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I personally don't have a problem with the concept of firing people, getting fired etc... I've been fired 3 times in my junior years (and 2 times were really un

I personally don't have a problem with the concept of firing people, getting fired etc... I've been fired 3 times in my junior years (and 2 times were really unfair in retrospect) but it was all a very useful experience in retrospect. What I do have a problem with is ensuring that the industry is fair and founded on merit so that if a company fires someone, that the industry will quickly re-absorb them and make use of them. Some companies need mostly people who can get stuff done quickly, some companies need engineers who can build stuff to a very high quality standard the first time with a focus on long term maintainability and ability to handle requirement changes with low risk. Most companies need a mix of both people with different proportions. A fair market is really good at finding peoples' strengths and seeing through credentials as well as past 'failures'. Getting fired should not be a big deal. It can be a positive for the employee. Think about what kind of company will hire an obviously smart person who was recently fired... The recruitment filter works both ways; sometimes as an employee candidate, you actually WANT the company to reject your resume as it signals something about how they think. I wasted so much time in my career working for rigid companies which were ill-suited for me - Just because I was good for them doesn't mean they were good for me. As I'm getting older and my work history is being written on my LinkedIn, it creates a kind of signalling/messaging about me which more closely reflects my identity and aspirations. This made my last job hunt much more successful.

sokoloff 3y ago
> ensuring that the industry is fair and founded on merit so that if a company fires someone, that the industry will quickly re-absorb them and make use of them. Surely there exist people who are close to (or exactly) entirely incompetent at programming. Fair and founded on merit means that such employees should not be quickly re-absorbed into new positions in the industry. Sure, the competent should be able to be hired reasonably quickly after a financially-driven layoff, but a firing for terrible performance or lack of competence isn't something that is easily wiped away at the next interview.
- jongjong 3y ago
  Can happen but I suspect that it's unusual for someone to completely suck at every aspect of their chosen area of work. Probably 99% of the time it's mismatched skills/interests. Even in these cases though, firing people is good for them. Maybe they should find something else to do in a different industry. It must be torture to suck at your job every day while simultaneously depriving better suited people of that role/opportunity which you occupy... All while there may exist better opportunities for you in another industry where some other low-performing fool just like you is occupying what should have been YOUR dream job. Of course this is assuming a functioning free market. If the market is overly manipulated, you could find yourself locked out of opportunities which you would be really good at while some mismatched fool has your job and gets paid your salary (which they use to pay a shrink to help them cope with their impostor syndrome...)
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    > I suspect that it's unusual for someone to completely suck at every aspect of their chosen area of work. I agree that it's rare across the population in total. It's much less rare amongst the population subset which was fired for performance.

sokoloff 3y ago

> ensuring that the industry is fair and founded on merit so that if a company fires someone, that the industry will quickly re-absorb them and make use of them. Surely there exist people who are close to (or exactly) entirely incompetent at programming. Fair and founded on merit means that such employees should not be quickly re-absorbed into new positions in the industry. Sure, the competent should be able to be hired reasonably quickly after a financially-driven layoff, but a firing for terrible performance or lack of competence isn't something that is easily wiped away at the next interview.

jongjong 3y ago
Can happen but I suspect that it's unusual for someone to completely suck at every aspect of their chosen area of work. Probably 99% of the time it's mismatched skills/interests. Even in these cases though, firing people is good for them. Maybe they should find something else to do in a different industry. It must be torture to suck at your job every day while simultaneously depriving better suited people of that role/opportunity which you occupy... All while there may exist better opportunities for you in another industry where some other low-performing fool just like you is occupying what should have been YOUR dream job. Of course this is assuming a functioning free market. If the market is overly manipulated, you could find yourself locked out of opportunities which you would be really good at while some mismatched fool has your job and gets paid your salary (which they use to pay a shrink to help them cope with their impostor syndrome...)
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > I suspect that it's unusual for someone to completely suck at every aspect of their chosen area of work. I agree that it's rare across the population in total. It's much less rare amongst the population subset which was fired for performance.