Trial By Firing: Saga of a Rookie Manager

This chapter talks about the author's experience working for a large telecommunications research laboratory. He joined as a member of the technical staff. Later, he was made the department manager, and was coached through a wide variety of challenges during the first few months. The chapter describes his varied experience of delivering the firing orders (much to his dislike) to two of his employees. The first employee resigned before he could be dismissed, which made the author feel proud that problem number one had been solved. In the second case, the employee told others in the department about his dismissal which led them to question the author's decision. At the end, the author learned two important lessons: firing somebody is very painful; and no matter how many people are supportive of a painful decision, a person is all alone after implementing the decision.