8+ years of experience in software engineering. Solving user problems, building and architecting systems that are scalable, fault-tolerant and resilient.
I was fired at my very first job. I was just graduated and joined the company as Associate Software Engineer. I am very novice, the recruiter cheated me she said you will be here as QA Automation Engineer for 6 months later we will move to developer position. At that time, I don't know what is testing and what is development. Later, after 2-3 months I was into testing, I didn't like doing it.Then I felt the difference. Also, I didn't like my manager, he doesn't know anything. I always thought of learning something from the people, but I didn't feel he has what I am looking for. So, then I found something called "Freelancing" then, I studied about it, how to do it. But, I don't know that we shouldn't do it while being an employee of a company. Actually I was enjoying it more than my job. But, I never used my company's resources or time for it. I used to do it only on weekends.
On June 22, 2016, I went to office as usual and doing my stuff. My HR and Operations Manager called me I thought it's a meeting for everyone, but then they said that "Lokesh, are you working as freelancer?" I said "Yes". "Do you know that you shouldn't do it while working as an employee of a company" I said "No". The discussion went and they frightened me. They took my laptop and gave it to IT department, once upon a time I have copied some text file into my dropbox folder. That has nothing, but they took it other way. I never afraid loosing the job, but I am afraid did they ask me to pay money as they think that I have been using their resources (not really though, I was honest to the company). They fired me, got my 22 days salary. Then, started preparing for interviews very hardly, then landed on a very good job which I am liking so much that means I don't need to freelance :)
Just so you know - it's not illegal or wrong to freelance during your free time even while employed by a company. They have no right to dictate what you do on your own time.
8+ years of experience in software engineering. Solving user problems, building and architecting systems that are scalable, fault-tolerant and resilient.
Ohh... but, they said like "In india, you shouldn't do two jobs, on every employment agreement it was mentioned that you shouldn't involve in any other projects and you should dedicate your time to the company". I couldn't defend them since I felt that was a mistake.
Ohhh well it is possible that you had signed an agreement not to do that. In the US I don't think that is something that happens. But I am glad you have a better position now.
8+ years of experience in software engineering. Solving user problems, building and architecting systems that are scalable, fault-tolerant and resilient.
I was fired, quite recently, by a large e-commerce company. Basically a new VP came in and decided he wanted to clean house, particularly of senior technical staff (I was an architect), so that he could bring in some of his own people from his previous employer. It probably did not help that I'd needed to take a bunch of time off to care for my sick wife recently, nor that I didn't match the VP's preferred nationality. (He was from India).
Yes, I'm specifically accusing him of anti-American bias, along with the rest of the management of the Seattle office of this company, which was made up mostly of Indian-born ex-Amazon people. I never knew an American-born senior technical type who succeeded in Seattle -- the ones who were any good either left the company or transferred to a different office.
Despite having been at the company 3 years with good reviews, I suddenly got a bad one and was put on a "performance improvement plan," which really should have been called the "you're gone in a month no matter what you do" plan. And that was that.
Fortune 500 company in a foreign country. Went through a divorce, dealt (and still dealing) with depression, performance and attendance impacted, fired. Now broke, jobless, with visa issues. Doing opensource and consulting right now, still making ends meet.
I've been laid off several times but one was pretty much a firing with a nicer name.
After the tech bubble burst I was unemployed for months. I took a job at a huge pay cut and with a role that I was too experienced for, just because I needed to pay rent.
I was promised opportunities for advancement but they never came. As time went on my boss started to see me in the light of that junior role and not based on my previous experience. It was really bizarre, he'd talk down to me and I'd have to remind him of my background. There was an internal opportunity that came up that I was really interested in and I didn't get it. At that point I became super disillusioned.
Not too long after that my boss laid me off. He knew he had a lot of responsibility for how things went (he was really bad at managing and HR), so he treated it as a layoff. But it didn't feel like one.
After that one of my coworkers from a previous job recommended me for an opening in his shop. I got the job and a big raise, and it was much more interesting work.
