Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by blowski 1132 days ago
I absolutely could be wrong. Even if I spent 2 hours listening to both sides, I could still be wrong. This is my best guess, based on my own experience of being a manager.

My guess is that you gave them what you thought was honest and helpful feedback, but the way you delivered it made you come across as arrogant and abrasive. I say that because I get the same feeling talking to you on here.

Imagine a story that runs like this. You off-handedly made a negative judgment in public about their existing code, which was written by their longest-serving and most senior engineer, who overhears your criticism. They then criticise you in private Slack channels of which you are not a member. Now your manager has a conflict to deal with. On one side, there's a long-standing engineer who knows the existing tech stack in great depth and has delivered much value for the company. On the other is you, somebody who started three weeks ago, and doesn't know much about the tech stack. The easiest way of resolving the conflict is to get rid of you. While they could be patient and see if things improve, your somewhat abrasive reaction to your manager's request to work more in the office makes their mind up that the pain in managing you is not the worth the potential technical skills you offer. HR advises that the lack of knowledge with Angular and browser dev tools gives sufficient justification, no need to muddy the water by mentioning the personal conflicts, as that's much more subjective. Thanks tamarind8, but your work duration probation "did not met the performance expectations and standards" so we're terminating the contract, here's 2 weeks notice as per your contract.

You arrive here, and tell us that last sentence, and you're asking if it's fair. The rest of that paragraph gives context to the decision.

Now I'm not suggesting I've got all or even any of the details right there, it's simply a generic story I've seen play out quite frequently. But without knowing that kind of detailed context, it's impossible to say what happened.

You can't control the decision to fire you. It's done. Whatever the reason.

But you can now control your response to it. You can be defensive, blame everything on them, and think about taking legal action that will almost certainly fail. Or you can learn from mistakes you made and do things differently next time.

1 comments

> This is my best guess, based on my own experience of being a manager.

So, as a manager. How would you feel if someone interviewed you, and hired you based on your years of experience as a manager, then suddenly started acting like you have no experience at all? How would you handle that?

How would I feel? I’d be annoyed! Undermined. Why would they hire me and then belittle me with tasks someone with half my experience could do?

How would I handle it? There are two answers to that.

The first is “I’d quit and go and get a new job”. I’d assume they were idiots who didn’t know how to run a software company. I’ve done this in the past.

The second is “I’d figure out why they feel like that and do something about it”. Seniority is set to zero when you join a new company, and you build it by working well over time. If you’re smashing out junior tasks every day for two weeks, discuss it in retro and 1:1. This is where personal growth comes from and shows true seniority.