<story><title>Did Pixar accidentally delete Toy Story 2 during production? (2012)</title><url>https://www.quora.com/Pixar-company/Did-Pixar-accidentally-delete-Toy-Story-2-during-production/answer/Oren-Jacob</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>libria</author><text>Surely you&amp;#x27;ve heard of at least these arguments:&lt;p&gt;- Employee was error prone and this mistake was just the biggest one to make headlines.  Could be from incompetence or apathy.&lt;p&gt;- Impacted clients demanded the employee at-fault be terminated.&lt;p&gt;- Deterrence: fire one guy, everyone else knows to take that issue seriously.  Doesn&amp;#x27;t Google do this? If you leak something to press, you&amp;#x27;re fired, then a company email goes out &amp;quot;Hey we canned dude for running his mouth...&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s better to engage the known and perhaps questionable justifications than to &amp;quot;never understand&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>lokedhs</author><text>I never understood the attitude of some companies to fire an employee immediately if they make a mistake such as accidentally deleting some files. If you keep this employee, then you can e pretty sure he&amp;#x27;ll never made that mistake again. If you fire him and hire someone else, that person might not have had the learning experience of completely screwing up a system.&lt;p&gt;I think that employees actually makes less mistakes and are more productive if they don&amp;#x27;t have be worried about being fired for making a mistake.</text></item><item><author>woliveirajr</author><text>The biggest difference, I think, was leaving the hunting for a head for a second moment, or even not doing it at all.&lt;p&gt;Commitment would be very different if people were being asked to help while some heads were rolling. Because you&amp;#x27;re a real team when everybody is going in the same direction. Any call on &amp;quot;people, work hard do recover while we&amp;#x27;re after the moron who deleted everything&amp;quot; wouldn&amp;#x27;t have done it.&lt;p&gt;You just commit to something when you know that you won&amp;#x27;t be under the fire if you do something wrong without knowing it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>morkalot</author><text>Case 1: It&amp;#x27;s fine to fire individuals for ongoing performance issues.  (though you must make clear to those who remain that the number and types issues the individual already had, and the steps that had been taken to help the individual rectify their performance issue.)&lt;p&gt;Case 2: no competent manager would fire an employee who made a mistake to satisfy clients.  They may move the employee to a role away from that client, but it would be insanity to allow the most unreasonable clients to dictate who gets fired.  Any manager who does what you suggest should expect to have lost all credibility in the eyes of their team.&lt;p&gt;Case 3a: A leak to the press is a purposeful action.  Firing for cause is perfectly reasonable.  Making a mistake is not a purposeful action.&lt;p&gt;Case 3b: If you want to convey that a particular type of mistake is serious, don&amp;#x27;t do so by firing people.  Do so with investments in education, process, and other tools that reduce the risk of the mistake occurring, and the harm when the mistake occurs.  Firing somebody will backfire badly, as many of your best employees will self-select away from your most important projects, and away from your company, as they won&amp;#x27;t want to be in a situation where years of excellent performance can be erased with a single error.</text></comment>
<story><title>Did Pixar accidentally delete Toy Story 2 during production? (2012)</title><url>https://www.quora.com/Pixar-company/Did-Pixar-accidentally-delete-Toy-Story-2-during-production/answer/Oren-Jacob</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>libria</author><text>Surely you&amp;#x27;ve heard of at least these arguments:&lt;p&gt;- Employee was error prone and this mistake was just the biggest one to make headlines.  Could be from incompetence or apathy.&lt;p&gt;- Impacted clients demanded the employee at-fault be terminated.&lt;p&gt;- Deterrence: fire one guy, everyone else knows to take that issue seriously.  Doesn&amp;#x27;t Google do this? If you leak something to press, you&amp;#x27;re fired, then a company email goes out &amp;quot;Hey we canned dude for running his mouth...&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s better to engage the known and perhaps questionable justifications than to &amp;quot;never understand&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>lokedhs</author><text>I never understood the attitude of some companies to fire an employee immediately if they make a mistake such as accidentally deleting some files. If you keep this employee, then you can e pretty sure he&amp;#x27;ll never made that mistake again. If you fire him and hire someone else, that person might not have had the learning experience of completely screwing up a system.&lt;p&gt;I think that employees actually makes less mistakes and are more productive if they don&amp;#x27;t have be worried about being fired for making a mistake.</text></item><item><author>woliveirajr</author><text>The biggest difference, I think, was leaving the hunting for a head for a second moment, or even not doing it at all.&lt;p&gt;Commitment would be very different if people were being asked to help while some heads were rolling. Because you&amp;#x27;re a real team when everybody is going in the same direction. Any call on &amp;quot;people, work hard do recover while we&amp;#x27;re after the moron who deleted everything&amp;quot; wouldn&amp;#x27;t have done it.&lt;p&gt;You just commit to something when you know that you won&amp;#x27;t be under the fire if you do something wrong without knowing it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Griffinsauce</author><text>If you&amp;#x27;re going to let your clients decide when you fire someone you&amp;#x27;re having some enormous issues. Take the person off their account, sure, but how in hell does a client make your HR decisions?</text></comment>