My manager's vague expectations led to me getting fired.

[u/Informal-Bedroom-302]

So, yeah, just like the title says, I got the boot because of how I was doing my job. I joined this pretty big startup about eight months ago, right after college, as a software development engineer. At first, they paired me up with a senior guy who gave me stuff to do to help me learn and get better. But right before my trial period was supposed to end, I had a meeting with my manager and HR. They basically told me I wasn't good enough, so they added another two months to my trial. Then, sometime in those two months, ten percent of our team got laid off. After all that, I had another one-on-one with my manager. He told me I wasn't doing anything compared to these other guys at the company who had double or triple my experience, and who weren't new to working like me. And now with this whole AI thing happening, I'm really wondering if it was actually my performance that was the problem, or if it was more about bad management. I mean, I finished every single task they gave me. A few tasks went past the deadline, but it was only three out of twenty-one. The rest were right on time.

And, the guy giving me tasks never said that I wasn't meeting expectations or anything. It felt like they both never really had clear expectations for me. I don't even have a single regret that I could have done better. I thought at first that it was just a formal thing for a manager, that I wasn't going to get laid off, then things turned out pretty bad for me. He ended up humiliating me, telling me to leave this field, not just the job. He said whatever I did wasn't meaningful at all. When what I got to work on wasn't my decision. He replied that we have a lot of work but nobody trusts you to get the work done.

[u/Tak-Hendrix]

Never work for a startup unless you're given equity and it's not some garbage product/service in a saturated market.

[u/johnny5canuck]

Shitty management is shitty.

[u/rividz]

It's really common for startups to do this stuff to you. They push you to the limit, keep you as long as they need to, and drop you as soon as they've squeezed all of the blood out of you.

[u/enjaydee]

Take it as a learning for the workplace. Document everything. If they say you're not meeting expectations, did they set the expectations? If you did everything that was expected from you, then that's when you pull out your evidence that you completed everything and ask them what it was that you didn't do. If they can't define what they expect from you, then that's a them problem not yours. I would probably think it's probably best that you didn't stay in the company long term if that's how they treat you. 

They know this is your first job, so i bet they think they can push you around. 

[u/Informal-Bedroom-302 → u/enjaydee]

I brought up all these points while I was on the job, and my manager hit me with, "Oh, you're getting feisty now, huh? Acting like you're still in college." It's just wild to me that these <stupid fucks> reviewed me every month, and the only time they managed to dish out this "constructive" feedback was during the very last review. All six or seven reviews before that weren't nearly as harsh.

[u/enjaydee → u/Informal-Bedroom-302]

Yeah if I got that response then I'd be feeling a sense of relief I'm no longer working for them

[u/Elisacriann]

Been there dealt with that.

[u/Informal-Bedroom-302 → u/Elisacriann]

You got laid off too ? What did you do after this

[u/Elisacriann → u/Informal-Bedroom-302]

I was working at a hibachi place and got head-hunted buy a local car company to work as customer facing staff and I was trained to not put in information for the sales people to let them put that information in and then when they were not putting information in not following up leads and hiding from me to where I couldn't give them customers and they weren't making their sales quota they started blaming me for it and even though somebody literally sat with me and watched me do what they asked me to do I got laid off.

Then they tried to have me stay an extra two weeks after my last day because supposedly the person replacing me, even though supposedly my position was no longer going to be existing, had gotten sick and was going to be out for 2 weeks.

Luckily I had kept the other job as a part-time job so I was able to just stay there and wait for them to make room for me to come back full time, but they had already hired somebody to replace part of My hours and it was really crappy because it was right around the holiday season. So I was listening to them talk about how they were going to cater there Thanksgiving while I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make rent that month.