I Just Got Fired!

Cool! That's the first time that's ever happened to me.

Okay, so a bit of background. Right before we left for our Rockies trip, I did an interview for a position that an employment agency had called me up about out of the blue. (Me: "Sure... I'll come in for an interview tomorrow... what exactly is the position?". Them: "Don't worry, your resume is absolutely perfect for it!!1~". Me: "Yes... but what will be the duties? What skill are they looking for?". Them: "No idea.". I love employment agencies.)

The interview went pretty damn well (especially considering I couldn't prepare for it at all because I had half a days notice and they couldn't tell me anything about the job), and they essentially said: "Can you start tomorrow?". (I love employment agencies.) I had to say that I was going on a month-long holiday tomorrow and that I'd be happy to start when I got back; unfortunately the position was urgent and it was right away or nothin'. Fair enough, that one got away, I thought; plenty more fish in the sea.

Fast-forward a month: we arrive back from the airport and there's a message waiting on the answering machine... the same company had hired someone else, but there was a lot of work and could I start tomorrow? Fine, I said, and dived right in.

The poor guy who started had been given a pretty picture drawn in Photoshop and been told: "Make a website that looks like this and streams live video and has live sports feeds and up-to-the-minute news and is totally customisable by the users and so on and so on." He didn't have a working computer, a monitor (he had a widescreen TV), a functioning network, any software (he downloaded cracked versions himself), or even a web server. "Oh, by the way, we want it done in six weeks." Buuhhhh?

The CEO of this place is basically a head case. He has absolutely no engineering or technical knowledge, which would be fine for a CEO most of the time; but if you are trying to build a business founded entirely on technology, you need to
a) know something about it yourself, or
b) have one or more experienced technical advisers who you listen to very carefully.

You can probably guess by now that he ticked "c) Neither of the above". The guy is almost a complete caricature, a living stereotype; the boss from Dilbert.

He micromanaged us down to which software we used or which language we wrote in, despite having absolutely no idea of the differences or the consequences of those choices. He expected to see results every couple of hours and for us to be finished in a couple of weeks. He constantly changed the requirements and then yelled at us for taking too long. At one point he had both of us working on two different versions of the same feature in two different languages, just to see which one would turn out better, all the while complaining that not enough progress was being made. If we managed to sit him and down and try to get him to listen to anything, he would agree with us emphatically; and then promptly forget the whole thing inside of ten minutes. He is that kind of manager that you always hear about, but you don't think really exists.

Anyway, after we'd been chasing our tails for about a month, I felt like I was starting to understand what we were trying to do - which I'd never been told - and felt strong enough to talk to our CEO without wanting to tear off my own ears. After a couple of conversations it became clear to me that he didn't really know what we were trying to do anyway. So, I thought, I guess I have to 'upwards-manage' this thing to preserve my own sanity. I started writing design documents and trying to get him to agree on what we were trying to do before we started doing it.

This was received by him very well; he even made me the manager of the software team (all three of us - I think he did this more because he didn't like the other people than because he liked me). For a couple of days I was happy and motivated again; "This project could be really good if we can actually get clear what we are trying to do and if we can start working in anything resembling an efficient manner!". Of course, it was only three days later that he completely undercut the design document with some half-assed suggestion that he hadn't really thought through, but that was suddenly top priority.

You might be thinking by now, "Josh, why the hell did you stay there?" The answer, sadly, is money, and stupid amounts of it. I'm wearing a hat made from the stuff as I type.

Anyway, after another couple of weeks of this, it became clear that he was very unhappy with the guy who had started while I'd been away. Now, this guy is awesome technically, and had brought the site from literally nothing - not even a web server - to a functioning site, including doing images, advertising, copy, design and programming. He had consistently worked 60 hour weeks to get it all done so quickly. Was any of this appreciated? I'll let you guess.

Now, the strange thing is, despite being an aggressive, confrontational kind of guy, the CEO could not talk to us honestly about his anger and disappointment. We would hear from our (supposed) manager, the Chief of IT (who worked part time and out of the office and didn't really do anything as far as we could tell) that he was really angry at us, but he wouldn't actually tell us himself. The same thing happened when he decided to fire the original programmer; he told the CIT, he told me, he told everyone else in the office, but he couldn't actually tell the poor guy to his face. He eventually told the guy that he was on a day-to-day rolling contract, and he would be told each afternoon whether or not to come back tomorrow.

By now we had both stopped caring and found the whole thing vaguely comical. However, it became a moral thing for me at this point (by taking this guys money I felt like I was in some way condoning his behaviour), so on Friday when I heard about this day-to-day contract thing I told the CEO that I didn't like how he treated his employees and I wasn't going to stick around. I advised him to hire some new staff as soon as possible that I could train up, and then in two weeks I would leave. (For those not in IT, it might bear clarifying that you can not simply walk in on a software project and start contributing; you really need a month or two of reading through code, going over the design documents and documentation and most importantly, being mentored by someone already on the project.)

He was quite understanding and agreed with my recommendation. I was quite shocked that he didn't simply fire me on the spot, but I obviously had heard him agree with me before and then do completely the opposite, so I spent last weekend doing the job-hunt thing.

Monday morning was fine... I discussed with him what I wanted to get done in the coming week, and he agreed and said it sounded good. He even added a couple of things to my list to be done before Friday.

Tuesday, just before mid day, I get a call from the employment agency that we'd got this job through. They told me that they'd had to terminate all our contracts (but weren't allowed to tell us why) and that we would have to leave the office immediately, as in right now. Yep, he'd fired all of us, including the third person in my team who'd only started a couple of weeks ago! Again, he didn't have the courage to actually say this to any of us, and he couldn't even look us in the eye as we all walked out of the building. I stuck my head in to his office and said cheerfully, "Good luck with everything!", and off we went!

So, I've got a couple of free days on my hands. I'm not in the least worried about getting another job, and we've got a fair bit in the bank so I'm just going to de-stress for a while. I just can't help wonder though... what the hell is going through this guys head?