Ask HN: Down to $16, had 4 job offers rescinded; in crisis mode, where to turn?
I have a few pieces of advice, though you should obviously take them for what they are: just a random, psuedo-anonymous Internet commenter.<p>Your head in the right place. You&#x27;re doing whatever you need to do to keep your head above water. It sucks right now, but regardless of how things turn out, there will come a day where the things that seem insurmountable right now will just be a fading memory. That day will come sooner than you think.<p>I&#x27;ve been terminated three times, and my job history as of ~2020 looked a lot like yours. I have more experience, and a seven-year stint at a large company, but had gone through a series of jobs where I didn&#x27;t stay more than a year or so. It definitely reduces the number of responses you&#x27;ll get, but it&#x27;s not a disqualifier in and of itself. My approach for dealing with that was to be very up front about it, and to make it a point to be articulate what I learned from each experience.<p>The first time, I was working for a very small company and joined as their second engineer. The first engineer was still there, and their entire experience before starting was a boot camp in another language. They did fine work all things considered, and were very productive. He was a good fit. I, on the other hand, was at the point in my career where I was transitioning away from &quot;implementation&quot; and toward &quot;architecture&quot;. I wasn&#x27;t as fast as he was and was making more money. When the time came that the owner let me know he was planning to let the first guy go, I raised my hand and volunteered to leave instead. It was a better decision for the company as a whole, and I believed my relationship with the owner was such that he&#x27;d appreciate my candor and treat me well. I was correct - while I was technically &quot;fired for cause&quot;, I volunteered to help if he ever needed it and he continued to pay me until I found another job. That only took me about a month, but it was very, very helpful. I just told the unvarnished truth about that one, but highlighted that I better understood my own strengths and weaknesses along with the importance of finding a role that fit me well.<p>The second time was a combination of several things: burnout, financial details of an upcoming IPO, and my own mental health concerns. I was being pulled in so many directions I was missing deadlines, but I was missing them because I was &quot;putting out fires&quot; that were more important to the business. I was hired just before their options pool for new hires started to run dry. They reduced the grants to new employees and were looking for people they could let go to replenish it, as they couldn&#x27;t expand the pool due to an upcoming (unannounced) IPO. The pressure from them forcing me out exacerbated the anxiety I was already having, and I ended up taking my accumulated vacation time to try to get my shit together. The company suggested that I file it as FMLA leave, which I did. When I returned, they assigned me a project that would take about two weeks to do correctly, then fired me when it wasn&#x27;t completed after a week. That hurt, and it took a while to recover. I couched this one as my having learned that the importance of understanding as much as possible about the context of the business as a whole, and in clearly communicating both my own time estimates and any changes to those timelines that I encountered as early as possible.<p>The third time... well, I&#x27;m not sure. It was a small company, and my direct manager wasn&#x27;t entirely fluent in English. There were a couple of cases where I misunderstood the requirements for something even after I put them in writing and got acknowledgement from him. I was told I was &quot;let go&quot; and not given a reason. I contacted HR, and they responded that they weren&#x27;t able to provide me with any details either. I honestly don&#x27;t know if I was technically fired or not. I filed for unemployment and received it, so I can only assume that I wasn&#x27;t fired &quot;for cause&quot;, but they could have also just decided it wasn&#x27;t worth fighting. For that one, I approached it as &quot;The conditions under which I was let go are still unclear to me. I&#x27;ve reached out to them to try to better understand so I could learn from the experience, but they&#x27;ve refused to help.&quot;<p>Basically... you can&#x27;t change your history, but you can change how you talk about it. Treating it as something bad to overcome isn&#x27;t helpful. Finding the positive in it completely changes the tone of the conversation, and ultimately that&#x27;s what people remember afterward. Trying to hide it or downplay it is a much bigger red flag in my mind that acknowledging it and using it to highlight your strengths.