Got hired.....and fired within 2 weeks. Really feeling down

[dk34]

Hi Everyone.

As some of you may remember, I recently posted about getting a developer job a few weeks back. I was beyond excited to share the news with my fellow free code campers. I had interviewed at about 4 or 5 other places to no avail. Although I did receive some good feedback from the employers, most of the time they went with someone with a little bit more experience. And then I had a phone interview with a pretty decent marketing company not far from where I live. That phone interview turned into an in person interview which was very casual, and I was offered the job the following day.

I was there for two weeks before they let me go. The reason for this was because they said I wasn’t as up to speed on my programming as they thought. I was disappointed because in the interview they said they knew there was going to be some on the job training for the first few months, but I guess they weren’t prepared to give me as much support as I needed. It was just me and one other developer and he basically raised concerns from the time I was hired. The head of IT said he wanted to give me some time (5 days to be exact), at which point they told me they needed someone with a little more experience. I wish that they had possibly vetted me a little better, but I also feel like I am to blame. Maybe I should be better then where I currently am. I had to learn a jQuery library I never heard of and implement it into an application for the sales team of this company (was able to do so after a couple days). I also had to do some wordpress edits for clients which they had. Some were easy, others I had some questions about. If they needed someone with more experience then thats fine, I just wish I had known ahead of time, because now I am unemployed, and also seriously doubting whether or not this is a profession that I should even be in. I know that the environment I need is more for a junior role, with hopefully more then one other developer, and definitely someone who doesn’t mind taking me under their wing. I was hoping that this was going to be a great stepping stone into my dev career, but I feel like i just had a piece torn out of me.

I honestly was very hesitant to write this post, because I am down right embarrassed. I feel like i have failed myself again and again, I feel like im a disappointment to my family (i know that im not but thats just how i feel, they have actually been supportive and have all encouraged me to keep going). While i needed some comfort food to get over this feeling (which Im not at all over), my plan is to get right back on the horse, keep applying for jobs, keep learning and growing as a developer (I know my JS needs serious work), and to just keep on looking forward. Watched a couple of ‘Learning from Failure’ videos on youtube, and I have a project that I am planning to start in the coming days to keep learning. I just wanted to share this and let people know not to let failure get the best of you, learn from your mistakes, and above all else don’t give up. I am seriously down about this whole experience, but I am really hoping it makes me a lot stronger in the long run.

Cheers Friends

[JohnLocke]

You’re down and depressed over this? Hah!

I’m a 36yr old security guard, stuck in a city with no family or friends, just getting into JS functions, arrays and objects. How’s that for darkness and depression?! Don’t get me started on the fact that I share a rundown apartment with a 60+yr old half-crazed man whose dog, literally, stinks.

Now, let us consider the fact 9/10 self-taught devs will never get hired. Ever. Let us also take into account that you’re obviously on the verge of making it. With all that being said, you should be proud of yourself. Congrats.

[shimphillip]

You are doing well! Keep grinding. Perseverance is the key. Take this as a learning opportunity and polish your skills. I am sure your next job will be better.

[edubz]

The exact same thing happened to one of my friends. It’s a really tough thing to go through. He ended up using his experience as motivation, and a month and a half later got hired at a different company where he is a better fit.

[Nimp]

I can top you. I’m a 23 year old college drop out with approximately $30,000 worth of debt, who can’t hold most jobs for financial and personal reasons who still lives with his dad like I’ve been doing since I was a teen, just now trying to find a way to make some money online so I can finally get out of and stay out of the middle of nowhere that is my rural town where I have no friends, no social life, and every decent-paying job is at least 30 minutes away. AND I have a deep fear of driving. Always worried I’m going to wreck the only vehicle we have and get sued for a car accident, then be in even MORE debt. AND possibly injured.

All I can tell you is, don’t be a damn victim. Keep practicing, keep networking, think of ways you can step up your game and outshine your competition.

[JohnLocke]

Oh, I agree, no excuses, no victimization philosophy. Both of us are, more or less, responsible for the predicament we’re in. I just wanted the OP to compare different levels of low.

I wish I was hired and fired from an IT company, seriously, what difference does it make whether you get it in a week or 3 months from now. You’re pretty much there.

