Should show him Episodes 7 and 8 of Season 4 of The Office.
Essentially, if his second/third/fourth jobs are affecting his first one, he needs to quit the others or quit the first.
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I have failed.
Unfortunately, the final firing power didnât lie with me, but the person did eventually get let go. It took a while and didnât happen until I had moved on to another company myself.
Thereâs plenty of people you can put back on track, but some people just arenât cut out for it.
The good news is from your brief description, it sounds like this may be a case of low effort rather than low skill. If he gets scared enough about job security, he might put in some extra effort and genuinely improve.
If heâs already putting in 200% effort and still struggling to meet basic goals, then you have a more serious problem.
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I once did this. He didnât become a great worker, but he did meet minimum standards. I didnât scare him with threats of firing, i impressed upon him that his failure impacted the rest of us, and he liked the rest of us (and me, his boss) enough that he didnât actually want to leave us stranded or make us work overtime.
I also once inherited a worker who had an incredibly bad review from his prior manager but who was completely fine. Again, not a stellar employee, but he solidly met expectations, and i liked working with him. As best as i can tell, he rubbed the other manager the wrong way due to having a lot of success with exams (while not being a stellar performer). So it might not be as bad as you have been led to believe. You might want to start by discussing his prior review with him and telling him you want to see for yourself. Maybe youâll be pleasantly surprised.
I know of many actuarial types fired for poor performance.
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I think it could have been handled much better than it was, and a big issue was the timing caused by the annual cycle. The time for a conversation was summer of the year-of-poor-performance. [yes, my focus was elsewhere most of the year, and I dropped the ball on some projects that summer]. It also was a conversation that occurred with my former and current manager (we were transitioning managers in the department at the time).
By the time the conversation actually occurred, it was a bit of a gut punch, as my performance had been better than fine for nearly half a year at that point. But the 1/1-12/31 calendar means the feedback for my prior year was poor.
My changes were all internal; I was also in the middle of losing 60 lbs, and finally learning a foreign language thatâd been on my to-do list for 15 years. Iâm sure there are people in HR who view my PIP as a success, but it felt like an absolutely useless process to me, and the loss of remote work for 3 months was annoying.
I understand that there are formal talks that get documented for HR on some regular schedule, but I donât get why your manager didnât talk about the problem when they were happening, and I would have expected the annual review to be of the form: âI have to give you this low annual mark and shitty raise because of your poor performance at the start of the year, but I want to commend you on turning it around, and if you stay on this track both of those are going to be a lot better next year.â
I usually say that if you learn something new at the annual review, I havenât done my job as a manager during the year.
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Thanks for sharing, and glad things turned around!
It wasnât a surprise to me (I tend to be rather self-aware of my performance; maybe not in the moment, but at least in reflection), but yeah, the formality of the annual cycle has annoyed me many times.
IC level or higher ups? I know of only one off the top of my head, came into my org very high up (my bossâ bossâ bossâ boss I think, could be misremembering the exact structure) and was fired less than a year later for basically not knowing anything and being generally incompetent (at least that was the water cooler talk that filtered down to me).
Iâve seen actuaries fired from near-entry-level through experienced IC through higher-up for poor performance.
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I only know one person that got fired, said person was very high up, and it had to do with issues with financials, and the directive came from the CEO.
I know plenty of people that got laid off, but not fired.
Hmm, most of the people I am thinking of were technically laid off. A couple were fired, though, including a newish person and a senior IC.
Iâm being a little facetious but yeah definitely thinking more of fired than laid off. At least in insurance it seemed like you could pretty much coast along indefinitely although you wouldnât advance, as long as you werenât egregious about anything.
I got told once that I was likely facing a layoff. Phrased as âim told there wonât be work for you at the end of the projectâ.
Except I maintain the problem with my work wasnât me. It was two layers of management that was both horrible managers and horrible people. I was documenting calculations for an external vendor and the vendor sent an email saying that it was the best documentation theyâd ever seen.
At least I learned quite a bit about what not to do when managing.
Curiously I moved departments to escape that, and ended up with one the best actuarial managers Iâve ever seen.
The whole 5 years I was there was just unbelievable. Right out of a Dilbert cartoon.
I think Iâve posted this before, but I was talking to an agent about a bug in a program. Told him Iâd speak to the programmer and get back to them.
I hang up, and the programmer storms into my cube with donât ever call me a programmer. Iâm an it specialist level 4.
Iâm pretty sure I said said something like âthen whose doing the programming?â not helpful.
Got called into the managerâs office. He was exasperated. Programmer is wild over stupidity, and heâs now got me looking at him. In a rare moment, I offered to apologize. He was relieved.and to my credit, I actually apologized believably.
Prior to being an actuary, I told my supervisor that I needed to speak with them privately one afternoon. When I got there, she launched into a speech about how it was tough times for the company and they needed to change my schedule and cut my hours back (among others). I told her that I said I wanted to speak with her because I was giving notice. That was awkward for her.
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Lol. You done? Can I speak now?
Once upon a time, I was told I was constantly causing problems that my manager had to fix. After that [and a whole lot of bullshit that preceded it], I handed in my resignation one day after yet another dressing down in front of the rest of the department. I cheerfully offered, âsince Iâm causing so many problems and youâre always having to fix them, I have a solution - Iâll go somewhere else where I can contribute and someone will appreciate what I do, and you donât have to have all this wasted time fixing all the problems I cause. Itâs win-win.â
Suddenly, I wasnât causing problems and I misunderstood everything - which led to an hour-long discussion in 10-minute cycles that went from âyouâre really doing a good jobâ to âyouâre just not doing things like I wantâ to âyou donât listen to meâ to âyou cause problems, and then I have to fix themâ that ended each time with me saying âexactly, Iâm causing problems - this is why Iâm leaving, so you donât have to fix those problems any more, you should be happy about thisâ which, for some reason, always pissed off my manager when Iâd agree with him.
Go figure.
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I worked at a company where the managers always needed to give a negative for improvement.
I shot that shit down every time, getting into lengthy arguments with my managers.
Then I switched to a different company and realized how toxic that structure was.
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