Not really, most of your performers are self motivating. They will cry and grouse but end of the day, they don't have the personality to do a bad job or lower their standards. As an old boss told me once, when you got a horse, you ride him to the ground and get another one.
Real world: I had an employee that should have been fired for poor performance years before I took over the team. The trouble was he was a nice guy just a total flake; one of my managers described him as a golden retriever puppy in fact. He rarely screwed up obviously and expensively enough to justify an instant firing, and since it was a small team transfering all his work to someone else was going to be miserable for all involved. We didn't have the ability to hire someone ahead of firing him to ease the workload transition, and dumping his entire workload one one or two other people was going to be a mess. He also had six kids and his wife didn't work (which was surprising considering he came across like a goofy kid and not a guy in his early 40's!) All that conspired to keep a guy who really needed to get his act together or get fired in a job.
My job on taking over the team was to go through his PIP (performance improvement plan) with an eye towards correcting the "needed to be fired a long time ago" problem. Thing was, he actually was improving so long as I was there to keep him focused, so it was going to be awkward.
As it turns out, I got into a conflict with a guy a few levels up from me who is definitely not "psychologically normal" and he fired me out of hand the next day, before the puppy got kicked. So far as I know, puppy is still working there.
I suspect that points to an interesting interaction effect between firing aversion (both individual and institutional) and the complete lack thereof mixed in the same company. Bad employees who are agreeable or otherwise keep their heads down will persist for a long time, but bad managers can also take out good employees, which obviates the benefits from being slow to fire people. You wind up with the worst of both worlds: it is slow to hire people and slow to get rid of poor performers as you grind through the HR process, and higher level employees that can get around the HR process will still do damage as they see fit.
Effects of firing aversion: Firing aversion tends to lead to large layoffs all at once, especially during generalized economic downturns. I have seen this in a few companies over the years, where companies hang on to poor performers out of firing aversion, then when there is a downturn in the news suddenly layoff a whole bunch of people at once. Happened in a company I was working for in 2008, as well as 2021, likewise 2024 due to business specific downturn and not general economic. Firing one person feels bad, and you have to explain that it is their fault for bad performance, but firing 10% of your workforce because of the market is outside your control and a lot easier to explain. Nothing personal, just the business, you are great but what can we do? We as economists would probably prefer that job turnover was more steady and smooth, but firing aversion means that when one person loses a job lots of people are, and when one firm is laying off lots of people other firms in the same industry are more likely to start dropping people as well. That no doubt makes finding the next job a lot harder as there is more competition for fewer roles.
I wonder if this is why internships are common. You hire someone with a set end date. And at the end you can decide to hire them permanently. No awkward feelings when the internship ends. Everyone knew up front that the internship would end.
Definitely. I've had a couple of bosses that were big on internships, partly for that reason. It's overall just a great recruitment tool, but yes, the smooth layoff if they don't work out is some of the attraction.
Real world: Companies will put operational non-performers in sales roles with performance comp. This forces a quitting for those unable to perform. This is defiiitely not legal advice.
This is a narrow view of firing aversion, no? Often bosses simply don’t want to take the time to hire new people due to sheer laziness, lack of time, or fear of being too short on labor. And don’t discount that they sometimes just have humility, for better or for worse about their own hiring and firing abilities.
Real world: a cowardly manager tries to move the low performing employee to another manager's team, sometimes with lies, sometimes even with a promotion.
Probably had a lot of staffing issues then. Even when I managed a fast food joint, 1% productivity better than 0% productivity and even unskilled labor takes time and effort to train / recruit. Often as long as you showed up consistently and weren't negative productivity, I was keeping you.
Firing aversion is real, but at least in the U.S. it’s motivated by human nature rather than legal force. In Germany, I understand that firing anyone is a formal invitation to a lawsuit and a big settlement. Having been fired and done the firing, neither is fun, but you aren’t going to take a chance on someone if you are stuck with your mistake.
Bryan, why assume a robot manager would be less considerate of workers than the human managers you describe? My experience working with Machines makes that comparison far from obvious.
There are receipts beyond personal experience. A 2025 study found that evaluators rated GPT-4’s responses more compassionate than those of trained crisis responders. That does not establish how a Machine would handle a dismissal, but it challenges the automatic association of Machines with coldness.
A Machine need not experience guilt to recognize what losing a job would mean for someone and weigh alternatives. Whether it retains, retrains, reassigns, or dismisses depends on its instructions, information, authority, and the organization governing it. Your firing-aversion hypothesis deserves examination. The robot’s presumed indifference deserves examination too.
There is real friction for the company to find a new worker and worker to find a new job, so some amount of firing aversion is good on those grounds, but i agree with your overall point that it is usually more than is justified
Working with poor performers who nonetheless still get a paycheck is demotivating for the rest of the team. A drop in morale and productivity.
Not really, most of your performers are self motivating. They will cry and grouse but end of the day, they don't have the personality to do a bad job or lower their standards. As an old boss told me once, when you got a horse, you ride him to the ground and get another one.
