[jasonkester]

I bet if you read this back to yourself, you’ll understand why they let you go. And hopefully you’ll approach your next gig differently.

From their perspective, they hired a guy, and it took him 3 weeks to close a single CSS ticket. If you were the company, what would you do?

It sounds like you may be new, so chalk it up to miscommunication. But next time, spend the first day “learning” while closing a few real tickets. Make sure you’re up to speed with the rest of the team in your first week, so there’s no question of your value.

[tamarind8]

I actually had to insist on being given that ticket. My boss was actually happy to let me spend more time learning angular and setting up my dev env. Think about that.

But the moment I stepped up to, and embraced the challenge, everything changed. Maybe someone whispered some bad things about me? I will never know...

What I'd do differently if I wanted to work there? Keep my mouth shut, and not say anything about my views and concerns. Just wait to be given orders and follow them, never questioning anything.

[jasonkester]

Hey, man. I'm only reading what you wrote and responding to the impression it left. Please try to take it constructively.

Imagine your boss was actually happy with you not delivering anything those first few weeks. Would he have let you go?

I've watched this exact situation play out too many times now to miss the signs. A new person joins the team, spends a few weeks familiarizing and reporting as much in the standups. Manager is encouraging the whole time. Then one day, New Person is no longer with the company, reach out to me if anybody has any concerns.

Every time, it's the new person not catching the signals that they should have been self starting and delivering all that time.

I'm not trying to say that it's fair. Just pointing out that it happens.

[stefanos82]

> Hey, man. I'm only reading what you wrote and responding to the impression it left. Please try to take it constructively. > Imagine your boss was actually happy with you not delivering anything those first few weeks. Would he have let you go?

If you were a boss, at what day would you expect from your newly hired developer to start delivering any result?

> I've watched this exact situation play out too many times now to miss the signs. A new person joins the team, spends a few weeks familiarizing and reporting as much in the standups. Manager is encouraging the whole time. Then one day, New Person is no longer with the company, reach out to me if anybody has any concerns.

...and you consider this a healthy behavior from any working environment?

What do you think employees are, mentalists to read people's minds and know what others they are thinking?! Let's be serious here please...

> Every time, it's the new person not catching the signals that they should have been self starting and delivering all that time.

Oh how much I abhor this behavior! What is it with "not catching the signals" even mean here?!

If you don't like someone's behavior, let that person know and be crystal clear about the reasons; 99.9% of all times it's either bad communication or misinterpretation, let alone a naive misunderstanding.

> I'm not trying to say that it's fair. Just pointing out that it happens.

Indeed it does and this needs to change and needs to change yesteryear!

[jasonkester]

> ...and you consider this a healthy behavior from any working environment?

No. Of course not.

But there's a difference between the world we want to exist and the world we live in. And that world is full of people who behave like your manager and the ones I've seen that led to my observations here.

The sad truth is that you need to be able to read situations like this and adapt to them.

> If you were a boss, at what day would you expect from your newly hired developer to start delivering any result?

I'd suggest flipping this around. If you were a boss, and your new hire jumped in with both feet on day one and started closing tickets, would you let him go after his 3 week probation was up?

[tamarind8]

> The sad truth is that you need to be able to read situations like

If my manager wanted me, as a senior dev to only use chrome for a browser, and use a its debugger for solving all my tickets, he should have made this clear during the recruitment process.

"Senior Front-End Dev required, must only work with the Chrome Web Browser, and full blown IDES"

We would have saved one another a lot of time...

[stefanos82]

Rule #1: Identify the environment you are in.

You never EVER do any ticket closing or commenting on your very first day. Others might interpret this as a threat: e.g. who is this who came here to show-off, that thinks he knows more than us?

Good luck after this type of behavior; you are doomed by your own colleagues, let alone the management.

Rule #2: Be observant, at all levels.

See how each and everyone behaves; who talks a lot and who does not, who is the silent one and who is the mystery one.

Learn to read and interpret human behavior and professional behavior, both verbal and professional; I know from experience that some colleagues pretend to care about you in verbal communication, but in professional they dig your grave...let's call them insecure people.

Rule #3: Go with the flow and apply #2 and #1 accordingly.

A working environment should be a pleasant place to work for that helps you acquire professional and personal experience, not make you feel like you are in a military camp or in a prison with unwritten laws, that is surrounded by invisible landmines.

So, to answer to your counter-question:

> I'd suggest flipping this around. If you were a boss, and your new hire jumped in with both feet on day one and started closing tickets, would you let him go after his 3 week probation was up?

Unless that person was exclusively hired to save the whole company from bankruptcy, due to his or her previous professional experience in such stressful time constraints and was guaranteed to deliver in time, I would call this person in my office and give him a warning that such behavior would cause nothing but trouble and would advice him / her to take it slowly, but at a moderate degree; a person should understand when should draw a line, else that person is out, not by the management, but by his / her colleagues.

Does this cover you?

[mock-possum]

> Rule #1: Identify the environment you are in.

> You never EVER do any ticket closing or commenting on your very first day. Others might interpret this as a threat: e.g. who is this who came here to show-off, that thinks he knows more than us?

holy shit my man... you have worked in some dire situations. Last time I hired a junior dev that finished a bunch of stuff in his first couple days I made sure everybody knew what a good job he was doing, how proud we were of him and how lucky we were to have him there. Your coworkers are supposed to be your allies, not a threat.

[mstipetic]

What kind of manager communicates with signals? It’s their job to say what are the expectations during onboarding and offer feedback during the period. This isn’t Bridgerton

[blowski]

From your second paragraph here, I understand you were somewhat critical of the management at this company?

[tamarind8]

Yes, I think I was... good catch :)

So they'd recently changed their policy from 2 days to 3 days work from office. Meaning the majority of dev time, would be spent at the office. I simply told my manager that since we'd be spending more time in the office, could they give us the equipment we need? One of the devs wanted an extra monitor, some other two devs were sharing a laptop charger, I'd been waiting 3 weeks for my second monitor and laptop charger....

I want to be productive. My home office is 100% set up for my productivity. So I need to spend more time in the office? Ok. But please supply all the equipment I need to work effectively. If you consider how much devs get paid, hardware is cheap! You are wasting money by not giving them the tools to do their job!

I was not that blunt, but kind of hinted that, after spending my first 3 weeks waiting for a monitor, usb port and laptop charger.

[blowski]

It sounds to me like the manager realised you weren’t a good fit for each other, and used the Firefox thing as a pretext.

[tamarind8]

To be honest, I believe me and the manager were a really good fit. If the choice was to move away from angular. As a developer, I believe we have the same values. He just felt I would be "too stressed with whats coming down the line" whatever that means.

If you hire someone because you think you are going for A, then change your mind about "what's coming down the line" and decide to stick with B, what is the proper way of letting them go?

[blowski]

It's hard to say, as I have almost no context except for what you can give me. I highly doubt you'd get anywhere taking legal action against them.

Also, are you posting here because you're frustrated and want to rant? That's OK, I do it too, but it's pointless me trying to offer advice if that's the case.

Or perhaps you are looking for advice? HN isn't great for that, so email me if you want, it's on my profile.

[stefanos82]

Read carefully what OP wrote please...not only the CSS issue was fixed, it was also done on ALL pages as well AND the CSS ticket was given the third week.

[tamarind8]

Thanks. I was actually still being asked if the CSS had been done this morning before the firing. Despite the fact that it had actually been moved as done on the board, me saying I'd finished with it in a slack DM with him yesterday, and me saying it was done in yesterdays sprint meeting. I guess when someone-one has already made up their mind, any kind of input gets automatically, and subconsciously deleted from their minds.