is it wrong to hire a replacement before an employee is fired?

A reader writes:

My company has a habit of recruiting and hiring a replacement for fired employees before the person has actually been fired. The replacement doesn’t start work until after the original employee is gone, but the company is recruiting and interviewing before they’ve told the person they will be out of a job (and the person has no idea the company is actively interviewing for their spot).

I suppose that this is … practical? But it feels so slimy! They’ve done this secret recruitment, not advertising the position in their normal ways so no one sees that it’s open and figures out what’s happening. It also prevents anyone internally from applying for these positions because they obviously don’t advertise them internally so the person being fired doesn’t find out.

It all feels sneaky and gross to me, and makes me think I would have no idea if my job were in jeopardy (since the people who were fired were blindsided, no PIP, performance conversations, etc, which is another bad practice of course). Am I overreacting?

I answer this question — and two others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

Other questions I’m answering there today include:

• Should I ask older employees if they know basic functions in Word and Excel?
  Should remote workers be paid less because they have fewer work-related expenses?

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