[pw0ncakes]

In a way, it's an admission of impotence. When you fire someone, you're saying that you don't have the resources or power to turn that person into a success at your company.

The "resources" angle is crucial. Large companies can afford to have a non-producer for 6 months and train him up to being able to contribute, and they generally should. Startups usually can't afford this.

Of course, this excludes the cases where a person is fired for doing something seriously wrong or unethical. But I imagine it's much easier to fire in those cases.

[hga]

I don't think it's within my power or anyone else's to turn many people into a success if they can't grok pointers, recursion and/or abstraction and one or more of those is necessary for the job (I'm assuming a small enough startup they can't be put someplace "safe").

I'm pretty sure the abstraction bit is innate (I'm assuming they've passed high school math), and very sure I can't teach it nor is it my duty to. Pointers and recursion are not so bad (but again, in these sorts of situations I'm probably not in a position to get them up to speed on something so basic and so far reaching in effects (especially unsafe pointers)).

[pw0ncakes]

If you fire someone who can't understand basic programming concepts, the mistake you made was hiring that person.