Comments on: Getting Fired

By: mel gerard

mel gerard — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:17:55 +0000

I have never NOT been fired. In advertising and marketing, it’s very common for a job to last about 8 months, then you’re fired. I’ve come to the conclusion that the business world does not want talent or creativity, common sense or logic. They want a roomful of dweebs or ‘happy slaves’ who are hard workers, low earners, and subservient.

By: Give Me Back My Five Bucks » Dear Self: snap out of it!

Give Me Back My Five Bucks » Dear Self: snap out of it! — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 03:02:54 +0000

[...] to thank her for. I really appreciate it! And Mr. Cheap over at Four Pillars wrote a post about Getting Fired, where he admits that he’s been fired twice before. He also gave me some really encouraging [...]

By: FD » Blog Archive » Framework For Thinking Through Personal Finance11 Oct 2007 W…

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:46:23 +0000

[...] Comment on Getting Fired by linklings, October 10, 2007 brip … [...]

By: Quest For Carnivals

Quest For Carnivals — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 09:02:43 +0000

[...] Getting Fired was hi-lighted by Brip Blap who liked Mr. Cheap’s analogy regarding firings. [...]

By: Krystal

Krystal — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:35:44 +0000

It’s surprises me that so many people have come forward to let me know that they too have been fired/let go/etc. before. I suppose nobody really likes to talk about the time they got fired, but it is reassuring to know that capable people are let go all the time. Just like Gates VP said, Mr. Cheap is making $65k/year, which is a pretty darn good salary for someone who’s been fired twice!!

Also, Gates VP, don’t worry, I didn’t take it personally.

By: Mr. Cheap

Mr. Cheap — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:35:58 +0000

Gates: I was just thinking “Krystal is going to KICK his ass!” .

Surprisingly I never bring up getting fired twice at interviews so it hasn’t really factored into my current career / salary level .

By: Gates VP

Gates VP — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:31:41 +0000

(I just re-read my own post, I should add)

Krystal don’t take it personally!

By: Gates VP

Gates VP — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:29:21 +0000

Hey Cheap, aren’t you like making 65k now? Isn’t that like more than the median Canadian family? (not just those under 30) Seems to me that you’re doing pretty darn good for a guy who’s been fired twice!

As to the fire/hire cycles mentioned by Telly, it’s just part of the game. For some bigger companies, the spree is never-ending, but even then it’s becoming standard procedure for some companies. Especially in the Knowledge Worker fields, it’s becoming well-known that top producers make like 10-50% more but deliver 2-10x more productivity (IT is a great example here).

Good, big companies don’t cut top producers, they cut the fat and try to hire better replacements. If you look up GE or Six Sigma processes you’ll get a better feel for what’s happening here. The goal is to cycle out the chaff or just “the mistakes”.

If you look at Krystal’s company (even though they’re not really big), this is pretty much what’s happened to her. The company puts people on a test drive for 3 months and mercilessly cuts the ones they don’t want. In Krystal’s case it sounds quite distinctly like she wasn’t the person they wanted for the job, even if she was quite competent and capable.

Hiring people is expensive, but hiring the wrong people is also expensive. We’re all familiar with the first case (McDs, Walmart), but very few people are familiar with the second case b/c very few companies spend lots of time correctly grooming their staff.

So Krystal was just “groomed out”. They didn’t really fire her, they just took her for a test drive and put her back before firing her became too expensive. They didn’t tell her that she sucked, they just told her she wasn’t right, which is about as soft a rejection as you can get.

I’m guess that they did this because they “made a mistake”, so to speak. They probably didn’t pick the right person, so Krystal’s capacities didn’t really matter.

By: » linklings, October 10, 2007 brip blap: learning how to manage life, family, career, personal finance, productivity, self-improvement and health

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 09:09:08 +0000

[...] Getting Fired: Mr. Cheap at Four Pillars makes a very good observation on the parallels between the code of silence around miscarriages and people’s reluctance to admit to being fired. (@ Quest for Four Pillars) [...]

By: nancy (aka money coach)

nancy (aka money coach) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:50:36 +0000

Fired thrice and *$&^ proud of it! Good heavens. Thank goodness for firings. If I hadn’t been fired I could still be ….
1. a telephone marketer – one of those people who ruin your suppers (I lasted 4 hours)
2. working as a bank teller (didn’t pass my probation. couldn’t balance at the end of the day to save my life)
3. ok this wasn’t ‘fired’ per se, it was ‘downsized’ (but I still took it personally) – crunching registration numbers at a small esl college that completely collapsed 2 years after I was ‘let go’.
In between were some pretty terrific experiences (like going back to university) and I’ve had a couple wonderful career positions since then – and now have my own business, the ‘crowning glory’ imho.
Fired shmired, I say.