Ask HN: Fired from first job, now what? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Fired from first job, now what?

6 pointsPryde17 comments

I was recently fired from my first software job out of college and I don't really know how to bounce back smoothly.

For some context, I'm 22 and graduated with a B.S. in both Computer Science and Mathematics in May. I took a job just before graduation with a small custom software development firm that focuses on custom web and mobile applications for businesses in and around my local area, and in which all employees work remote full-time, which I’ve since learned may not be the best situation for me. During the interview, much of the discussion revolved around mobile experience, and as such I believed that I’d be primarily working on mobile application development, which may have been true had our contracts at the time not all been web applications. I had no real experience with the stack the company used, nor significant experience with web development.

I live in an at-will employment area, so I was fired without notice, because I was taking too long to accomplish tasks and milestones on the contract I was assigned. This is an issue that had been discussed with me a 3 or 4 weeks prior to the termination of my employment, and my employers and I agreed to a 2-week probationary period to assess my progress before deciding on continuation of my employment. At the end of this period, I was not proactive in obtaining feedback on my performance, and as such received little-to-none. Today, I was told that my performance was not satisfactory, and I was let go, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Now I’m unemployed and have no idea what to do next. I've considered looking for freelance work while I find a solid job, but I don't really know what to look for. I've reached out to my former employer to receive more feedback on my performance to know exactly what I need to improve on, so I feel that I'll have a solid foundation to make the changes necessary to be a better employee, but how do I overcome losing my first serious tech job due to performance?

So you got hired straight out of school, and then let go because you weren't fast enough at working with a non-trivial technology that your employer knew (or should have known) you had little experience in? That doesn't seem reasonable to me at all.

My advice would be to not worry about this and simply job hunt as if this didn't happen. You may need to explain the situation to prospective employers. Mismatch between the job you were hired for and the actual job seems like an honest and succinct description of what happened.

Thanks for the advice and encouragement. Like I said, this happened today, so I'm not sure I'm being the most fair to the company. It's a very small company, who I'm sure need to be employing people with a much faster turn-around time than I had. I completely understand their issue with my productivity, and I've been trying to improve that so that it's not an issue with future employment. I was likely also not the best at seeking help when I should have.

Regardless, I appreciate the advice. In your opinion, should I keep this job on my resume?

I agree with this advice. Also, maybe focus on mobile jobs for now. while unemployed look for some courses in tech you might want to learn. Also, go to your college and see if they have some placement services.

Given the short length on the job I don't think it warrants even putting on your resume. It will probably do more harm than good.

I definitely don't want to lie to potential future employers, is there a particular way I should handle any questions about the gap?

Nobody will ask.

If they do: you took some time to relax after school.

You can just say you took some time off to relax after university, travelled and/or worked on some personal projects. Should be sufficient explanation, nothing strange about that.

I'd say the opposite, put it on your resume because at this point it's experience that makes you stand out compared to other fresh graduates. Any and all experience is important to landing a job at this stage of your career.

Say you started or finished a couple of months earlier so it looks like a 3/6 months contract and tell employers that the contract wasn't renewed because they ran out of work, which is probably half true anyway.

You shouldn't lie but this is massaging the truth in your favor ;)

I agree with putting it on your resume. This is great experience if you can be honest in your self reflection. Ie realize remote only is probably not a good idea for your first job out of school. Realize that you’ll need mentorship. Etc.

I have no problem leaving the job off the resume (“resumé” means “summary” not “comprehensive”). If asked you could say that you listed all experience that you felt was relavant. But personally I think it is a valuable thing to have listed.

However, I strongly discarded with the parents suggestions for “massaging” the resume. Those sugggestions are pure lying. There is a big difference about highlighting certain aspects of a career and stating things as fact which are not true.

I got fired (well, laid off) under very similar circumstances, at a similar age, working for a company in a similar niche.

My experience, which may not be the same for you, was that the small company was in financial trouble and tried to hire grads as a cost-cutting measure, then discovered that people with no experience don't work very fast, and that they weren't getting the kind of contracts they thought they'd be getting.

The emotional response to getting fired is going to suck and probably already sucks, but it's important to remember that your emotional response isn't a completely objective take on what happened. You're still a grad, you still have a degree, you now have months of experience, and hopefully the next job will be better.

First off, you'll be okay. You're a good writer and seem to have a good attitude. Everything will be fine and one day, you'll look back at this and laugh.

Second, it sounds to me like you worked for assholes. What kind of shithead takes a new grad, sells him/her on mobile, drops him/her into a totally new stack and then pulls out the fire hammer because he/she wasn't meeting milestones?? This makes my blood boil and I don't even know you.

To answer your question, put it on your resume and be incredibly open about what happened. You have nothing to be ashamed of and I bet that you learned a ton.

Best of luck, bud!

Second that - this will be a great story in 5 years. Just try to shrug it off and go for a second job. You have more experience now. I recommend not doing remote work as a junior. You can learn much more in-person and will get more feedback on your work.

Exactly. Just being hired once brings you a step ahead of other fresh grads.

I second the recommendation against remote work at this career stage. My first tech job was (and it still kinda is) remote with a very hands off boss and I managed to burn myself out with very little work and acquire one hell of a procrastination/anxiety problem. Got moved to part-time maintenance with the expected pay cut and I'm slowly getting better now.

Of course, my story is a worst case scenario, but it's good to know how sideways things can go.

If a company has to fire someone a few months after hiring them, it’s typically the company’s fault, not that person’s. Take your time finding a real job now, not some sweatshop/bucketshop gig.

tl;dr — Pretend like it didn’t happen. The company failed you, not the other way around.

Specifics:

Unless you credibly represented yourself as someone who could produce from “day 1” (figuratively), then you should probably still be in the training/development mode with a senior person giving you a significant amount of support and scaffolding. This sounds especially true since you say you had no experience with the stack. If they were giving you support, then the issue was most likely with your senior person rather than you.

The only possible way that you failed was simply by not doing work by spending entire days procrastinating (note that most folks only have about 4 or 5 strong productive hours of thought work a day). If that’s the case, I recommend you read the book Getting Things Done.

As others have mentioned, don’t even list in on your resume. Resumes have “relevant” experience, and it sounds like that company was irrelevant in terms of your development.

> you should probably still be in the training/development mode with a senior person giving you a significant amount of support and scaffolding. This sounds especially true since you say you had no experience with the stack. If they were giving you support, then the issue was most likely with your senior person rather than you.

i agree. Quoting the OP:

> in which all employees work remote full-time, which I’ve since learned may not be the best situation for me

this is a good observation.

as a new grad i'd expect you to be able to ramp up slowly over a period of months if dropped into an existing team on an existing project with some experienced and capable devs you can learn from while working on initially relatively simple tasks like basic bug fixes or enhancements.

there's a good chance you would find it much harder to ask for help (or have colleagues notice in passing that you are getting stuck with some inane idiosyncratic organisational or technical obstacle they can immediately help you with) if everyone is remote.

you may get more mileage out of getting a junior job in a larger organisation that explicitly has some kind of well-defined and resourced training / development program for grads, if you can find such opportunities. small businesses tend to need you to start making them money right away (by billing you out to the clients or so on)

I was hired by a corporation out of college and then fired for mostly political reasons after 4 years.

Since then it's been quite hard to find a steady job. It sucks pretty bad, because I don't have any connections.

But, I've also downsized my life a lot and focused on what is free and what is really beautiful in life, like my relationship and my health..

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