As fjorge’s company size has become stagnant, I don’t think anyone can keep blaming growing pains for the number of issues now happening at fjorge.
In the past 6 months, fjorge has fired four employees (one got 60 days notice, while the others were terminated immediately) for not being a “cultural fit”. For a company of its size, this rate is somewhat alarming. What many those employees had in common was that they were vocal and opinionated about issues they saw in the workplace and areas where they saw an opportunity for improvement. They did not have poor job performance and often positively impacted the company’s culture and policies. One employee who helped spearhead the MN Tech Diversity Pledge was told when they were fired that they, “wanted to change the company culture, but the culture was not going to change.”
Fjorge uses the Traction business model, and while firing employees for not being a cultural fit is part of that business model, fjorge has no written policy on when termination can or should be used. It is completely up to the PM’s discretion. This makes room for personal biases, as the evidence shows.
However a member of leadership who notoriously creates a negative workplace culture, makes employees cry, and has driven PM’s to create a limited direct contact policy between that member of leadership and developers, has often had excuses made for them. After years of not exhibiting the company’s cultural values, it is doubtful that they would be fired for not being a “cultural fit”.
As a final note, Project Managers are incredibly overworked and do not have the time to support their employees, and this is with the minimum number of employees per pod. PM’s were sometimes working 50 hour weeks with 5 developers to manage, and leadership’s goal is to get pods to a max of 8.