[bradtaniguchi]

Id consider this a learning experience. (as everything life ultimately is) I love to say failure is the best teacher and look at it this way, I assume you learned a lot about yourself in this process.

That’s good, if this didn’t happen I don’t think you would have realized it. You could of spent the last 2 weeks continuing on what you were doing before, but instead your here with the experience. When I say experience I don’t mean “I know all of the es6 spec like the back of my hand” experience, rather you gained life experience and now know exactly where you stand in terms of your skills.

A key part of learning is knowing what you don’t know. If you don’t know this about yourself, or are arrogant about it and think “I know everything” you probably will be caught off guard. Instead failure shows us what we are missing, and what there is to learn. Seek out and learn what you were missing, gain that knowledge from your experience. It’s not that “your a disappointment” as that means your always going to be a disappointment, it only means your skills are not where they could be and need to keep grinding and learning to overcome.

This is like running a marathon and you not knowing how long it is, and you’ve been running what seems like forever and feel like quitting. Then someone comes by and tells you “your not even 25% done yet” your probably heart broken, beaten and embarrassed. But then you realized you made it this far and you didn’t even run the marathon last year! Now you know exactly how much further you need to go, and you might feel tired, but at the same time you just went further than you ever went before, so might as well keep it up

Now whether you finish this “marathon” is up to you, you can easily quit and give up. Or you can keep grinding and finishing your run.

I’ll end with this, think about the next interview you walk into. You can explain to them what you did after these 2 weeks. After which you explained how much you improved your skills you found you were missing. Instead of walking in asking to learn what you lacked, you walk in saying you spent all your time practicing your skills yourself, and have vastly improved because of it.

That sort of approach shows maturity, experience, and grit. I’m not saying it will get you the job, but it will be something employers will respect.

Goodluck, and keep it up. The only determiner of fate is yourself

[WhisperPntr]

There’s a lot of solid tough love on this forum, so I’ll add a little bit as well. Life is a series of failures and it’s not having them that makes you one but how you DEAL with them.

Getting back on the horse is commendable but also you need to start getting numb. You got a foot in the door great. Now take into account what it was they stated. Did you find out exactly what it was that they thought you needed improvement on? Do you know how to close that skill gap?

I dont’ have statistics but I wanted to say what I believe about the 9/10 self taught developers comment. You have to be a forever learner and voraciously close gaps and learn new technologies. I argue that many of the self taught developers are not voracious enough or simply have too many life commitments to 100% jump into it.

You need to be different to get in and stay in.

You need to be courageous, set a plan, and go.

Your family like my own has a right to their opinion but that doesn’t change you.

You got your foot through the door, if you are dedicated you will find the gaps and keep going.

Have faith in yourself. Be strong. You’ll get there.

[dk34]

i hear what you’re saying. I appreciate the constructive feedback, and I was happy that i was offered a job, just have to get back at it and hope for the best

[dk34]

appreciate the feedback, thank you!

[dk34]

this! hopefully i am in the same boat as your friend and im sure they were better off for it in the long run

[dk34]

lol not a content but i want to comment on this. I am also in quite a bit of debt due to student loans and car payments, it’s tough. What have you been doing to try and secure a job? And i assume we are talking any job and not just programming. Depending on where you live i would say stay at home as long as you can, simply because the housing and rent market in a lot of places in awful. Where i live, it’s HIGH. Making new friends can be challenging, but you could always try going to meet up and speaking with people about things you have in common, hence why the meet up would even exist. In terms of driving, I was in a pretty bad car accident and to this day i still have very minor ptsd. But, you can’t live in fear from those things. It’s like being afraid to walk down the street because of what MAY happen.

I appreciate your feedback

[dk34]

so you think it would be good for me to bring up this experience in an interview? don’t you think it could cause a red flag? I really appreciate the in-depth response!

[dk34]

i was basically let go because they wanted someone with more experience who could complete tasks a little quicker. I know where my skill gap is, so that is what I will be working on. And yes, always learning is key to surviving in the industry.

Appreciate the response.

[Nimp]

Oh, sorry. My second paragraph was more aimed at OP. It’s funny, everyone seems to in some way envy each other’s situation in comparison to our own!

[Nimp]

Yeah, and no problem.

