Terrible advice (from a broadly terrible book, I hasten to add). The reason that this is terrible advice: if you "fire quickly", it is because something is either grievously wrong (a mishire) or you are firing based on limited evidence. If the former, you have a hiring problem, not a firing problem; if the latter, you will generate a fear-based culture. Now, if you're running a prison, a fear-based culture may be exactly what you're after -- but fear is anathema to innovation, and if your endeavor requires any creativity whatsoever, you should be seeking to build mutual trust, not foster institutional fear.
It's very old school and discounts how many problems can actually be corrected faster and less expensively than by firing ASAP.
The reason "fire quickly" may be appealing advice to some is that solving problems takes effort without a clear guarantee of return, and leaders usually end up trying easy solutions that diffuse blame or create the illusion that something has changed. Then they wonder why productivity is not up or why employee sentiment is middleing.
About your point 2, can you summarize what you heard about Bridgewater Associates from people who were there? I also stopped reading the book, probably further in than you did, and I felt uneasy about Dalio's description because it seemed internally inconsistent given rudimentary knowledge about working environments and their psychology. He felt like a good boss because people wanted to work at Bridgewater ($$$) and nobody criticized him much - but probably, people had reason to do so but just didn't dare to.
I also wonder what their actual competitive advantage was. My guess is Dalio himself had a good way to think about economic questions, and that they used not-too-simplified computer modeling before most others.
In Germany it is very hard to fire people but there is a six month period in the beginning, where one can be fired without reason. Is it possible to gauge a new employee during that timeframe?
Not only that but you run into the very expensive reason why literally every large company has a lengthy documented process for firing (outside of layoffs of course, lol):
A mishire situation is what usually this advice is about. Maybe if you hire only people you previously worked with you can bring the mishire rate way down but for majority that rate will probably be very high is what I commonly hear.
bcantrill|2 years ago
ravenstine|2 years ago
The reason "fire quickly" may be appealing advice to some is that solving problems takes effort without a clear guarantee of return, and leaders usually end up trying easy solutions that diffuse blame or create the illusion that something has changed. Then they wonder why productivity is not up or why employee sentiment is middleing.
ahartmetz|2 years ago
I also wonder what their actual competitive advantage was. My guess is Dalio himself had a good way to think about economic questions, and that they used not-too-simplified computer modeling before most others.
halkony|2 years ago
F-W-M|2 years ago
dmoy|2 years ago
Lawsuits
dilyevsky|2 years ago