

Ask HN: What's the worst thing that happened to you job-wise? - simonebrunozzi


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bitshepherd
Got let go after showing up late to mandatory retraining (I found out the day
of, and we didn't have smartphones then), which resulted in moving to another
company across town for a contract where conversion was a "sure thing" just to
have the contract run out 3 months later and not get renewed. No official
reason given for either, but I can read between the lines.

As I was still reacting to the news about the contract, the IRS seized my
assets based on a clerical error on their part, resulting in an already tight
financial situation turn into a nightmare. After being unable to find paying
work for months, my vehicle was repossessed and I was evicted, broke with no
support network.

Over the years since then, I've hustled to get back on track, but that one
year's repercussions are still being felt today.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
That's a sad story, and I'm happy that you were able to get things fixed
eventually. I always have a little safety net for situations like yours, even
if I of course hope they will never happen to me.

------
hawkice
Depends on precisely what you mean by worst.

There is a deep, objective sense in which spending more than a year on a site
that never got launched was bad. A permanent loss of meaning for that time.
But it doesn't hit quite so hard as, for instance, being woken up every night
for two weeks due to a bug I wasn't allowed to fix in an integration with our
monitoring system, or when the amped-on-amphetimines founder threw a chair at
the guy I was sharing an office with (and later explained how this was a
better way to handle their disagreement than firing him, because he was really
quite talented, wouldn't firing him have been bad for the company?) -- this
made it impossible to work, the anxiety was just....

I think that's the odd part. A lot of the answers here have the distance of
time, and know what's important. At the time, stuff like that, like having the
management team demean and laugh at you for being concerned about honesty with
business partners -- it has such a salient emotional impact it's hard to
remember it's not even in the right category for 'worst thing'.

------
byoung2
The worst thing to happen to me was also the best. Back in 2006 I put in my 2
week notice after 5 exemplary years at the company. With 3 days to go I was
fired for a frivolous reason (my boss was a vindictive type of guy). I was
supposed to continue working part time for the company but getting fired put
an end to that, that's why he did it. That motivated me to take a year off and
prepare for a career change. The new career was software engineering, and now
I make four times what I did back then, and I work fewer hours and have less
stress. Funny how life works out sometimes.

~~~
kidlogic
What was your previous occupation?

~~~
byoung2
I was a center manager at Kaplan test prep. I was also a teacher for SAT, GRE,
GMAT, and LSAT classes. The plan was to continue to teach part time after I
left my management position.

------
scottrb
I used to work for a small company and was their only IT person. This was an
internet business with a dozen employees and I was responsible for taking care
of the office computers and network, as as well as taking care of web
properties they had and maintaining an e-commerce platform from the late 90's.
The whole period was terribly stressful. I worried a lot about everything I
couldn't fix quickly, and lost every bit of work life separation possible.

------
31reasons
A Startup was using a really bad way to communicate between their software
components. Their main architect was a moron. I was a contractor at the time.
I told the CEO that there is better way to do this if he let me. I was asked
to leave the next day. 6 months later the startup went belly up.

------
MichaelCrawford
I was expelled from the California Institute of Technology for sleeping on a
couch after the Master of Student Housing told me not to.

------
simonebrunozzi
For me, when a previous employer hired a lawyer to send me a letter to clarify
certain things (it was related to non-competition and non-solicitation).

What's yours?

~~~
partisan
I've been threatened when announcing my resignation at two jobs. I work in a
niche market, but the level of paranoia is unjustified.

The first time was a very uncomfortable five days where they tried to convince
me to say where I was going. I was heading to a competitor and they figured
that much. I finally had a heart to heart with my manager and explained that
if they trusted my integrity then they would know that I was not going to take
any "trade secrets" with me. They backed off at that point and the rest of my
stay was more pleasant.

The second time was at the next job. They asked me to stay and I said no. Then
they said, "what if your offer were to disappear?", implying that they were
going to somehow going to make enough trouble to have my offer withdrawn. I
made it very clear I wouldn't respond to their threats and they denied making
threats and didn't make them again.