I should have left the job that didn't work out before I was let go. And I shouldn't have counted on vague promises of advancement. It was a good learning experience though. I learned that situations like that can actually be really positive, if there are better opportunities out there. And it's one of the things in my career that taught me that in the end, you have to look out for yourself. No one else will care as much about your needs as you do.
I was with an ad-tech company that woo'd me by saying they were growing after a recent acquisition. It was nice to be around a large group of developers sharing ideas, until a new exec started. Upon hiring, this exec, claiming to be from a CI background, threw shade on all our internal attempts to build any utility software citing "it would be cheaper in the long run to get [insert package]." I soon found that all the work several of us put in design and implementation was scraped to negotiate a contract with and then the adoption of a third party API.
The solution was far less than projected and the time to integrate pulled resources from further development of client facing apps. Deadlines pushed and frustrations, I spoke to my manager, who spoke to theirs. A sprint later, there were lay offs in engineering, practically everyone who voiced opposition and blame on this exec.
AFAIK, the exec is still there, but we have moved on.
Brian Rinaldi is a Developer Experience Engineer at LaunchDarkly with over 20 years experience as a developer for the web. Brian is active in the community running CFE.dev and Orlando Devs.
I've been laid off numerous times but only once was I fired in the way that I was sent home immediately. It's a bit complicated, as I'd already given notice - but I think it also has an important lesson (one I was not aware of at the time).
About six and a half years ago, I got offered my dream job (at the time) with Adobe. I happened to be out of town, speaking at a conference at the time but decided to let my boss know to give the company more time to plan for my absence (we were a very small company, so I thought it was important). I'd given about 3 weeks of notice. I'd actually tried to get a month, but the position at Adobe needed to start. My direct boss took it in stride.
However, upon my return a couple days later, I was summarily told to grab my stuff and get out of the office. The owner of the company was apparently so enraged by my leaving that he not only refused to speak to me, but was firing me on the spot - meaning that my 3 weeks notice was now unpaid. As this sort of situation had never happened to me, I was unaware at the time that they have no obligation to honor or pay for the notice that you give. Most employers do, as this sort of behavior only inclines employees to give no notice...but in this case (as with the person who'd left previous to me) this employer chose not to do so and I learned a lesson about the rules around giving notice.
The feeling of being fired has happened two times, only one with the "you're fired" notice.
The first time was a due to problems with my boss. Never related to my job performance. Neither with attitude, we still like each other. But payments didn't came on time and, being the main developer (with only 6 hours/day) I started asking for a bigger share (responsibilities and money). I started giving more opinions and trying to have more authority over other jr developers. Funny thing was that he took me to a enterprise training (the motivational type) training us (the boss and me) to have mission, vision, etc; and the Guru advice him against me (this was a confession of my former boss), he told him something like: "be careful with this guy, he likes to trouble the trouble".
How he "made me" quit was very particular: I was going to be able to work 9 hours per day, so he drop it straight to me: what are you going to do with your free time? (...)
I moved to another company for twice the salary. Didn't feel completely good, I'm still having the feeling that I lose something there. He still is the boss and hire a ton of juniors only.
The second time (the "you're fired" one) was at an outsourcing company. First, they said, it was due to a regular cut on the budget, actually true, but I knew they could keep me anyway so I insisted; so they told me about performance issues.
It was a period (about three months) where I used to work toooo much overtime to learn really simple things (front end, angular, etc) but It was funny (weird funny) that we had all this agile meetings with retrospectives and such and I never felt like I was going to be fired. You know, the confidence of exceeding at some task and being delayed with some others. Here I didn't felt really bad, still sometimes I feel like I should try to work at the same place as a challenge.
I've never been "fired" but I was "laid off". When I was hired, there were ~20 employees. Six months later, the largest client asked to increase their monthly expenditures ~10 fold. The boss opened a second physical office and hired ~15 additional people. Six months after that, the same client stopped sending the company any business. The boss eliminated all of the new people (most left on their own) and closed the second office. One friday, I came in and had a bad feeling. He asked me into his office and explained that because I was the person with least seniority remaining in the office, I would be let go next.
