
Getting Fired Can Be Worse Than Divorce - kafkaesq
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-27/why-getting-fired-is-worse-than-divorce-or-the-death-of-a-spouse
======
bcx
I am skeptical of these findings. The graph comes from LSE's center for
economic performance ([http://cep.lse.ac.uk/](http://cep.lse.ac.uk/)), but I
cannot find any reference for a related study when searching google.

I also find that it would be very difficult to summarize 4000 research papers
into a clean graph about subjective life satisfaction in such a way that you
could cleanly compare post divorce well-being and post unemployment well-
being.

Given, it's VERY hard to find the root study, and most other peer websites are
just referencing the Bloomberg article. My guess is the author of the article
is conflating some data.

A few interesting references:
[https://whatworkswellbeing.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/unemp...](https://whatworkswellbeing.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/unemployment-
reemployment-wellbeing-briefing-march-2017-v3.pdf)

References:
[http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/926/1/02-16.pdf](http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/926/1/02-16.pdf)
To conclude: "Using a longitudinal study of 24,000 people living in Germany,
this study found on average that individuals had lower life satisfaction
following unemployment and this never recovered to the pre-unemployment
levels. These results held for men and women but were stronger for men."

The authors of this study frame their results slightly differently:

"The findings suggests that even a short period of unemployment can cause an
alteration in a person’s long-term set-point. Although there was substantial
stability in life satisfaction over the years, unemployment did influence
long-term levels, thus suggesting that in addition to personality, long-term
subjective well-being can also be influenced by life circumstances"

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xexers
I wonder if the study went deeper into the different types of "fired". Things
like:

* Your entire team is being cut because it's not generating enough revenue

* No one likes you

* your position can, and will, be outsourced to India

* you are incompetent at your position

I feel like there would be different levels of upset based on those things.

~~~
Consultant32452
With the requisite of I'm an anecdote and anecdote != data....

I've been both divorced and fired. I got fired because my position was
outsourced to India. I got divorced because nobody liked me :).

The firing was basically nothing. I think the key difference, for me as an
individual, is that I'm not a "lifer." I'm generally well liked in my jobs and
get regular raises and promotions, but I'm not emotionally attached to the
vision or whatever. In addition to that I happen to be the type of person who
keeps a hefty emergency savings and all that. Financially speaking getting
fired was a minor nuisance. I had another job within a month.

Getting divorced was really tough. It was an existential crisis. One day I was
one thing, a married man with a child. The next day I was this completely
different person, a bachelor with half a child. I didn't have ANY single
friends, or childless friends who could do adult things when my daughter was
with my ex-wife. I had to re-create who I was almost from the ground up.

The key factor, for me, is the "lifer" status. I was a lifer in my marriage,
but have never been for a job.

~~~
cableshaft
You do not have to be emotionally attached to a job for it to be negatively
effected by the job being terminated. The transition from income to no income
can have chain effect on all other aspects of your life, especially if it
usually takes you time to find your next job (a foreign concept to SV types,
probably, but less so for other industries and parts of the country).

I went through layoffs four times in a row after working at each one for less
than two years. Each time it was due to a downturn in the company due to poor
executive decisions (in hindsight) or bad timing with the market. I actually
started thinking I was cursed, and stopped taking as many chances because I
saw too many companies struggle and fail up close and personal.

There was also a period of unemployment in between each one, and my finances
took a beating each time (seemed like I had only just recovered when the rug
got pulled out from under me again). It sucked. I'm still struggling in some
ways as a result of it, years later.

~~~
Consultant32452
As the other responder commented, I think it's about identity rather than the
job itself. I imagine if I'd had the same kind of experience you had with
multiple layoffs and all that I would have suffered some severe depression.
One layoff didn't really impact me, but four times in quick succession would
definitely wear on me.

~~~
wolco
In a way it might be a good thing if you have worked in the same place for
years and wanted to browse around the industry picking up new skills. You have
built in reasons why you left each position so that shouldn't work against you
when looking for a new job. Hopefully you had some payout each time that could
earn you more than you would have during that period. Hopefully you had a
chance to retool and reinvent yourself.

------
leroy_masochist
What's up with the massive drop in happiness of fired women between years 3
and 4 post-firing? As a group they go from happiest score of any cohort-year
pairing to least happy.

