I wasn’t even fired/let go. But boss treated us badly on several occasions over the space of a mere several months of employment. I’d got a job from an acquaintance who worked there, he was a bit of a doormat, but I wasn’t. The position was good for my CV, giving me a the opportunity to put commercial experience of tech stuff I was already quite skilled in. So I also got a very good friend of mine a job there - same deal he was also an experienced geek(relatively, we’d both recently dropped out of our respective uni courses for Reasons). the basics of the job were basic (dialup user support), but it was a small company with a lot of technical and process problems that we put some effort into fixing as we went along, which reduced overall support burden. Some of this was underappreciated, and some was actively frowned upon because it showed management’s faults in not addressing them previously.

Anyhow, after one particular week, my friend and I (66.6% of the support team) decided we’d had enough and ditched the job, feeling no remorse by just dumping them in it and doing a no-show on monday. Short-staffed and extra-super-short skilled, they managed for a short while, and obviously tried to fill our vacancies - once they’d finally got hold of us, becuase this was the olden days, and they had to phone our landline, and we’d been out most of monday. Another acquaintance, not a person of great character, but someone wanting to move to london, and some kind of job to go with it at least as a stepping stone, spoke up at just the right time - we duly pointed him at this company, who were only too happy to find someone with reasonable skill to fill the role. We were honest with him, the job sucks, but it’s a salary, and don’t feel any loyalty to it just because you got it through us. He knew the original staff member was a bit

Revenge for their being bad employers was served hot, luke warm, cold and often. Ditching them on the monday, lining them up with new staff who went in with their eyes open, then when they needed his full contact details, they discovered he didn’t merely know us, but he was also staying in the same house as us. He obviously wasn’t going to give them more than they paid for, obviously that wouldn’t be rewarded, and anyway, that wasn’t his style. And obviously he then later ditched them as soon as a better job came along, which he’d been actively applying for since he moved down.

The company folded a while later, don’t think that can be ascribed to this tale but neither tech not management were operating at a level of competence that would allow them to grow their offerings to keep away from the commoditised end of the industry, and they missed out on the chance to keep what time has shown to be proven talent in their midst.