I worked for many startups in the Silicon Valley where it was typical to have many acquisitions and layoffs that meant we had to look for other work (not related to job performance, just funding issues.) This would happen every two years or so -- you just got used to it. Most of the time I could see the writing on the wall and would get another job before any layoffs. I once commuted to a dual job interview with my boss... that was pretty ironic.
As for an actual "you're fired!" style firing, yes, once, back in the "Just Say No" 80's. Again, not related to my job performance (I was getting stellar reviews every 6 mos.) I was heading to a friend's place out of town for the weekend (after work) and when I left home I threw a joint into my briefcase but forgot to remove it and leave it in my car before going into the office. I accidentally left my briefcase at the building's guard station while looking for my entry badge. They found the briefcase some time later and opened it looking for an ID of the owner and found the contraband... they just said no. In the end this triggered my return to school for a MS in CS so it ended up being a good thing. Getting the next job afterwards was rough as I had to explain this lapse in memory/judgement, not fun. How times have changed...
I have been, twice. Both offered to give good references after so I find it likely not a performance problem, but in both, I’m pretty sure my overambition and vocal insistence to improve processes and clarify job requirements didn’t help as a squawking junior. The first job was an agency layoff due to a client taking the project back in house. There was no opportunity for growth and leadership was replaced 3x in a year’s time. The second one was just over a week ago, at a an all-remote software company where I’d do support with the promise of moving over to dev. At first I was onboarded a ton like never before, worked alongside devs, did a bit of everything that was lightly technical. Seven months in customer and company growth put me in helpdesk support. Conflicting instructions from multiple leaders made it hard to do my job well and I became occasionally passive aggressive or overexplanatory of new rules given to me. One day I was told over phone I was terminated right away. It was a blow as I liked the people but I think logistically they needed to fill a customer service shortstaff and I couldn’t fit anywhere on their stack. The lessons I learned are that to not make too many suggestions so as not to be seen as critical despite good intentions, but keep the door open for communication. If you see your job description changing lots or measure your impact, it may be time to explore other options.
Me and co-workers walked into office on a Wednesday morning (we worked in Buffalo), saw VP of HR (from San Francisco office) already there. I said, "We're fucked" and started packing my stuff.
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I was fired at my very first job. I was just graduated and joined the company as Associate Software Engineer. I am very novice, the recruiter cheated me she said you will be here as QA Automation Engineer for 6 months later we will move to developer position. At that time, I don't know what is testing and what is development. Later, after 2-3 months I was into testing, I didn't like doing it.Then I felt the difference. Also, I didn't like my manager, he doesn't know anything. I always thought of learning something from the people, but I didn't feel he has what I am looking for. So, then I found something called "Freelancing" then, I studied about it, how to do it. But, I don't know that we shouldn't do it while being an employee of a company. Actually I was enjoying it more than my job. But, I never used my company's resources or time for it. I used to do it only on weekends.
On June 22, 2016, I went to office as usual and doing my stuff. My HR and Operations Manager called me I thought it's a meeting for everyone, but then they said that "Lokesh, are you working as freelancer?" I said "Yes". "Do you know that you shouldn't do it while working as an employee of a company" I said "No". The discussion went and they frightened me. They took my laptop and gave it to IT department, once upon a time I have copied some text file into my dropbox folder. That has nothing, but they took it other way. I never afraid loosing the job, but I am afraid did they ask me to pay money as they think that I have been using their resources (not really though, I was honest to the company). They fired me, got my 22 days salary. Then, started preparing for interviews very hardly, then landed on a very good job which I am liking so much that means I don't need to freelance :)
Just so you know - it's not illegal or wrong to freelance during your free time even while employed by a company. They have no right to dictate what you do on your own time.
Ohh... but, they said like "In india, you shouldn't do two jobs, on every employment agreement it was mentioned that you shouldn't involve in any other projects and you should dedicate your time to the company". I couldn't defend them since I felt that was a mistake.
Ohhh well it is possible that you had signed an agreement not to do that. In the US I don't think that is something that happens. But I am glad you have a better position now.
