I work for a large government contractor. My job is to stand between the marketing folks and the subcontractors, making sure that the Federal Acquisition Regulations are followed and that the government gets good value for its’ money.
I make decisions like whether or not the work can be assigned to a particular sub, or if we have to request prices from several companies in a competition. (aka “Telling the old boy network to screw themselves.”) I set up the legal contracts and other documents which govern the relationship with the subs, and pound on them to maintain the various reports and audits required for compliance with regulations. I am also responsible for getting mean and scary if they are not delivering on time or at the requred standard of quality. Conversely, I also represent the subs when they have a problem with our company (i.e. not getting paid on time)
If you’re not pissing somebody off at least once a week, you’re not doing it right. The average stay for someone in my position at any company is 2.5 years.
Software engineer. Depends totally on the company; I’ve worked for large companies where I never heard of someone getting out right fired, but would have layoffs every once in a while.
I’ve also worked for small companies where everything was at the whim of the owner. One place fired half their development staff - all the people who had been there longer than a few months - because the owner had a temper tantrum one day.
I try to work at places somewhere between those two, and so far have had pretty good luck, job-wise.
In theory, I could be let go for any reason that’s not illegal (race, gender, marital status, etc) but in practice, you’d have to work fairly hard at getting fired around here. I’ve seen people do colossally boneheaded things that affect external customers and only get an “Aww, don’t do that again, OK?”
(“Here” is IT with one of the country’s larger banks.)
I’m a paralegal. It’s very, very easy to get fired in this business, and particularly in this firm, especially in the current job market. That said, I am worth a lot more to the firm than the other people doing my job because I can do a lot of things they can’t (medical record summaries, for example) and my boss is a partner and won’t fire me without a damn good reason (arson, theft, taking a dump on the copier).
A few weeks ago we had a guy lead the police on a low-speed hit and run chase which ended in a DUI arrest in our parking lot. I didn’t notice him missing any time. Maybe they wrote him up?
I work in a highly technical environment, IF you managed to get hired but don’t really know what you are doing we find out pretty quick and just let you go.
If you miss deadlines a few times with no valid cause, we let you go.
If you turn into a slacker and come in late and whine all the time? We let that guy go last week.
Know your stuff, prove it forever and you can stay as long as you like.
Government-employed attorney. I’ve known of it happening a couple of times, the big one for gross incompetence that led to the attorney almost being found in contempt of court while, unbeknownst to her, her boss was standing in the courtroom watching it. Chances are had the boss not been around, she might have stayed on a while. A couple of new hires have not made it past the probationary period. But generally, it’s VERY tough to get fired from here if you’re an attorney. Other support staff have been fired for various reasons, mostly involving insanely unbelievable things I can’t get into here.
I work in a call center where it seems the risk for being fired as higher than average. Since we are held to performance standards we have to maintain these levels, which are tabulated on a monthly basis. If your performance metrics fall short of the criteria for two consecutive months you get placed on a PIP (personal improvement plan) where your team lead works with you more closely to bring your stats back up. If you’re still lagging over the following month then they put you on a Final Written Warning, and if you blow this, then you’re out the door. From what I have observed this is rare since anyone who values his or her job and cares about it will make the effort to improve, and anyone who’s not cutting it probably just isn’t fit for the job in the first place.
The most common reason people seem to get fired is because they rack up too many occurrences. An employee incurs an occurrence for tardiness, with 1/4 point for being 5 to 30 minutes late, 1/2 point for being 1 to 2 hour late, and so on, with a full point for being more than four hours late. After 8 occurrence points incurred within any 12-month period they’re canned.
Since we work with sensitive and confidential information such as clients’ credit card numbers a person can be fired for not following the proper verification procedures we have in place to prevent fraud, though a firing would not likely occur on the first offense but only after the employee repeatedly demonstrated a failure to comply with the security measures.
I’ve known a few people to get axed for being rude to callers or for flagrantly unprofessional conduct. Another guy was once fired for exchanging emails with another coworker that contained libelous information about the company. Another one was fired for plugging his own side business’s web site to clients during his calls. The people who get fired for stupid things like this are rare, though.
I work in a call center: the company is a distributor of medical products for nursing homes, elder care facilities, home health and hospice. In the time I have been here, we have not had any layoffs: in fact, our division of the company consistently improves their bottom line. With the boom of our elderly citizens, I think our jobs are pretty secure.
They will even work with you as long as possible and give you every tool needed to do your job before they will fire you.
A couple of posters have said it’s pretty easy to get fired from a call center. I gather from some other threads that turnover in call centers is incredibly high, though. So, how hard is it to get another call center job (same or different call center) after you’ve been fired from one?
I also work at a University, but as tenured faculty… the term “moral turpitude” is used to describe grounds for firing, but I think it would take a felony conviction AND no remorse to get fired…
In management consulting firms, it seems sort of arbitrary. There are a lot of vague performance and feedback mechanisms, but at the end of the day, it seems mostly based on whim and how many hours you bill.
Some firms also have the concept of “up or out” where your performance may be fine, but they may simply decide that you have peaked in your career and should probably move on. At that point, you will be “counselled out” of the firm.
In terms of how “easy” it is to get fired, it’s actually pretty hard in a normal corporate America sense. People pretty much come and go as they please, work from home, roam around the office grabassing, hook up with coworkers, get drunk after hours and show up hungover. But pretty much as long as you bill enough hours or sell enough work (depending on how senior you are) no one seems to give a shit.
What will happen though is if your hours drop off, either because there isn’t enough work or if you are “unstaffable”, it becomes very easy to get laid off or counselled out.
Unless your company gets bought by another company.
Or there’s a significant market downturn.
Or you fail to meet shareholder expectations for a couple of quarters.
Or there’s a corporate restructuring.
Of course these are all called “layoffs” but it still quacks like a duck.
Damn hard- you’d have to be stealing or sexually harassing someone to get fired mid-project; it’s too hard to find a replacement without getting way behind. But it’d be very easy to simply fail to get hired back, since it’s work that’s seasonal and project based.
I worked in a few call centers back in the 90’s. Everyone eventually gets fired from those places.
Ok. A slight exaggeration. Its a very hard job to do for any length of time. And nearly every second of your day has some type of performance number assigned to it. It’s soul destroying work. “I see here you took a break for 16 1/2 minutes and were 1 minute late last week. Im placing you on written warning.”
And god help you, if you have to use the restroom when it’s not your assigned break. Thats an ‘instance’.