Episode 481: I'm bored and will I ever find out why I was fired?

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Oct 6, 2025

Two listeners pose intriguing questions about career challenges. One grapples with boredom in a slow-paced university job versus a tempting startup offer. The hosts discuss the trade-offs between stability and pace, offering advice to consider personal values. The second listener shares an unsettling experience of being fired shortly before a vesting cliff, prompting a conversation on why companies often remain vague about terminations. They emphasize the importance of processing the experience positively and crafting a concise narrative for future interviews.

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ANECDOTE

Solo Developer At A College Got Bored

A listener left a startup for a medium college and became a solo dev who quickly ran out of work.
They worried about staying after a brief tenure despite a sizable outside pay bump.

ADVICE

Match Job Pace To Your Values

Evaluate whether the job's pace and values match your preferred way of working before staying.
If you value speed and frequent impact, consider moving to a faster-paced company with better pay.

INSIGHT

Higher Ed Prioritizes Stability Over Velocity

Universities and similar institutions favor stability and slow, careful change over rapid shipping.
That cultural mismatch can permanently frustrate engineers who prefer startup speed.

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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

Hi Dave and Jamison,

After fleeing a sinking ship of a startup, I became a solo developer at a medium sized college. This role has really allowed me to expand and grow in ways that I haven’t imagined, but I have encountered an interesting issue I didn’t have in the startup world: there isn’t much to do.

At my one year mark, I was promoted into a management position, but with no direct report. I will soon have an employee under me doing data integrations. My manager has been reluctant to give me data integrations work despite knowing that I want to understand what my employee will be working with.

I’ve found some of my own projects, but I’ve completed them all. I’m getting bored. I’m a competent developer, learn fast, and get things done quickly. Recently I’ve been planning an upgrade to some of our legacy code, but it will take probably a year or more to complete.

Some former colleagues reached out about working with them for a substantial pay bump, but I don’t like the idea of leaving after just over a year and a half. Do I keep riding it out here, or is it time to start looking else where?

Thank you both for this wonderful podcast. Its a joy to listen to on my walks. I’m sure I get stared at when I try to hide a laugh or grin from the amazing list of Patron names and your commentary.
I was recently terminated a few months before my 1 year vesting cliff as an IC2 for being days (not weeks) late on 3 or 4 stories. The late ones were defined incorrectly by management, or were for paying technical debt created by senior engineers, and my manager knew this. I had no IC2 or IC1 peers on my team for comparison. My performance review for the first half of 2025 was not released to me, I was fired when I would have seen it. This means the only reasoning that management has shared with me was my late work. In 1 on 1s before, my lateness has been something my manager has mentioned, but never a warning of termination (or a “pip” as some call it) and no indication that it’s anything more than an area to improve. The org has made poor decisions that left them tight on funds, and I feel the most financially responsible thing for them to do was fire me rather than give me a warning which would let me hit my cliff or lay me off where they’d give more on my way out.

Had I been pipped or laid off, I would not be asking about this. Should I go with the confusing justification that my boss was truthful in his attribution of my firing without warning to my lateness (and can you help me understand why that’s professionally justified)? Should I go with the disheartening approach and brainstorm other shortcomings that would better justify an unwarned firing, possibly spurring professional growth or a career change? Or should I say I got instafired because of penny pinching and opaque management?