Also I wonder the extent to which the male-female discrepancy in the data (men
do meaningfully worse than women post-firing, per the graph) is driven by the
continued decline in blue-collar, traditionally male jobs, or whether another
factor explains it (e.g., women tend to verbalize stress with their friends
more consistently, thus they process the grief of getting fired
faster/better).

~~~
btkramer9
I've never been married but the other data surprised me too. Both men and
women experience increased happiness after a divorce or their significant
other died.

~~~
civilian
It's the year of divorice/widowhood that is the low mark, but afterwards
people recover. Doesn't that make sense? That are still in the negatives as
far as life satisfaction goes.

My close friend killed himself nearly 4 years ago. The first year was really
bad, the second year was just a little better. And now, ya know, I'm mostly
back to myself. Life satisfaction isn't a finite resource that you can only
lose, you can rebuild it.

~~~
ianamartin
I feel you. My best friend did the same when I was in my mid 20s, and it
really wrecked me. 14 years later, I _still_ sometimes have a really hard time
with it. I still visit his parents once a year and play my violin for them--
the same piece he requested in his suicide note that I play at his funeral.

For a couple of years after he died, I was really angry and depressed--perfect
mood for a classical musician, really. But I wasn't getting any better. After
a while, I decided to start trying to understand what was in his head better.

He was always a brilliant Mathematician and Software Developer and
Philosopher. I was into tech at the hobbyist level. Purely as a curiosity. So
I started reading all the books I inherited from him, and over time the
projects he was always talking about and the goals and dreams he had . . .
started to make sense to me.

Eventually, I decided to chase some of his dreams for him, and that got me
started down the path I've been on ever since. At first I worked on his dreams
and took them as far as I could make sense of them. Then I started realizing I
was forming my own dreams and goals wrt technology stuff. And I started
chasing those.

I have a good life now. Better and happier than I was as a musician. I was a
far happier person 4 years after he died than I was before he died. He changed
my life and opened up a world to me that I didn't know about while he was
alive. And he did it again after he died.

I'm sure that with the suicide rates being what they are in the U.S. that most
people have been touched in some way by this particular pain. Though it's easy
for me to forget that on a particular day every year.

Sounds like you're dealing with it in a healthy way. Hang in there when it
gets tough. It gets less and less tough over time, and eventually, you get to
a point where the feelings hit you on your terms, when you're ready for them,
and you plan out your response in advance, and you can be honestly positive
about how you deal with it--a point where the happiness that this person was a
part of your life outweighs the sadness of the loss: a genuine appreciation of
a wonderful human being.

Sorry for your loss.

------
patmcguire
This is maddeningly vague. I've reread it and I can't figure out if it's about
continuous unemployment or not. I think that it is but they want to make it
about firing.

They talk about firing, then about firing some more, then they need some hard
stats so they talk about long term unemployment. "Unemployed people continue
to become increasingly unhappy over the next few years." All the facts are
about being unemployed long term, they just talk about firing a bunch. The
graph is about unemployment.

"People who regularly attended church had a buffering effect from the impact
of unemployment" is the closer.

Am I crazy? This seems like an article about one thing dressed up as another.

------
garyclarke27
Utter Garbage, I've experienced both, getting fired is minor hiccup compared
to divorce. Divorce is very similar to the pain I felt losing a brother, when
he was killed in a car accident. I'm lucky though I soon got a better job and
a better (for me) new wife and wonderful kids. But I will never forget how
awful and surprisingly painful the divorce experience was for me, after just
10 years together.

~~~
Stryder
Same here. Getting fired is stressful, but losing a loved one is a soul-
crushing experience that will kick me into a deep depression for months.

Work is a means to getting money, and curing boredom; precisely in that order.

I suspect this is some clever social engineering to get people to be more
fearful over losing their jobs.

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kafkaesq
The weird part is that getting fired can still suck, very deeply, even if it's
from a job you truly hated and were going to quit anyway.

~~~
milquetoastaf
Rejection sucks. I was fired from a job I hated and it did not help my self-
esteem at all heh. Also a lot of the time firings / layoffs happen around
bonus payout times so it hurts the head and the wallet.

~~~
j_s
Very good point about the double-whammy of getting fired right before a bonus!

------
droithomme
What he says is true some of the time.

Last time I got fired, for refusing to cooperate with illegal and unethical
management behavior, it was a huge relief to me and a net benefit.

I realize this is not always the case for people, but it sometimes is. In
general though you have a better shot at claiming unemployment insurance
benefits you paid for if you're fired without cause than if you quit. This
wasn't a factor for me since I immediately flipped to a new higher paying job,
but it's an issue for many people.

