Is this becoming a common trend or has it always been this way.
Posted by Sfpkt@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 50 comments
I was let go from my position yesterday due to performance reasons. I was asked to join a project to help get it across the finish line. However, in the last two weeks, I made mistakes and put a release into jeopardy. This was my first major mistake at the company. That obviously resulted in me having a bad 1:1 with my manager. I admitted that I fucked up and came prepared with how I was going to calibrate and bounce back from there.
We both agreed. The next day, a meeting popped up on my calendar for yesterday 930, I felt uneasy about it, but to calm my nerves, I asked my manager how I should best prepare for the meeting to ensure a successful conversation. I was told, come as you are. I came prepared to the meeting with progress on my work and a prototype to fix a bug.
The manager joins, and then HR joins. I get told that I'm not performing at a senior level, and it would be my last day at the company. Maybe I'm being stupid, but I did not see that coming. I did not see that coming for the following reasons
- The 1:1 before this past Thursday, my manager did not have any feedback for me
- I was asked by my manager to do a company demo for the team about how I've been using AI in my workflow.
- For months leading up to being fired, I was publicly praised for the work that I was doing. I got DM's on Slack from my boss about how my code is clean and really appreciates the refactoring that I'm doing along the way.
Did I make small mistakes? Yes, we all do. None of those mistakes made me believe that my job was ever at risk.
Here are some learnings that I've gained from this experience. Maybe this
- Know what you need to be successful. For me, I need some resemblance of project management.
- If you're even the slightest bit unsure about something, ask the stakeholders for clarification. The project management for the team was basically non-existent. I have worked in places where we didn't have formal sprints, but we definitely had well-documented tickets. That anyone could pick up and complete successfully.
- Stop biting off more than I can chew. I was brought on to a project to help in a domain that I'm not supposed to own. I should have known better to take on less
With all that being said, have you ever been let go after 1 bad sprint?
Has it always been this ruthless, because anytime I've done poorly, I've always been given time to calibrate and bounce back.
Now that I find myself on the job market again, what's the extent to which AI is being used in interviews?
Is the interview prep still the routine way of do DS & Algo until you're blue in the face?
denverdave23@reddit
Depending on your state, you might be able to sue. You won't get your job back (you probably don't want it anyway), but severance, health care, etc. are common. Even if you don't want any retribution, you shouldn't allow your former manager to get away with sloppy work, for the sake of the people still working there.
Regardless of whether you messed up or not, it's the managers responsibility to communicate with you and give you the chance to improve. He needs a documented trail of communication.
I would speak with a local employment lawyer.
Source: I'm a manager
jmking@reddit
OP is in California. It's an at-will state. There's no legal recourse unless they can prove they were discriminated against based on their race, sex, age, religion, sexual orientation, or any of the other protected categories.
denverdave23@reddit
I happen to know this isn't true, as I worked in California for a long time. You can sue for breach of contract. There's a lot of reasons why it won't work, but it's worth talking to a lawyer about it.
But, yes, being an at-will state makes it harder.
jmking@reddit
I mean, sure - there are plenty of employment lawyers that will give a free consult. But they're just going to tell OP the same thing. It's an at-will state - the company can let anyone go at any time. It doesn't have to even be performance related. As long as they weren't let go for being a member of a protected class, it's perfectly legal.
It sucks, but OP shouldn't waste time spiraling on this. They ultimately got let go because the company told the manager to cut someone (they may have told all managers to cut someone), and the manager decided that OP was bottom of the stack rank. Sometimes it's that simple. It doesn't mean OP is bad, it's just that when stack ranking happens, someone has to be at the bottom of the stack.
OP - you got this job, you can get another. Yes, the typical interview prep advice stands. However, you might be seeing more companies allowing AI use in interviews and specifically want to see your effectiveness in using it.
Sfpkt@reddit (OP)
Exactly this.
Sfpkt@reddit (OP)
I already have and was told there wasnt a case.
There wasn't a paper trail on bad performance from our 1:1s.
denverdave23@reddit
Oh, bummer. Worth a try
Goducks91@reddit
You don’t need a paper trail. Companies just do it to protect themselves even further from a discrimination lawsuit.
Winter_Persimmon_110@reddit
If your coworkers were organized they would not be able to fire you out of the blue.
SypeSypher@reddit
If i had to guess.....it was just bad luck :(
Odds are your manager or whoever is i charge of hiring/firing was told "Hey you need to fire someone within a month to hit budgets. They're now trying to figure out who to let go.
