> 1) almost no company will just up and fire a developer without warning, even in "right to work" states. A company will always 2) have the manager or HR talk to the developer to try to resolve a performance issue. It's cheaper than firing and rehiring a new developer. It also saves time.

Hmm, I've been fired from my last two positions without any warning or prior notice. In the first instance, I was a full-time employee and I got stuck on a piece of functionality and I was simply let go. I made co-workers aware of the fact that I needed some sort of help, but one day after a prolonged period of being denigrated, I was let go. When asking how come no prior warning was given, I was told "you could see it coming."

The most recent position was as a consultant and I was working with deadlines that had slipped for a number of reasons mostly outside of my control and I had to handle numerous support requests in addition to that -- which led to a severe case of burnout. My contract was abruptly terminated one day, without prior warning.

I took what I could from both experiences and improved my skills as much as I could, but there is always the domain-specific hurdles that arise.

My point is that there are some companies out there that are ruthless, so far in my experience it seems that this mostly applied to the smaller ones. I never oversold myself or my skills and I did ask for a second opinion when I felt things were taking too long. It could just be my luck thus far.