Being afraid of driving is kind of silly but rational in some way, but it’s not like I have a choice. As for getting a job, I’ve applied for, I think five different welding jobs, a retail job a few minutes from home, a firefighter position, and a security guard position in Memphis. I got rejected for one job, I think because the hiring manager was bitter from that last time when I turned down the offer because I got my last job before she called back, yesterday took a weld test for one I got through a temp agency, the day before managed to complete a firefighter interview and PT course, and haven’t heard back at all from the other jobs.

I almost got a welding job five minutes from home, but they said they JUUUUUUST hired on three welders, and I think they were going to try and pay me $10 an hour when I wanted $13 an hour. I wouldn’t mind that now, especially since I can get experience, but my last welding job was $10 an hour, with little in way of experience, and I believed and was often told that I could do much better than $10/hr as a welder, even starting out. That $10/hr is basically minimum wage for a welder. So I got arrogant and left to try and travel to Colorado in hopes of establishing myself there, which ended horribly thanks to me not being prepared enough and having little foresight and too little patience. It basically came down to either risking being homeless while working two part-time minimum-wage jobs while in the Rockies with winter fast approaching, or going back home.

This time I’m trying to, “assert myself” like I should have done in the past, and demand the pay grade that I think I am worth, but it never really feels like I’m in any position to assert myself or haggle. So it’s like, do I let myself get used and pushed around for chump change, or risk not having a job at all just to be, “assertive”?

Now with freelancing, I’m gonna have to be assertive and deal business because I will be my own boss, and there will be clients coming and going so if I can’t strike up a deal with one guy, there is, hopefully, always the next guy down. In theory.

If you want my opinion, we are both, and everyone else on here, are doing what they can to prove themselves and re-establish themselves in society through this new career path. Even if it doesn’t work out, who can blame us? The way I see it, it’s not just getting programming jobs, it’s proving to myself and others that I can learn, teach myself a new skillset, commit to learning a new skillset, commit to finishing something, can be professional, useful, and reliable.

With the way the economy is, and how misinformed and misguided I have been all my life, I kind of just want to be a nomad anyways, and I am hoping that if worst comes to worst, being a web developer will give me a chance to make money wherever I go, so I can afford to pay rent on time regardless of job circumstances, and always have a source of income regardless of where I am in life. And if that doesn’t work, I don’t know what will. I guess I’ll just keep trying to get a job until I exhaust all my options in the area. Then I’ll just pick up a banjo, a few tools, and just wander, trying to make money off odd jobs and musical performances.

[Sheaface]

I think there is more going on then they are telling you. I really wouldn’t beat yourself up.

1. You were honest about where you were at. They knew.
2. You learned and implemented a new library in 3 days, that’s impressive!
3. Some developers are jerks and he/she probably liked being the only one.
4. Yes you should be better than you currently are. That’s what makes you a good developer.There is always more to know.
5. Many people are willing to invest in passion and talent also If you’ve gotten to the point that someone ACTUALLY hired you then you can clearly do something worth value.
6. Sign up for upwork or any of those other freelance sights. What do you have to lose?

Anyhoo sounds like you have a lot of talent and that company didn’t tell you the whole story, it was simply the easiest way to dismiss you without a fuss.

[enriquejp]

The employer threw you in the deep end and watched you sink. That is not fair to you as they knew you needed guidance and development. I’m not sure an experienced developer would be up to speed in such a short time span (2 weeks??).

This “failure” is not on you. The employer really fell down on this one. You go on and apply to the next job or try freelancing. I’m sure you will find a place with much more support than this job.

[JESii]

I completely agree with enriquejp – your employer totally blew it. They accepted the limitations that you outlined (junior/entry level capabilities), hoped that you could handle whatever they threw at you, and were unwilling to invest the time to help you get to the level they needed.

Go get your unemployment benefits (that employer pays for that and you definitely earned it), keep learning, and you can make it.

When I decided to get back into the full-time engineering game (after many years of technical management consulting) it took me a year to get “up to speed” and I had some really massive fails on early interviews. All I could do was laugh, learn from what happened, and keep on studying. And yes, there were moments of being down, but I love programming and kept on keeping on. If you love it, then it’s worth fighting for.

I’ve now got five years under my belt, started as a Ruby QA automation engineer and am now doing the front-end development work (React/Redux) that has been my target.

Go get 'em.

[JESii]

And just for the record, I’m still working on FreeCodeCamp exercises to keep improving.