Hacker News Reader

Comment by detaro | Hacker News Reader

Why is it a red flag if someone talks about getting fired?

"Getting fired" implies you did something really wrong, which makes you less desirable of a hire.

It really depends if we are conflating "getting fired" with "laid off". The latter is not bad. When I hear that someone got fired it usually means they did something like break a big HR rule or caused the company to lose an important account.

I've known people who have gotten fired, and have gotten fired. 70% of the time, its politics.

Basically I found out the founder of the company had been lying to me as a early hire, and I asked about it and wanted it fixed. And suddenly performance reviews went extremely negative. Stuff like that is why people get fired.

Lesson Learned: Always get it written in a contact, don't trust verbal agreements. Companies only argue for "Professional" behaviour, when its in their favour.

Can you explain? I've never had a coworker that got fired without messing up badly or just being bad at their job. Maybe I've gotten lucky that way. Would love to hear about others viewpoints.

"70% of the time, its politics." or someone, somewhere can do you job cheaper than you are doing it. "Reduction In Force" is the cute term I heard once.

Often "laid off" is "fired" (not often as in > 50% of the time, but often as in not-rare). Companies will use "layoffs" as a way to get rid of the dead weight w/ less risk of being sued.

You are assuming the company knows who the dead weight is. I have seen more than a few times that someone is laid off, and only after he or she is gone do their managers figure out exactly what they did. Usually to their chagrin that there is no one else who can do it.

Oh what I mean is that people who would be fired tend to get held on to until the next layoff and then released that way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com