I got fired from my tech job
The narrative I tell people, and the actual one
I got fired from my SWE job at Stripe a month ago.
Technically it was a “mutual departure”.
They wanted me out, and honestly I get why. I wasn’t performing well enough by their standards, and the team I was on was particularly high-pressure at a company that’s already known to be a sweatshop.
The public narrative that I’m telling recruiters: I was moved to a team that wasn’t the one I interviewed for, and it wasn’t a good fit for my working style.
This is actually true. The org was restructuring at the time I joined, and I was going to be on a platform team, but was moved to a product team a couple weeks in.
I probably would have done fine on the original platform team had I been able to stay. Longer timelines of planned work, more big picture thinking, designing systems to last.
But the truth is that I don’t care about creating software anymore. Not in the way I used to.
I used to believe I cared. In hindsight, I was afraid. I was persistently in survival mode, and learned to contort myself into the “cracked engineer” shape in order to secure enough resources to get to this point.
After enough meditation, therapy, authentic relating, and having a catalyzing experience at Sleepawake, I’m not that guy anymore.
The persistent fear gave way to a default state of presence, and as someone with a sensitive nervous system, I’m now getting a LOT of information about myself and others in real time. This was unlocked about a year ago, and I’ve been progressively getting used to it, but I do still get overwhelmed often.
As I reflect on intro calls with tech recruiters or interviews with founders and engineers, what stands out to me the most is not the objects of conversation that we talked about, but how I felt with the other person, and the flavour of their presence. A few that come to mind:
The founder of a Brooklyn-based startup I talked to in person
He smiled the whole time. I felt uncomfortable looking at him. I smiled too. I looked at him when he was talking to me, smiling and nodding, and noticing the pain behind his eyes while I was processing what he was saying.
“What are your hobbies?”
I could sense he had an agenda; this was not genuine curiosity.
If I wasn’t afraid, I would have paused, slowed my speech, asked him to slow down and ground ourselves for a minute or two.
Instead, I looked away as I spoke, and talked about a side project I had been working on with Claude Code, launching into details about the vision and how I built it.
I felt bad about engaging with his agenda, but I accepted that this was the point of the meeting and put on my best performance.
He didn’t stop smiling as he awkwardly and abruptly said goodbye at the end of the meeting, went to discard some trash in the back of the coffee shop, then beelined towards the exit as if in a tunnel, as I watched him walk past me again without a second glance or wave goodbye. All with the same big smile.
The head of engineering at the aforementioned startup, in person
He was nice. Well put-together, composed. Short, sculpted hair do and glasses.
I was tired, and told him so. He thanked me for coming in despite my state.
He was open, accommodating. I felt safe and empowered, even excited. He seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.
We were still operating through an interface. I felt like I was putting on a performance to meet him where he was at, to engage in the symbolic register that it seemed like he existed in. ‘Tech industry casual professionalism’. I don’t mind it really, for short periods, in certain contexts.
He seemed impressed with the questions I asked of the company culture. I asked questions themed around psychological safety: Do people feel safe to push back against product direction from the founder? When you notice someone is burning out, what happens? Is there a culture of checking in?
“These are great questions. It’s making me think.”
I started to become excited by the prospect of influencing the culture of the company. Being a friend to my coworkers, showing them that it’s possible to be human in an environment that tends to reward the opposite.
He seemed to be impressed and in wonder when we parted ways, though he hid it well behind some small talk.
The first engineer who interviewed me at this startup, over Zoom
He jumped in right away with high energy, quick 1-minute each introductions.
I felt panicked, rushed. I accepted it. All part of the game.
It felt like he was in control of the dynamic. It was my job to prove myself, and he was the judge. I felt like I was being judged.
I felt pressured to ‘puff myself up’ to meet his energy. I had to assert myself, I had to speak with authority, to show that I knew what I was doing.
“Hold on, let me think about this some more.”
I paused to think about the problem presented, but instead of thinking about the problem, I was becoming aware of how panicked I felt, and of being watched by my interviewer. I got overwhelmed and felt the energy in my head get stuck.
I felt inadequate. I couldn’t meet his level of energy and self-assertiveness, and didn’t feel there was space for me to expand naturally. I felt myself compensating and projecting a false confidence in my answers.
He seemed like a good engineer. Smart, quick-witted, assertive. I don’t think we would work well together as collaborators.
The second engineer who interviewed me at this startup, over Zoom
The interview proceeded fairly similarly to the one described above.
I felt resigned, defeated by the end. Felt bad. I knew rationally it was good to know that it wasn’t a good fit for me. I wouldn’t get along with these engineers as collaborators, unless I could somehow teach them to be more slow and gentle.
A tinge of grief as I realized I wouldn’t have the chance to be friends with these people, especially the head of engineering who I got along with nicely.
A frontend engineer who interviewed me at an AI music startup, over Zoom
I could tell immediately that he was sensitive. Hesitation in his voice, fast blinking, eyes darting. He seemed gentle, courageous, respectable.
I felt safe, unpressured.
He conducted the interview with an informality that felt pleasant. It felt like we were really just getting to know how each other operated, like we were synchronizing nervous systems. I felt like he could follow my intuition of how I was reasoning about solving the problem, without me having to break down and justify every little detail.
Somehow, it felt like we both lived in the world where we treated programming as an art, an intuitive craft. I didn’t have to strain to translate my approach into a rigid engineering plan.
I got the problem working well enough by the end, and he gave me some positive feedback right away. I felt satisfied.
Starting to learn that the kind of gentle, sensitive engineers who I feel most comfortable collaborating with are quite rare. We’re out there though, and I’d guess we tend to thrive better in positions that are more design-oriented, possibly towards product management or developer experience. Roles that are more about the art of understanding the user and what they need.
I tweeted a thread listing possible life paths as they align with my goals:
6 and 7 are meant mostly as jokes, and 4 and 5 are… at least half jokes.
I should be careful with these…
Not giving up yet on finding a tech job that will feel aligned with my goals.
I have been playing around with an idea in my mind lately that if more people who thought like this and had this experience took this writing to LinkedIn instead of Substack if it couldn't do something to accelerate this slow breakdown of professionalism we are all living through. Popular opinion could be to look at AI and its economic impact but imo, when people started typing lowercase in the company chat after COVID and that economic impact, I felt that's when we all secretly agreed to start losing our minds. Otherwise, Ken Cheng is holding the absurdist fort down all on his own.
“We were still operating through an interface” - that’s what I hate the most and seems to be behind most boring or uncomfortable human interactions.
recruiters especially are the worst, non-human interface-blooping robots that are pattern matching your presentations for their shitty keywords.
have you ever tried breaking the fourth wall? It might be fun