the executioner

I haven't been posting for a couple week because, well, I've been busy firing people. Last time I posted, we had 20 attorneys. Now we have 13 left. The call came down from the top to make the cuts - "productivity" concerns. In other words, the partners at the firm did not want to shell out any more $$ to staff their cases properly. Instead, they found it best to strip down the cases to the bare minimum of attorneys needed to run the case. Then, they can start to extract every ounce of productivity of the people who are left -who, by the way, are now scared to death. As the chinese say "if you want to scare the monkey, kill the chicken" or something like that...Eventually, I'm going to go into detail about each of the 3 rounds of firing that I went through - but here's a quick list of those who got the boot:
Y - The Loud Typer - Mannish-Woman. I finally went to the HR and said this was intolerable.
JS - Pill-popping 60 year woman who kept falling asleep at her desk.
X - annoying JAP from Brooklyn who constantly complained about not me not taking her suggestions.
All of these three people, I was delighted to see go. In fact, I orchestrated much of their departure - as HR wanted to cut other people who were model workers if not the best coders in existence.
The collateral damages - four solid but not that efficient coders. I feel bad about them. But in two of the cases, it really wasn't my call. HR kept calling for their heads. Two of them were very nice woman and I felt bad bout them going.
By the way, the agency has the amazing tact to call some of the departed while they were in the office with me. (typically, in a doc review, the firm itself does not fire; the firm tells the agency who hired the reviewer and the agency tells them it's over). So, uh, that made for an awkward situation last night.
The terrible