On the other hand, my last divorce was also a huge relief to me as well. Good
riddance in both cases.

It seems like the referenced study is looking at people who become unemployed
and who stay unemployed and are unable to find work. Yes, that is a very bad
situation. But it's different from the article title that suggests they are
talking only about getting fired. Getting fired and becoming long term
unemployed (whether from firing, layoffs or quitting) are fairly different
scenarios.

------
toexitthedonut
The problem is that there is no self-regulation mechanism in place to keep
people from going too much into the deep end of un-employability. A feedback
loop that exacerbates a bad situation sounds like a quality of bad design to
me.

~~~
swiley
What can you do to keep it from happening though? It's not like you can just
grab their brain and make them apply themselves.

~~~
Apocryphon
I would hazard to guess in tech this role is being filled up by coder
bootcamps and Pluralsight, if such candidates were aware of any knowledge
deficiencies.

~~~
cat199
Unless the problem is that your years of actual experience with the actual
technologies being taught in these camps is frowned upon by recruiters in
favor of people completing them because they have completed some camp and you
have not..

Yes, some people are sloppy and never learn, that doesn't mean that others
arent self motivated and learn these things without needing someone to spoon
feed them through a bootcamp...

------
danso
This is a study with an interesting finding but the article doesn't really add
much additional reporting and context beyond doing PR for the mentioned study.
Case in point, the only person they manage to quote about the impact of job
loss is a teenager:

> _The impact of being fired is particularly pronounced on younger workers,
> the research shows. Tom O’Sullivan, 18, was fired from his first job after a
> three-month probation period. He believes it was because he took a sick day
> during his first month. “It’s obviously not what you want to happen,” said
> O’Sullivan, who lives in northwest England. “It’s not exactly good for
> confidence, especially for your next job; you’re going have to say you’ve
> been sacked.”_

~~~
ourmandave
It's not going to hurt him if he doesn't tell anyone. Does anyone expect an
18-year-old to have an employment history gap?

It's still bogus to be tossed because you took a sick day.

------
mirekrusin
Bullshit. Explicitly fired people are more likely to have problems with
themselves (poor work ethics, laziness, etc). Those are carried throughout
their carrier - of course they won't be happy after years, they (more likely)
will carry those bad habits with them to another job.

All this moaning about externals (boss, partner, government, whatever) is
quite boring frankly. Yes, in some cases bad shit happens that shouldn't and
we should fight with it, but to draw this general picture where responsibility
for oneself is shifted to others is just immature. At the end - nobody gives a
fuck about you - this adult realisation is liberating: you now have control of
your life in your own hands.

As to bosses - it's arguably better to say "we're restructuring business,
we've decided to let you go" (more likely in commonwealth/western countries)
instead of "you're lazy bastard, you're fired" (more likely in slovian
countries for example) - but I'm not sure. Maybe it's just better to say how
things are so the person gets clear signal he/she needs to get their shit
together? I don't know.

Anyway the best advice is to say "fuck it" and focus on the future.

~~~
kafkaesq
It's hard to just say "fuck it" when literally 4/5 of your discussions about
prospective employment immediately terminate once the person on the other end
finds out you were fired. (That is, until you think up a radically different
way of explaining it to people).

~~~
crispyambulance
The other dimension to the stigma of laid-off people is the fact that anytime
the whiff of impending lay-off starts floating through the office, people GTFO
as soon as possible. Usually these are valuable people in the prime of their
careers who won't tolerate even a small probability of getting laid off.

That's bad for everyone including employers, but especially careerists who
need an unbroken chain of employment, because yes, even if you're not laid off
there's a stigma to "job-hopping" as well.

------
damm
I've lived through my other half dying; I have been fired numerous times. It
did not lead to any downward spiral of depression; I just got another job.

Perhaps this article is more useful to those in the UK and it's tailored to
them; as their unemployment problem is different than what is in America. So
most americans who reply won't get it. (I suspect)

