No, firing and resigning are clearly different things (as is laying off). If your analysis were correct, then nearly every time a person parts ways with a job,

No, firing and resigning are clearly different things (as is laying off). If your analysis were correct, then nearly every time a person parts ways with a job, it would be via being fired by their management. The issue here was that the entire workplace isn't going to be reformed for a single employee. It's clearly a mismatch. The employee can then choose to adapt to the way things are done, or they can choose to move on -- which is what happened. In a firing, the employee has no choice, the decision has been made for them. This is pretty clearly not firing. Firing comes with an entire bag of other things that resigning does not. For example, a person who was fired might be able to collect unemployment while looking for a new job. A person who resigns is not. A person who is laid-off is automatically able to collect unemployment. Companies also are called by future employers to find out the nature of the split, and the way the separation happened will be in the employee's file. Many companies will also keep a record of why the separation happened. In the first case, convincing somebody to resign is a favor to the company, because companies must pay into the unemployment pool. In the second, it's a favor to the employee because being fired can have long-term career consequences to them.