Real world: I had an employee that should have been fired for poor performance years before I took over the team. The trouble was he was a nice guy just a total flake; one of my managers described him as a golden retriever puppy in fact. He rarely screwed up obviously and expensively enough to justify an instant firing, and since it was a small team transfering all his work to someone else was going to be miserable for all involved. We didn't have the ability to hire someone ahead of firing him to ease the workload transition, and dumping his entire workload one one or two other people was going to be a mess. He also had six kids and his wife didn't work (which was surprising considering he came across like a goofy kid and not a guy in his early 40's!) All that conspired to keep a guy who really needed to get his act together or get fired in a job.
My job on taking over the team was to go through his PIP (performance improvement plan) with an eye towards correcting the "needed to be fired a long time ago" problem. Thing was, he actually was improving so long as I was there to keep him focused, so it was going to be awkward.
As it turns out, I got into a conflict with a guy a few levels up from me who is definitely not "psychologically normal" and he fired me out of hand the next day, before the puppy got kicked. So far as I know, puppy is still working there.
I suspect that points to an interesting interaction effect between firing aversion (both individual and institutional) and the complete lack thereof mixed in the same company. Bad employees who are agreeable or otherwise keep their heads down will persist for a long time, but bad managers can also take out good employees, which obviates the benefits from being slow to fire people. You wind up with the worst of both worlds: it is slow to hire people and slow to get rid of poor performers as you grind through the HR process, and higher level employees that can get around the HR process will still do damage as they see fit.
Effects of firing aversion: Firing aversion tends to lead to large layoffs all at once, especially during generalized economic downturns. I have seen this in a few companies over the years, where companies hang on to poor performers out of firing aversion, then when there is a downturn in the news suddenly layoff a whole bunch of people at once. Happened in a company I was working for in 2008, as well as 2021, likewise 2024 due to business specific downturn and not general economic. Firing one person feels bad, and you have to explain that it is their fault for bad performance, but firing 10% of your workforce because of the market is outside your control and a lot easier to explain. Nothing personal, just the business, you are great but what can we do? We as economists would probably prefer that job turnover was more steady and smooth, but firing aversion means that when one person loses a job lots of people are, and when one firm is laying off lots of people other firms in the same industry are more likely to start dropping people as well. That no doubt makes finding the next job a lot harder as there is more competition for fewer roles.
I wonder if this is why internships are common. You hire someone with a set end date. And at the end you can decide to hire them permanently. No awkward feelings when the internship ends. Everyone knew up front that the internship would end.
Definitely. I've had a couple of bosses that were big on internships, partly for that reason. It's overall just a great recruitment tool, but yes, the smooth layoff if they don't work out is some of the attraction.
Real world: Companies will put operational non-performers in sales roles with performance comp. This forces a quitting for those unable to perform. This is defiiitely not legal advice.
This is a narrow view of firing aversion, no? Often bosses simply don’t want to take the time to hire new people due to sheer laziness, lack of time, or fear of being too short on labor. And don’t discount that they sometimes just have humility, for better or for worse about their own hiring and firing abilities.
Real world: a cowardly manager tries to move the low performing employee to another manager's team, sometimes with lies, sometimes even with a promotion.
Fuck up move up is always the easier strategy, I.e. promote them elsewhere.
As a long term employer of mostly unskilled labor I've never had this problem.
Probably had a lot of staffing issues then. Even when I managed a fast food joint, 1% productivity better than 0% productivity and even unskilled labor takes time and effort to train / recruit. Often as long as you showed up consistently and weren't negative productivity, I was keeping you.
Firing aversion is real, but at least in the U.S. it’s motivated by human nature rather than legal force. In Germany, I understand that firing anyone is a formal invitation to a lawsuit and a big settlement. Having been fired and done the firing, neither is fun, but you aren’t going to take a chance on someone if you are stuck with your mistake.
Miracle: Herb Brooks cutting Ralph Cox is the archetype for how employers and employees could conduct themselves when business so requires.
Here's my story and it's long. If you want to cut to the chase, read the last half.
https://davidrhenderson.substack.com/p/almost-getting-fired
Bryan, why assume a robot manager would be less considerate of workers than the human managers you describe? My experience working with Machines makes that comparison far from obvious.
There are receipts beyond personal experience. A 2025 study found that evaluators rated GPT-4’s responses more compassionate than those of trained crisis responders. That does not establish how a Machine would handle a dismissal, but it challenges the automatic association of Machines with coldness.
A Machine need not experience guilt to recognize what losing a job would mean for someone and weigh alternatives. Whether it retains, retrains, reassigns, or dismisses depends on its instructions, information, authority, and the organization governing it. Your firing-aversion hypothesis deserves examination. The robot’s presumed indifference deserves examination too.
There is real friction for the company to find a new worker and worker to find a new job, so some amount of firing aversion is good on those grounds, but i agree with your overall point that it is usually more than is justified