------
cmdrfred
Survivorship bias? Getting fired wouldn't upset me all that much but I'd be
upset to lose my fiancé. Perhaps the sort of people who get fired are also
prone to depression?

~~~
xupybd
Yeah this doesn't make sense to me either. I'd not be happy to get fired, but
it happens. However when I got dumped by the woman I was ready to propose to,
that took some getting over. This article just seems off?

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theprop
I'm also highly, highly SKEPTICAL of these findings. I've known MANY people
really scarred from divorce. I've NEVER met anyone similarly scarred from
being fired.

I think long-term unemployment could have more traumatic effects than divorce,
but that's very different from being fired. The way the article was written,
it spoke more of unemployment than being fired itself.

------
dhooper
This is the most American headline I've ever seen, so I'm shocked the data
isn't about Americans.

------
atemerev
I don't know why getting fired is such a big deal. I work mostly as an
independent contractor, and my contract usually states that I can be "fired"
(i.e. contract terminated) without any explanation at any moment (I can part
anytime too, as long as I respect the NDA and went through the parting
checklist).

This is much more convenient for the employer, which is the part of the reason
I demand much higher hourly rates than normal employees (and it still worth
it). A contract with a regular full-time employee is harder for both parties,
which is why the "usual" full-time employment is becoming increasingly rare.

Which is a good thing, if you ask me. We are not in Japan, and the company is
not supposed to keep us for life and take care of everything (and even in
Japan, it is no longer in vogue).

~~~
__jal
Putting aside everything else, contracting is very different. I'm was a
contractor (independent as well as via a firm I co-started) for a over a
decade, and getting fired by a client, as you say, is no big deal. Every
business deals with bad customers, makes mistakes sometimes, etc. If it
doesn't kill the business, you fix the problem (if any) and move on.

Working for The Man is a very different relationship and is looked upon
differently by everyone from other people through the tax man. So it is a
different thing. Working around the same people daily for a long period of
time within the context of employment means building different (and usually
deeper) relationships. I won't say it is an ersatz family, but there are
similar emotional things going on.

Given that you go in to your engagements with the understanding that you can
be fired at the drop of a hat means you think about it differently than the
person who gets canned. Perhaps people should think differently about at-will
employment, but they don't, and society loads them with different meanings.

------
jemfinch
Is this surprising at all? Of course most people recover emotionaly from
divorce. Most divorces are mutual, and these people have just gotten out of
the most toxic relationship in their lives. Firing is decidedly _not_ mutual.

------
scarface74
My first thought was why would I be deeply hurt if I got let go? Looking for a
job is minor two or three week inconvenience but it's not the end of the
world.

I had to take a step back and realize that life isn't that easy for most
professions as it is for software developers in a city heavy tech.

How would I feel if it took me 6-12 months of looking for a job, rejection
letters, not hearing back from employers, etc. at least with a divorce you
only got rejected by one person.

------
addicted
Wouldn't a better comparison be against people who got Fred or quit?

A divorce can both be a good or a bad thing (for at least one party it should
be an expected net benefit compared to the situation before)

------
iphonethrowaway
What about quitting?

~~~
kleer001
That would be a different article, I assume.

------
Jimmie_Rustle
You ever read an article that goes against everything you've experienced as a
human being? This is one of those for me

------
erik_landerholm
This article is stupid. Getting fired has always been a long term positive
experience for me.

~~~
interfixus
Completely. If getting fired ranges up among the ten worst things that could
happen to you, you really, really want to rethink your life. Deeply.

~~~
kafkaesq
_If getting fired ranges up among the ten worst things that could happen to
you, you really, really want to rethink your life. Deeply._

This strikes me as rather callous, or as well, something that only someone in
a relatively secure and high-paying line of work (like software development)
-- and of course, no kids to take care of -- could even begin have as a take
on the situation.

Yes, getting fired isn't anything like getting maimed or killed, or suffering
a truly debilitating illness. But for many people, the resulting financial
tailspin that comes from losing a decent job (particularly after one has
reached a certain age, after which, keep in mind, they may simply _not ever
find_ a comparable position) is an extremely brutal experience to go through
(and if one has kids or older relatives to take care of, exponentially more
so). In fact it's hard to think of a worse blow one is likely to have to deal
with (short of, again, the aforementioned physical deprivations).

~~~
iceberg
I work with and live near people who share the same point of view as you and
to some degree I get it but I mostly don't agree with it. Here's why and I'm
am absolutely not saying this is you!!! I'm just generalizing the type of
people I interact with that share your angst. The person who typically fears
losing their job (I have been around) has bought into a life-style that they
chose and was typically based on their highest earning potential and expect to
always be earning this good money. Now their under pressure to keep their
well-paid jobs and life-style choices but why oh why did they have to go for
the most expense life-style for their earning potential!? I guess human
nature. You lose your job have a lower income so what's the worst? Readjust
your life-style! I like the parent comment can think of far, far worse life
events, far worse than the effect of having a lower income!!!

