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I’m curious about your firing experience. What boundary did you push and was it explicitly stated or was it implicit?

• Nextgrid 4y ago
  In my case it was very implicit and it's only in retrospect after many years in other companies that I can realize it. To be clear, this was a textbook "growth & engagement" startup, but my experience nowadays suggests the same would apply in legacy, conventional companies too. The firing itself was over a stupid misstep outside of my domain of expertise and also wasn't of any consequence to the business, which IMO means that it should outright be forgiven or at the very least downgraded to a formal warning considering I was otherwise on good standing (or at least I thought so). The problem was that I was questioning and pushing back against a supposedly "technical" decision that even after 5 more years of expertise still feels correct - however by now I realized that the whole reason behind the decision wasn't a technical one but to farm out business to some high-up person's friends' company back in their home country. Tech-wise, this decision wouldn't have improved the supposedly-claimed problem (according to tickets and meetings) one bit. The mistake I did was just a convenient excuse for a firing, but overall it worked out both ways - they eventually got a lucky exit (and I'm sure whoever was involved in that scheme also benefited even earlier regardless of the exit), and I got to learn a decent lesson about office politics to carry with me in my freelancing career (I didn't have any stock options or any good money on the line anyway, so no hard feelings and I still got a good reference).