Even the introductory sentence has the puzzling statement “one of my jobs” which raises a lot of questions. Was this person over-employed? Was this part-time contracting situation?
This is just anger bait.
If nothing else, pestering the boss while on vacation is a bad sign.
We need to stop participating in this brouhaha as an industry. If your employer wanted to demonstrate loyalty you would see it in your contract.
Operating a business is hard? Well, yes, so is surviving.
Not that this makes everything OK, but that would explain the weeks of silence followed by termination over whatsapp. It’s possible there were no further formal requirements to sever the relationship besides ceasing communication.
If a senior engineer who's supposed to be independent and who knows that messages me on a personal number while I'm on vacation, I probably wouldn't fire them immediately, but that person is unlikely to be considered a high performer.
Totally different situation for a panicking junior, which is a situation that means I've done something more wrong.
> He said he was letting me go because my department was the most expensive in the agency, and that last month the company closed in the red for the very first time. He told me, very sadly, that he even had to take out a loan to pay his mortgage, and that cutting costs was the only way to keep the agency alive. All of this, of course, from his vacation in Hawaii.
If you are a business or a department of a business and losing money, it's often sensible to axe it. Yes that may involve axing some or all of the people involved, but there's no "oh well we're losing money, but I'm rich enough, better let the business keep losing money" reasoning. That is generally considered incoherent. This feels like "money comes from the money store" levels of reasoning.
> I just hope that someday my boss can forgive me and give me another chance to make him richer, without expecting anything in return, not even the tiniest bit of empathy or courage it takes to fire someone while looking them in the eye.
Emphasis mine. Presumably this person was paid? If he was doing unpaid work for a boss for profit, maybe this would make more sense. But under normal circumstances he absolutely expecting - and getting - something in return.
I would recommend that the author try to go into business for himself. It may be the only way to really understand what he is missing, if he has missed it all these years.
The manager/owner failed to manage in any number of ways (graceful exits, cash flow, task assignment), and then brought his personal problems to a firing (you should not - ever - mention your own financial issues while firing an employee from your Hawaiian vacation).
You are right that business is transactional, but there is the underlying notion of goodwill (which accountants can and do put on the balance sheet). It is the reason why we tell our old employer that we are leaving in two weeks instead of ghosting them the day our new job starts. It is the reason that you don’t fire people over text from a Hawaiian vacation. You don’t want to be the employee with the reputation for giving no notice, and you don’t want to be the employer with a reputation for firing people heartlessly. The employer in this case significantly reduced the goodwill part of their balance sheet to save a few weeks of salary for this guy. Do you think the other employees won’t read this? What will the morale hit among other employees cost the business? Would you stay at a business where the owner is firing people like this while admitting to personal financial problems?
Either this person was a part-time contractor, where being cut during down times comes with the territory, or they were overemployed with multiple jobs, which comes with a tendency to do sub-par work and communication from being overcommitted.
You could have gotten paid for a few more weeks (and maybe even secured a severance) had you been patient and let the official layoff notice come to you.
Learn and move on.
slack isn't fit for purpose. the missing messages will eventually show up but long after the negative impact has been realized.
I've used it full time for years and never had a "didn't you get that message?" situation in a DM