Yes, But I didn't remember that they mentioned in the agreement, All is well that ends well... Thanks...
I was fired, quite recently, by a large e-commerce company. Basically a new VP came in and decided he wanted to clean house, particularly of senior technical staff (I was an architect), so that he could bring in some of his own people from his previous employer. It probably did not help that I'd needed to take a bunch of time off to care for my sick wife recently, nor that I didn't match the VP's preferred nationality. (He was from India).
Yes, I'm specifically accusing him of anti-American bias, along with the rest of the management of the Seattle office of this company, which was made up mostly of Indian-born ex-Amazon people. I never knew an American-born senior technical type who succeeded in Seattle -- the ones who were any good either left the company or transferred to a different office.
Despite having been at the company 3 years with good reviews, I suddenly got a bad one and was put on a "performance improvement plan," which really should have been called the "you're gone in a month no matter what you do" plan. And that was that.
Fortune 500 company in a foreign country. Went through a divorce, dealt (and still dealing) with depression, performance and attendance impacted, fired. Now broke, jobless, with visa issues. Doing opensource and consulting right now, still making ends meet.
I've been laid off several times but one was pretty much a firing with a nicer name.
After the tech bubble burst I was unemployed for months. I took a job at a huge pay cut and with a role that I was too experienced for, just because I needed to pay rent.
I was promised opportunities for advancement but they never came. As time went on my boss started to see me in the light of that junior role and not based on my previous experience. It was really bizarre, he'd talk down to me and I'd have to remind him of my background. There was an internal opportunity that came up that I was really interested in and I didn't get it. At that point I became super disillusioned.
Not too long after that my boss laid me off. He knew he had a lot of responsibility for how things went (he was really bad at managing and HR), so he treated it as a layoff. But it didn't feel like one.
After that one of my coworkers from a previous job recommended me for an opening in his shop. I got the job and a big raise, and it was much more interesting work.
I should have left the job that didn't work out before I was let go. And I shouldn't have counted on vague promises of advancement. It was a good learning experience though. I learned that situations like that can actually be really positive, if there are better opportunities out there. And it's one of the things in my career that taught me that in the end, you have to look out for yourself. No one else will care as much about your needs as you do.
I was with an ad-tech company that woo'd me by saying they were growing after a recent acquisition. It was nice to be around a large group of developers sharing ideas, until a new exec started. Upon hiring, this exec, claiming to be from a CI background, threw shade on all our internal attempts to build any utility software citing "it would be cheaper in the long run to get [insert package]." I soon found that all the work several of us put in design and implementation was scraped to negotiate a contract with and then the adoption of a third party API.
The solution was far less than projected and the time to integrate pulled resources from further development of client facing apps. Deadlines pushed and frustrations, I spoke to my manager, who spoke to theirs. A sprint later, there were lay offs in engineering, practically everyone who voiced opposition and blame on this exec.
AFAIK, the exec is still there, but we have moved on.
I've been laid off numerous times but only once was I fired in the way that I was sent home immediately. It's a bit complicated, as I'd already given notice - but I think it also has an important lesson (one I was not aware of at the time).
About six and a half years ago, I got offered my dream job (at the time) with Adobe. I happened to be out of town, speaking at a conference at the time but decided to let my boss know to give the company more time to plan for my absence (we were a very small company, so I thought it was important). I'd given about 3 weeks of notice. I'd actually tried to get a month, but the position at Adobe needed to start. My direct boss took it in stride.
However, upon my return a couple days later, I was summarily told to grab my stuff and get out of the office. The owner of the company was apparently so enraged by my leaving that he not only refused to speak to me, but was firing me on the spot - meaning that my 3 weeks notice was now unpaid. As this sort of situation had never happened to me, I was unaware at the time that they have no obligation to honor or pay for the notice that you give. Most employers do, as this sort of behavior only inclines employees to give no notice...but in this case (as with the person who'd left previous to me) this employer chose not to do so and I learned a lesson about the rules around giving notice.
The feeling of being fired has happened two times, only one with the "you're fired" notice.
