Absolutely it's serious. But if we're talking laying someone off because you can't make payroll, that is quite different than dismissing them for cause. Generally the latter is what I think of as 'firing'.
There are scenarios one can construct that are quite painful, the person you convinced to move out of their home town away from an ok job and family to work for you who, due to the high cost of living, had a really long commute and got into a vehicle accident their first week, because they had been putting in 80 hour weeks to come up to speed quickly, that put them into the hospital but they they hadn't worked long enough to qualify for California Disability Insurance. Can we make it any worse? Perhaps their girlfriend found out she was expecting that week and so that was why this poor guy was rushing home? And your startup goes out of business because the lead investor pulled out just before the round closes, so now they don't have a job.
I'm sure we could pile more on.
My point is that the common case, the general case, is that people have multiple jobs throughout their lives. Sometimes it is wonderful, sometimes it sucks, but when they are 60 looking back at their 20's it will be part of a much larger tapestry of experience. If for the majority of people it isn't the end of their world.
There are scenarios one can construct that are quite painful, the person you convinced to move out of their home town away from an ok job and family to work for you who, due to the high cost of living, had a really long commute and got into a vehicle accident their first week, because they had been putting in 80 hour weeks to come up to speed quickly, that put them into the hospital but they they hadn't worked long enough to qualify for California Disability Insurance. Can we make it any worse? Perhaps their girlfriend found out she was expecting that week and so that was why this poor guy was rushing home? And your startup goes out of business because the lead investor pulled out just before the round closes, so now they don't have a job.
I'm sure we could pile more on.
My point is that the common case, the general case, is that people have multiple jobs throughout their lives. Sometimes it is wonderful, sometimes it sucks, but when they are 60 looking back at their 20's it will be part of a much larger tapestry of experience. If for the majority of people it isn't the end of their world.