Simultaneously a project (that you happened to be on) was late and higher up pressure came down and manager saw "solve two problems at once - who to fire and who to blame to get out of issues myself"
But no, that's not the norm, (maybe in super toxic work environments).
NickW1343@reddit
Does firing someone actually help the manager when it comes to higher ups shining a spotlight on them? I always figured if there's a VP or exec putting a manager in the hotseat, sacrificing a team member isn't going to make the higher up happy and more done because the manager wants to feel like it won't happen again so long as that employee is gone.
nanotree@reddit
I guess it would depend on what kinds of metrics are under scrutiny. A lot of times, managers have budgets on the brain. One of the tools for meeting budget demands in our modern late-stage capitalist society is cutting labor costs. And for the manager, they can tell the story that they made the hard decision to let someone go to meet the budget, painting themselves as the kind of person willing to make the hard choices for the success of the company. The long term results are next quarter's problem.
spicenozzle@reddit
As a manager, no it doesn't. It's usually a neutral thing from higher ups. They view it as someone managing their team and doing what needs to be done. If there are budget needs you do what you need to do to hit budget.
tmarthal@reddit
Managers think it does, but in most cases it doesn't. Firing team members is "meeting the bar" for a tech manager. :\
SypeSypher@reddit
i mean I didn't say it was good logic from the manager's side to do that....but managers make a lot of mistakes
DesperateAdvantage76@reddit
That's my guess. It's similar to when someone says "my girlfriend dumped me because of something trivial and stupid". Nope, they were just looking for an excuse to dump you for other reasons they're not revealing.
Goducks91@reddit
Yep. I bet this was it. Still super shitty though.
GroundbreakingAd9635@reddit
Hang in there. Sometimes the company sucks, sometimes its not you. My first position I was fired from...they hired someone else...he couldn't achieve what they wanted. Guess what..they fired the whole dev team and scrapped the project because non-tech people didn't know how to manage a tech project. Go figure.
WallStreetCoder@reddit
Since how long you were in this company?
Sfpkt@reddit (OP)
6 months
cametumbling@reddit
That's it then. Hiring is a stack. You were likely hired so that you could be fired to show investors they were trimming the fat. This is very common.
Neat_Strawberry_2491@reddit
Sounds like a terrible place to work
Visible_Fill_6699@reddit
It doesn’t make sense! There are cicd pipelines and pr review qa process such that it’s never clearly one persons fault (unless you bypass some of the safe guards in which case yeah it’s your fault). It may have been the last straw or an excuse to reduce headcount as others have mentioned. It’s funny you were asked to do a demo beforehand — some companies like to extract that last bit from someone they are letting go so the plan may have been in motion at that time already.
abluecolor@reddit
You're way too general. Get into specifics.
Sfpkt@reddit (OP)
I kept it vague to protect myself.
tndrthrowy@reddit
We know who you are. 👀
twochains@reddit
You won’t get any real feedback, then. You’re just fishing for support.
Sfpkt@reddit (OP)
Agreed, I replied to the comment the person left with an example of the biggest mistake that I made prior to this last sprint.
Sfpkt@reddit (OP)
I introduced minor regressions into a project that were easily fixed.
The regressions were introduced because of the poor structure of the spaghetti code that I was working in and the fact that the database did not have database constraints that should have protected users from entering into a hybrid state.
Prior to this last sprint, that was the biggest mistake that I made which was very early on.
kylife@reddit
Same happened to me solid feedback was put on leading a project that project was ahead of schedule. I had just asked my manager for specifics markers a goals he’d like me to hit and I hit them. A week laster the project I was leading was ahead of schedule I had test cases created ahead of time. Dev work was going well. My skip level meetings they told me my manager said things were going better. Week later I had two pairing sessions with my manager cuz he wanted to see how I work. Both went well and he had no negative feedback. Next day hr meeting on my schedule two hours before I got a slack call and hr was on and I got clipped.
SlipFlipOuch@reddit
What was their reason for letting you go?
kylife@reddit
Same reason “I was not performing at the level” even though I got down leveled from senior joining the company and when I got assigned to lead the project I asked around other engs my level and they said usually projects get lead by senior and staff engs. Again the project was ahead of schedule dev work was going and I had met all the goals in my managers goal doc. I did take my time onboarding but I got 2/3 positive check-ins and it was a new domain for me.
crappy_entrepreneur@reddit
Don't take this too personally. Sounds like your company is quite shit.
