Fired • Hacker News Board

Re: Fired

#51

Post by ChuckMcM » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

I have often said that companies rarely take it personally when you decide to leave them, so don't take it personally when they decide to leave you. Easy to say and hard to do, like a lot of things in life.

Mostly it is the illusion of control, you don't have it, you only have choices you can make in the face of unfolding events. At Zach points out, companies change as they grow, they are some weird strange attractor function that emerges from the collective personality of everyone working there. When I joined Sun for example it was the coolest place I could ever imagine being, when I left it was a enterprise focused sales engine. Same company but different places.

I will say though that when I meet someone who has been fired or "let go" repeatedly from job after job, then it is a different situation entirely. Something I doubt Zach will experience.

Re: Fired

#52

Post by crazypyro » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 7:52 PM UTC

_bfhp wrote: post #49

crazypyro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we just stop speculating about this? He didn't come out and tell us, meaning anyone that isn't close to him will never find out. This over-analyzing of the reason (wasn't even an important point in the article) is just off-topic and more importantly, completely without evidence.... (Its not just you, but everyone is trying to play internet detective. Just stop. We don't need to dig into this guy's work life....)

My comment explicitly didn't speculate on any particular reason, it pointed to language that could easily be politician-grade rhetorical defense. Did you read my whole comment? People can speculate about the reasons if they can point to relevant historical record. Why not? This man isn't sacred, is he?

>So we get a sort of intellectual dishonesty we see regularly from politicians: deep philosophical musings to surround a quick sweep-under-the-rug of the actual issue.

You are speculating here that he is pushing the issue under the rug. You also speculated that the reason he was fired was somehow related to the humorous reasons he gave. I think its a bit much....

Re: Fired

#53

Post by ElComradio » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 7:52 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #37

simonlc wrote: post #8

Why was he fired?

And that's the part of being fired you usually don't discuss publicly. It always makes somebody look bad and nobody wants to burn bridges

Image is paramount in this meritocracy.

Re: Fired

#54

Post by coffee » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 7:52 PM UTC

I say Congratulations!

5 years is long enough as a employee at any tech company that isn't your own (or that you have serious upside in).

Take what've you learned and forge you're own path.

A path with control.

Yes control...

If you're employed by a company you have zero control (though, good managers work hard to make you feel exactly the opposite) and you can be fired/laid off/let go at any moment, without notice - job security is laughable.

Congratulations, now forge ahead with control!

Re: Fired

#55

Post by ectopic_cheeto » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

heyheyhey wrote: post #9

Wasn't this guy called out by Julie Ann Horvath, the one who complained about harassment at Github? Guess this has nothing to do with that?

worse, he was the one who reversed her commits because she broke his heart. and they say girls are the emotional ones... ha!

Re: Fired

#56

Post by cozuya » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #23

lucasjcm wrote: post #15

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it bad for him to talk about this publicly and insinuate that his manager was shit and that he was fired for no good reason? This situation reminds me a lot of the time an ex-employee of reddit complained about his firing, on reddit (!!), and was publicly called out for it by reddit's CEO at the time [1]. [1] https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_r...

>that his manager was shit I don't think he said that in the article. He implied that the reason was out of his control, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good reason. From later in the article: >I still consider it an objective mistake for them to have hired me, back then >I left on great terms with leadership and the people I worked with

The first quote implies that he had fundamental differences in how he thought things should be done vs what management or the rest of the people he worked with wanted. In which case it seems to me he'd have a pretty rough 5 years there.

Re: Fired

#57

Post by Touche » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 7:54 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #46

[deleted] wrote: post #35

[deleted]

Why is it a red flag if someone talks about getting fired?

"Getting fired" implies you did something really wrong, which makes you less desirable of a hire.

It really depends if we are conflating "getting fired" with "laid off". The latter is not bad. When I hear that someone got fired it usually means they did something like break a big HR rule or caused the company to lose an important account.

Re: Fired

#58

Post by mordocai » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 7:54 PM UTC

therobot24 wrote: post #24

The initial opening of the tweet really threw me off. >The last half-decade meant everything to me. Was a hell of a gig. Thanks, GitHub. Something about it seemed off-putting. I dunno, maybe it's because i'm not really into twitter, but it just came off, for lack of better words, fake. However, i read the rest of the post, and it was quite good. I actually enjoyed way more than i thought i would. Which kind of begs t…

Probably due to not being used to twitter. I'm getting into it and I almost always have to shorten my tweets. It's hard to get anything meaningful into the character limit.

Re: Fired

#59

Post by grandalf » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 7:54 PM UTC

Zach's posts and presentation/explanation style added a lot of value to Github. In reading the blog post linked in this story, I realize that I hadn't seen as much of that lately coming from Github.

I'm sure Zach will go on to add significant value elsewhere.

And as others in the thread have mentioned, what makes you a great early employee can sometimes not make you a great bureaucrat as the company grows. Hopefully his options are vested and he's able to have some financial upside in the future.

Re: Fired

#60

Post by guelo » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 7:54 PM UTC

Pretty smart for a guy with a large following to use it to let it be known that he was fired for random fluctuations of the universe and it had nothing to do with his performance.