We fired ~40 sales people out of over 1,500 in our go to market org. Thatβs a normal quarter. When weβre doing performance management right, we can often tell within 3 months or less of a sales hire, even during the holidays, whether theyβre going to be successful or not. Sadly, we donβt hire perfectly. We try to fire perfectly. In this case, clearly we were far from perfect. The video is painful for me to watch. Managers should always be involved. HR should be involved, but it shouldnβt be outsourced to them, No employee should ever actually be surprised they werenβt performing. We donβt always get it right. And sometimes under performing employees donβt actually listen to the feedback theyβve gotten before we let them go. Importantly, just because we fire someone doesnβt mean theyβre a bad employee. It doesnβt mean wonβt be really, really great somewhere else. Chris Paul was a bad fit for the Suns, but heβs undoubtedly a great basketball player. And, in fact, we think the right thing to do is get people we know are unlikely to succeed off the team as quickly as possible so they can find the right place for them. We definitely werenβt anywhere close to perfect in this case. But any healthy org needs to get the people who arenβt performing off. That wasnβt the mistake here. The mistake was not being more kind and humane as we did. And thatβs something
@zatlyn and I are focused on improving going forward.