I've had situations before where I've nearly been fired for making trivial mistakes by managers trying to cover their a*s.
I've also shipped a serious prod incident and had the company be totally fine with it, and they helped everyone learn from the experience.
tndrthrowy@reddit
Yeah I was reprimanded once after delivering a solo project that did exactly as requested and specifically boosted the company’s top line. But there was one line of logging code vaguely related to my project which a more tenured dev randomly mentioned to me he wanted changed. I had prioritized it appropriately lower and it wasn’t part of my deliverable. This huge oversight of mine was apparently worthy of a half hour discussion between me and the CTO. I actually laughed in his face because I literally thought it was a joke. It was not.
YahenP@reddit
I've been through a lot in my life. This too. We all make mistakes of various kinds, all the time. Just remember that responsibility for mistakes always lies with the rank-and-file employees and line managers. This is true for any company, regardless of whether it's good or bad. And regardless of its size. If there's a mistake and someone is assigned the blame, then the management principle comes into play: any mistake, if there's someone to blame, isn't a mistake, but an opportunity. An opportunity to exert psychological pressure, or an opportunity to simply reduce wages, or burden someone with additional work, or, as in your case, to fire them if there's a need to find someone to fire. So yes. The threat of dismissal is an absolute reality today. And when there's the opportunity to fire an employee under a dubious pretext, that's a very good thing for management.
gekigangerii@reddit
This type of lay off happens.
Where performance is cited but it feels too sudden, and you may wander there was already pressure (budget-wise) to let go an employee
double-click@reddit
Were you operating at the senior level?
Sfpkt@reddit (OP)
I believe that I was until this last sprint where I definitely dropped the ball
08148694@reddit
Usually you’ll have performance feedback and an opportunity to improve before dismissal
Public praise is always normal even for underperforming (morale boost)
Seems like they just don’t like working with you and they gave you performance as the sole reason as an easy out without having more difficult conversations
skav2@reddit
What did you do that was a big fuck up? You are being too vague.
Sfpkt@reddit (OP)
I put the project at risk from being released on time. That was the biggest mistake that I made at the company.
skav2@reddit
Did you drop your quarter pounder and coke on the companies only server? Is that what delayed the project?
CanvasSolaris@reddit
Agree. Depending on the mistake, and the expectations of the role you were hired into, this could have been brewing for a while.
HoratioWobble@reddit
You know, I joined a company last year and they went nuts on AI (this is relevant).
I was brought in as a React Native Engineer, the first one in the company.
They let me go because I "wasn't meeting the standards expected for the role" - basically the same thing.
In the discussion with my line manager and HR I was told that because I hadn't upskilled other engineers, I wasn't meeting the criteria, but they only agree'd to actually build the app in React Native a week before they fired me and all the engineers had zero Mobile experience and themselves were VERY busy, they wouldn't even have the time to be upskilled.
During the time there, I had no 1:1's, no negative feedback, the CEO even told me how great I was doing a month before.
I was also building POC's and supporting and enabling different teams.
What's interesting is, I'm one of about 10 people, all of which got the same reason - different departments all doing good work, with no feedback, no 1:1s, no issues, just suddenly fired.
After I left, a bunch of people reached out to tell me the same story and I learned that apparently management had been using AI to do employee reviews.
I'm wondering if it was the same where you are and what's actually happening here is companies are trusting LLMs to make judgements - fed by their use of AI within the business.
Altamistral@reddit
Managers will deliberately deceive reports into believing things are better than they are. This ultimately harm the individual but benefits the company, so they have to do it.
BoBoBearDev@reddit
1) you were asked to join the team, which implied you worked on a different team under the same company, so why didn't they just transfer you back?
2) why would mistake be so severe when it is "trying to get to the finish line". Because this is more like alpha or beta build at best, not a production with users actually using the system for their daily tasks.
EddieJ@reddit
Sounds like a shit place to work for. Name and shame?
scandii@reddit
"I am a chef. I cooked really bad food. I said to my boss that I will fix my mistakes. they are now firing me"
does that sound like enough information to you? I got nothing. you might have been the biggest dick that has ever dicked, you might have had a hater that saw an opportunity to get rid of you.
also, your boss does not have a vested interest to be antagonistic towards you. they can say whatever they want in the moment while actively planning to get rid of you - that's just how human relationships work in general.
Packeselt@reddit
It sounds like you either were pipped and didn't know it, or were put on a doomed project and were delegated as a scapegoat for why it didn't work out.
GongtingLover@reddit
Fuck that company man.