What Getting Fired Means
What Getting Fired Means
A layoff or firing can feel like a permanent stain. Here's how to get it out.
NGL, it’s pretty wild out there. More mass layoffs, layoffs dressed up to look like firings, and firings masquerading as layoffs.
There’s hiring, too. My clients and friends are getting interviews, being assigned silly take-home case studies, getting offers, and some are starting new jobs.
There’s a rumor going around that the market is flooded with qualified candidates, making for insane job descriptions and cutthroat competition. That’s true, my friends, but it has been true since at least 2004. It’s tougher than it was last year, no doubt, but that was probably the best it’s ever been.
Here’s some good news. If you go out hard for a new role expecting the worst, you might be surprised with something better than you hoped for. Our economy is still expanding. Unemployment is still very low. The great news about AI is that it isn’t going to prompt itself (uh… is it?)
Here’s another little ray of light! Big companies might be toning down the random acts of emotional cruelty and fecklessly violent firings that heralded the early wave of job losses in late 2022.
CEOs who previously dismissed employees via unsigned email in the middle of the night have been doing their emotional intelligence homework. They’ll now greet a pool of bewildered employees in a hastily-scheduled Zoom call, fire them by reading a short prepared statement, then drop off, leaving a stricken HR colleague to clean up the mess.
This is what passes for progress.
Fired Up!
Every layoff is one too many. Thousands of sad, hurt, and worried people are left scrambling in the wake. Despite the real impact that a firing has on our mental health and our overall well-being, some still muster the courage to confront their search with optimism and grit.
The first thing I often hear from the recently released is their explanation for why they got laid off. This breaks my heart every time. It’s like the victim of a hurricane explaining why they live in a house.
I understand the need to rationalize. When I was fired, I obsessed endlessly over my own mistakes that I felt led to it. I got caught up in this thinking for years and wasted a good chunk of my productive career. If I knew then what I know now, I’d give myself that time back.
Instead, allow me to give that time to you. No matter the circumstances, it's not your fault for getting laid off. A layoff says everything about your employer, and it probably says nothing about you.
I read a preachy, condescending post from a senior executive at a big tech company explaining how to “artfully” avoid or spin the fact that you were laid off. This is harmful and unnecessary validation of a shitty stereotype. You do not to work for someone who admits to thinking that way.
There is one salient and scientific fact about layoffs that you must keep in mind, and that is this:
Most firings — even many ostensibly “for performance reasons” — are motivated by the need of managers and shareholders to meet financial targets.
It’s not uncommon for a layoff that is motivated by financial concerns to be dressed up as a “performance-related” termination.
Many “reductions in force” are only necessary to meet financial targets which are in some sense arbitrary. Any experienced manager — and surely any who are complicit in mass layoffs — will eventually have to confront the fact that layoffs are very rarely unavoidable in any meaningful sense of the word.
Mass layoffs happen because leaders believe they’ll help them to meet targets, improve financial performance, help with productivity (!), or reduce costs. They rarely if ever have the intended effect. They certainly can not help a company increase revenue, repair a broken strategy, fix a toxic culture, or cause management to suddenly start listening to customers.
Layoffs do sometimes boost financial performance for a while, as we’re seeing in the stock price performance of “big tech” companies in 2023.
This of course enriches the executives and shareholders, but never the victims who did the actual work of being fired. Sadly, even for the shareholders the effect is usually only temporary. A firing is forever, but the financial boost from layoffs is generally short-lived.
Considering all of the factors that lead to a company desiring to eliminate a role, it’s clear that a firing generally says more about the company than it does about the person it let go.
Treating Yourself Right
If you were fired in a layoff, you may experience some doubts about yourself. It’s only natural. When I was laid off, I blamed myself in every imaginable way in a binge of self-recrimination that lasted for years. With the benefit of hindsight I can see how foolish that was.
If there’s a stigma around being fired, it’s based on outdated ideas about what career success looks like. Previous generations of professionals were likely to spend substantially all of their career in just one or two companies. Today, any career coach will tell you that your most rapid career advancement will probably happen by changing jobs.
Most hiring managers are not going to look at a firing as a serious liability. In my experience, a candidate is much more likely to do damage by trying to spin or manage this information than by confronting it directly:
“My position was eliminated by a reduction in force. That was too bad, because I was having a lot of impact in the role. I’m looking forward to getting back to that ASAP.”
Even if your firing was performance-related, it probably says more about your former manager than it does about you. Personally, when I learn somebody who has been fired, I assume a deficiency in the manager — not the employee. Why? Experience shows that people managers are far more likely to be incompetent than the people they manage.
It’s hard to give a script for how to talk about a performance firing, since every one is so different. Try something like this:
That position didn’t work out for me. In retrospect, I may not have been the right fit for the role. I really appreciate how generous you’ve been in helping me get to know more about this opportunity.
In either case, the one good thing about getting fired is that the experience will make you a better and more empathetic leader and colleague. Any career worth having will include getting fired at least once. Nothing about being fired changes who you are, what you know, or what you can in your next role.
Try to remember this: Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.