[Aurornis]

> I think the general public (and by that I mean including software engineers too) overestimate the likelihood of a huge screw-up leading to being fired like they do in the movies

I’ve done some volunteer mentoring for a while. Fear of getting fired for small things is very widespread among younger generations right now. As far as I can tell, some of them build their mental model of the office from a combination of movies, Reddit posts, TikTok rage bait, and stories on social media. They’re so convinced that every corporation is an evil entity set on destroying their lives that small mistakes are catastrophized into career-ending moves.

The saddest part is when they make a small mistake and then let it snowball into lies and manipulation to cover it up. In the program I’m familiar with I don’t recall any stories of people being fired for singular honest mistakes, but there have been plenty of stories shared where people made a mistake and then caused far more problems by lying about it or even doing things like trying to attack and discredit people who witnessed the mistake as a defensive measure.

[paradox460]

A large part of it stems from layoff culture. None of us know if this is going to be the last day at work. Is it rational? No, layoffs typically hit randomly and with little predictability, but that's not salve to those who worry about their jobs

[nitwit005]

They've often only had part time jobs for small business owners, which is a situation more prone to getting fired for minor faults, or owner's whims.

[AlexeyBelov]

I agree with your post in general, but let's not whitewash corpos.