Fired every year? You might be the problem.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t change your tactics and start winning.

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– Fullstack

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I met a guy a few months ago.

We graduated the same year. Same number of years of work experience.

Yet, I’d been in my current W2 for 6 years.

He’d been fired after ~1 year at every W2 he worked.

Sound familiar?

Is this you, anon?

Well, this post is going to be a one-two punch.

Tough to say, but you might be the problem.

But with new tactics, you can turn your career around starting today.

Still with me?

Good.

Let’s work through some hard truths and emerge better on the other side.

Why are you getting fired?

Ask yourself why?

Why do you keep getting fired?

Take your past 5 years of job history and write down a brief narrative for each.

• Why did you want that position

• How did you get the job

• What made you first interested

• What problems did you have with your manager

• What problems did you have with the team

• What technical issues did you get stuck on

Writing forces you to think.

This will be hard, but worthwhile. 

First, writing a narrative for your past has psychological benefits. Humans don’t live on principles or facts, but on narratives. 

Everyone needs a story. If you don’t have a cohesive story, you will keep coming back to those memories as your subconscious tries to determine what is the cohesive story for these events.

If you keep dwelling on the past, it can often mean you don’t have a cohesive personal narrative. Writing can force you to find one.

Second, reflecting and writing on your past work experience will naturally start to reveal patterns through the years, throughout jobs, across teams, managers, projects.

Once you can start to pinpoint those patterns, you can lean into them if they are positive, or find ways to stop them if they are negative.

What does it mean to get fired?

Maybe your boss didn’t like you. Maybe your team didn’t think you had culture fit. Maybe your project got canned.

There’s a lot of reasons for why you got fired that you discovered through writing in the previous step.

But, now we go a layer deeper. 

What does it mean to get fired?

Negative self-talk will naturally lead to many thoughts like this that you need to reframe:

• Getting fired means I can’t code -> I wasn’t technically ready for that role yet, I could be in the future.

• Getting fired means I can’t work well with others -> I didn’t have the skills to manage upwards or team dynamics, I could build those skills.

• Getting fired means I’m a failure at life -> I wasn’t a good fit for that manager, team, project, company but could be for a different one.

Fundamentally, you being fired only means you didn’t make the cut this time.

Being fired says nothing about your capability to act differently next time and get a different outcome.

Mass layoffs from company bankruptcy or other things largely outside your control aside, being fired is a statement that you failed to meet the expectations of your employer.

That’s a hard truth.

But, it’s no harder than facing the prospect of failing to meet your parent’s expectations or friend’s or girlfriend’s or wife’s.

The path forward is accepting the hard truth that you failed.

Take extreme ownership over your outcomes.

Then choose to get up and address those deficiencies. Meet expectations or choose a role with different ones. The time for self-pity has come and gone.

It’s time to take action, keep your job, and excel beyond what you think you can ever achieve.

How to Keep Your Job

Many people don’t understand how to keep their job intuitively or even after many years at a W2.

That’s maybe why you’re here trying to learn some new tactics.

While it sounds simple, keeping your job is a multi-step ongoing process.

Let’s dig into it. I’ll probably need to do a part 2 to this post since there ended up being a lot to cover.