff members are actually great. The only consolation is that great people bounce back, and they will go on to do great things elsewhere. The arbitrary nature of this moment in their CV will soon be shown to be just that.

One of the harder things about letting people go who perform poorly, is wondering if they will bounce back or learn from the experience… will they be able to find a new role? Have you damaged them on a personal or financial level beyond the professional setback?

I know that the great people who are currently looking for a new role and professional home will prevail, but, nonetheless, I’ve collated a list of roles at associated companies that are open right now. I’ve tried to normalise the role titles a bit:

Dagster:

Dev Rel: https://boards.greenhouse.io/elementl/jobs/4432332003

SE: https://boards.greenhouse.io/elementl/jobs/4974027003

Hightouch:

SWE: https://boards.greenhouse.io/hightouch/jobs/4782625004

SWE: https://boards.greenhouse.io/hightouch/jobs/4782632004

Census:

AE: https://app.careerpuck.com/job-board/census/job/a7913854-2e52-4872-914e-ee2e63f3ca6c

Dev Advocate: https://app.careerpuck.com/job-board/census/job/72e52bf6-ba14-4b25-98e6-30175bacc583

SWE: https://app.careerpuck.com/job-board/census/job/86ddb238-a334-4bdc-815f-e1947732b195

Senior SWE: https://app.careerpuck.com/job-board/census/job/8785db04-c58a-4102-a414-26db73843826

Senior SWE: https://app.careerpuck.com/job-board/census/job/9d4c645a-28c0-4aff-8bb4-d537894e69ad

Count:

Junior SWE FE: https://count.notion.site/Junior-Front-end-Engineer-84821182ac73416c8f53b0c8faa71e63

SWE FE: https://count.notion.site/Front-end-Engineer-ff1716570c3a43e4820933b73044f79d

SWE Full Stack: https://count.notion.site/Full-stack-Engineer-44c46cf695cb46c2babbd1d7531344b1

Hex:

MLE (AI): https://hex.tech/careers/ai-engineer

SE: https://hex.tech/careers/customer-engineer

SWE: https://hex.tech/careers/fullstack-engineer

SE: https://hex.tech/careers/sales-engineer

SWE Tech Lead: https://hex.tech/careers/product-engineering-lead

Metaplane:

SWE BE: https://metaplane.dev/careers?ashby_jid=fede17fd-da19-4dfe-bc1b-4cb7ada6a4e6

SWE FE: https://metaplane.dev/careers?ashby_jid=98a309dc-696e-4237-86c4-f11498d33e1c

I can personally vouch for the quality of this engineering team!

Content Writer: https://metaplane.dev/careers?ashby_jid=fe294bc1-3e79-4de6-91fe-349f81f2df75

Monte Carlo:

Senior SE: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/montecarlodata/0b9623e5-62f3-4a7c-946a-0c13b153cec7

Castor:

Senior SWE: https://notion.castordoc.com/careers/senior-software-engineer

Senior DE: https://notion.castordoc.com/careers/software-data-engineer

AtScale:

SE: https://jobs.jobvite.com/careers/atscale/job/oCmNjfwO?__jvst=Career%20Site

SE: https://jobs.jobvite.com/careers/atscale/job/ohY18fw8?__jvst=Career%20Site

Cube:

Principal SWE: https://boards.greenhouse.io/cubedev/jobs/4064396005

Customer Experience Engineer (sounds kind of like CS/SE hybrid): https://boards.greenhouse.io/cubedev/jobs/4004639005

Deep Channel:

PM: https://www.deepchannel.com/careers/product-manager

PopSQL:

Senior SWE: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/popsql/9b30c9ba-183d-462d-aab5-e2fbe26764b4

Technical Content Marketing Manager: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/popsql/a5d8a954-2a7a-4ee2-a7bf-7f11c2be1ef0

Fivetran:

Staff SRE: https://www.fivetran.com/careers/job?gh_jid=5507329003

Staff SWE: https://www.fivetran.com/careers/job?gh_jid=5513792003

Staff SWE (Dublin): https://www.fivetran.com/careers/job?gh_jid=5506166003

Lead PM (Toronto): https://www.fivetran.com/careers/job?gh_jid=5568523003

PM (Toronto): https://www.fivetran.com/careers/job?gh_jid=5588585003

SE (Dublin): https://www.fivetran.com/careers/job?gh_jid=5600480003

Glean:

SWE FE: https://glean.io/open-roles/visualization-engineer

Principal SWE FE: https://glean.io/open-roles/principal-frontend-engineer

Senior SWE: https://glean.io/open-roles/software-engineer

Senior AE: https://glean.io/open-roles/analytics-engineer

Lightdash:

AE Advocate: https://lightdash.notion.site/Analytics-Engineering-Advocate-cf7812fed9c04459a77011490a7e5446

SWE: https://lightdash.notion.site/Full-Stack-Engineer-bae679c9bb4f46c0a787f40a6d7d8b16

Kestra:

Senior SWE: https://kestra.io/careers/senior-full-stack-engineer

Mode:

EM: https://boards.greenhouse.io/modeanalytics/jobs/5021723

EM: https://boards.greenhouse.io/modeanalytics/jobs/5025332

Prefect:

Senior SWE: https://boards.greenhouse.io/prefect/jobs/4873105004

Senior SWE: https://boards.greenhouse.io/prefect/jobs/4873104004

Secoda:

SWE (Toronto): https://www.workatastartup.com/jobs/56139

SWE (Toronto): https://www.workatastartup.com/jobs/59974

Select Star:

Senior SWE BE: https://www.selectstar.com/about-us?ashby_jid=6e9987bc-724d-47dd-a317-1675b700dddf

Senior SRE: https://www.selectstar.com/about-us?ashby_jid=f51d9173-2ffb-499a-9171-fda6eb69d297

Senior SWE FE: https://www.selectstar.com/about-us?ashby_jid=bf80df80-c911-4b92-a86a-2acf8f1790f0

Senior SRE: https://www.selectstar.com/about-us?ashby_jid=122d5e22-492b-4afe-a337-a8a312ec96a5

EM: https://www.selectstar.com/about-us?ashby_jid=f770ebf3-c940-40a1-88fd-9a672fdc891c

Content Strategy Lead: https://www.selectstar.com/about-us?ashby_jid=d0abd669-bbd8-4f00-959b-6f2e1747ad91

PM: https://www.selectstar.com/about-us?ashby_jid=6f1f0b06-4f65-4462-9247-36ae73fb5c2d