The first time was a due to problems with my boss. Never related to my job performance. Neither with attitude, we still like each other. But payments didn't came on time and, being the main developer (with only 6 hours/day) I started asking for a bigger share (responsibilities and money). I started giving more opinions and trying to have more authority over other jr developers. Funny thing was that he took me to a enterprise training (the motivational type) training us (the boss and me) to have mission, vision, etc; and the Guru advice him against me (this was a confession of my former boss), he told him something like: "be careful with this guy, he likes to trouble the trouble".
How he "made me" quit was very particular: I was going to be able to work 9 hours per day, so he drop it straight to me: what are you going to do with your free time? (...)
I moved to another company for twice the salary. Didn't feel completely good, I'm still having the feeling that I lose something there. He still is the boss and hire a ton of juniors only.
The second time (the "you're fired" one) was at an outsourcing company. First, they said, it was due to a regular cut on the budget, actually true, but I knew they could keep me anyway so I insisted; so they told me about performance issues.
It was a period (about three months) where I used to work toooo much overtime to learn really simple things (front end, angular, etc) but It was funny (weird funny) that we had all this agile meetings with retrospectives and such and I never felt like I was going to be fired. You know, the confidence of exceeding at some task and being delayed with some others. Here I didn't felt really bad, still sometimes I feel like I should try to work at the same place as a challenge.
I've never been "fired" but I was "laid off". When I was hired, there were ~20 employees. Six months later, the largest client asked to increase their monthly expenditures ~10 fold. The boss opened a second physical office and hired ~15 additional people. Six months after that, the same client stopped sending the company any business. The boss eliminated all of the new people (most left on their own) and closed the second office. One friday, I came in and had a bad feeling. He asked me into his office and explained that because I was the person with least seniority remaining in the office, I would be let go next.
I can't necessarily blame him but it did hurt.
I worked for many startups in the Silicon Valley where it was typical to have many acquisitions and layoffs that meant we had to look for other work (not related to job performance, just funding issues.) This would happen every two years or so -- you just got used to it. Most of the time I could see the writing on the wall and would get another job before any layoffs. I once commuted to a dual job interview with my boss... that was pretty ironic.
As for an actual "you're fired!" style firing, yes, once, back in the "Just Say No" 80's. Again, not related to my job performance (I was getting stellar reviews every 6 mos.) I was heading to a friend's place out of town for the weekend (after work) and when I left home I threw a joint into my briefcase but forgot to remove it and leave it in my car before going into the office. I accidentally left my briefcase at the building's guard station while looking for my entry badge. They found the briefcase some time later and opened it looking for an ID of the owner and found the contraband... they just said no. In the end this triggered my return to school for a MS in CS so it ended up being a good thing. Getting the next job afterwards was rough as I had to explain this lapse in memory/judgement, not fun. How times have changed...
I have been, twice. Both offered to give good references after so I find it likely not a performance problem, but in both, I’m pretty sure my overambition and vocal insistence to improve processes and clarify job requirements didn’t help as a squawking junior. The first job was an agency layoff due to a client taking the project back in house. There was no opportunity for growth and leadership was replaced 3x in a year’s time. The second one was just over a week ago, at a an all-remote software company where I’d do support with the promise of moving over to dev. At first I was onboarded a ton like never before, worked alongside devs, did a bit of everything that was lightly technical. Seven months in customer and company growth put me in helpdesk support. Conflicting instructions from multiple leaders made it hard to do my job well and I became occasionally passive aggressive or overexplanatory of new rules given to me. One day I was told over phone I was terminated right away. It was a blow as I liked the people but I think logistically they needed to fill a customer service shortstaff and I couldn’t fit anywhere on their stack. The lessons I learned are that to not make too many suggestions so as not to be seen as critical despite good intentions, but keep the door open for communication. If you see your job description changing lots or measure your impact, it may be time to explore other options.
Me and co-workers walked into office on a Wednesday morning (we worked in Buffalo), saw VP of HR (from San Francisco office) already there. I said, "We're fucked" and started packing my stuff.