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Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

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641–650 of 862 posts

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the first place I worked didn't claim to be agile or anything. The daily meeting wasn't a stand-up (we sat and usually ate breakfast at a cafe or chatted in the lobby). It was still a really useful meeting.

I sit during my teams standup, it’s a standup because it’s a daily sync not because of literal standing.

actually it is supposed to be a literal standup. standing encourages very quick and to the point updates.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#642

I sure hope this format doesn't take off. Having worked as a dishwasher, line cook, pool manager, business analyst, software engineer, and startup founder, I have to say software engineer was, by far, the most coddled job. How about this: I'm a line cook, and I can't afford to be fired. I make minimum wage, and burn or cut myself badly at least once per week. I'm not allowed to take the day off and have to work throu…

I've worked minimum wage jobs like that. Yet it was at my last, professional job that overwork and pressure to travel in unsafe conditions led to me crashing my car into a tree and almost dying.

Get off your high horse.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#643
Well I actually just got "fired" today. I'm doing an infosec traineeship right now, and I supposedly don't put in enough effort at home. Employer told me the company expects people to put in another ~20hrs of studying by themselves on top of the 40 in the office, I hope this is not industry wide...

Had I known this I wouldn't have signed in the first place.

Any infosec companies with sane hours hiring trainees in the Netherlands?

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#644
I work at a tech company that just lost 70% of its stock price in under a year, my team was laid off from 15 people down to 3 people, my boss quit, and the app I've been working on for a year is questionable to be shutdown.

And I'M going to look like the jerk on my resume for quitting before a year is up.

God love capitalism!

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn’t you just recommend Azure Repos? It’s a great product and fits what you need. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/services/devops/repos/

* Azure means cloud and cloud means no * It didn't exist at the time, but there was an on-prem that MS offered a few years back. It was forced on another department with no version control experience. It lasted about two weeks.

On prem gitlab then? Just throwing out ideas.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a sad story; but PIP is really the pink slip; you take it as an advance notice that you're going to be fired, and start looking for jobs. I've heard stories of people completing PIP programs successfully, but quite honestly, I don't get it. Once you got to that point, you're not a good fit to the team and/or they don't appreciate you. Makes no sense to stay. I could understand staying with the company & switchin…

As a manager, can confirm. By the time you get to this point you are being "managed out". There is a basic expectation that you will either leave (preferable) or be fired at the end of the PIP process. I've heard of people coming back from it, but it's rare. And I think it would need to be the trigger for some kind of personal epiphany that completely changed behaviour for that kind of effect.

I only have a data point of 1 on this so it may be different than other companies, but by the time I'm implementing a PIP, I've already made up my mind that I want the employee out. I've already worked on coaching them and identified that it isn't a temporary issue or something personal they're going through outside of work. HR is my last resort and a PIP is merely a formality I'm forced to deal with. There is a world in which they kick things into high gear and turn things around, but I've usually given up hope and the onus is on them to prove that they are capable.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#647
post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried watching him a few times and got the same feeling. He also goes to great lengths to remind everyone (all the time) of how much money he makes. Is that normal for people in Silicon Valley?

I always assumed his videos were satire.

Well, not satire, by his sarcasm can be easily confused and misinterepreted. I don't think he's intentionally showing off how much money he's making.

I like him and I like how he's projecting the life of a regular developer from SV in his videos.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#648

On my last job, a new manager called me for a meeting on Friday 4PM. I spent the whole month on an extremely stressful project. The meeting was about an app that integrates credit card payments, billets and bank account on a terminal that is going to be available to the general public. The deadline? 11PM of the same day. Final version. From 0 to 100% in 6 hours. I said that it was impossible. He said that I was incap…

BTW that was probably an illegal act by your employer. They gave you a clearly impossible task then fired you when you couldn’t complete it. That’s unreasonable. You might want to contact an employment attorney in your state for a consultation. Your state Bar association can give you a referral and probably a free consultation. They will be particularly interested if this was the culmination of a pattern of bullying…

For at-will employment, employers can legally fire employees for unreasonable reasons, including unrealistic expectations of work performance.

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn’t you just recommend Azure Repos? It’s a great product and fits what you need. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/services/devops/repos/

* Azure means cloud and cloud means no * It didn't exist at the time, but there was an on-prem that MS offered a few years back. It was forced on another department with no version control experience. It lasted about two weeks.

Oh and this is on prem...

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/devops/server/

Re: Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired?

#650
post #320

So many ideas in my head that I really want to be working on, and I can’t seem to separate myself from the mental model of having a set position in a heirarchy, taking confused and/or hostile direction from seemingly arbitrary sources of authority. Some kind of fear, not even financial, more like the idea of getting lost, losing touch, never finding my way back, being abandoned and undesirable, dying alone. And beyon…

I love writing software, but I think there's something about the psychology of it that is really unnatural. Not long ago we were just hominids hanging out in small bands, and our psychological sense of worth and reward were tied to our capacity to find and kill something big enough for everyone to eat. Or perhaps to turn that mammoth into shoes and clothes to survive the winter. I wonder if this system fires the same…

and deodorant
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