On the morning that I got fired from TCTSRN (THE COMPANY THAT SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS – at least until I get all my damn severance), I brought in pictures of my family to hang on my cube. I’d been there 6 weeks, Mr. Whiteboard had just fired "Charlie", and I thought it was safe to personalize.

As John Lennon sang, “Instant Karma’s gonna get you, Gonna knock you off your feet.”

That afternoon, Instant Karma landed one to my balls.

At exactly 5 PM, I got a call from the Julie (nice body, but has seen her better days) in H.R. The one who had convinced me that TCTSRN was a great place to work. “Hi Kevin. Can you come down?”

Not a good sign, because all she did was hire and fire. My reptilian brain processed this binary equation:

If (Julie Calls From HR)
If(You are already Hired)
Then (You are Gettting Fired)
End If

I was already hired, so I must be getting fired. I walked down to the H.R. conference room where they did the hiring/firing. Mr. Whiteboard was there, blank-faced as usual. Julie had a stack of documents in front of her. I had seen documents like those before. Three months before, in fact. SIAN (SWEATSHOP IN A NIGHTCLUB) had presented me with those similar pages when they fired me. Legal stuff. Severance agreements, to be exact.

“We’ve come to conclusion that we will have to let you go,” Julie said.

That was it. No job reassignment, nothing. Except six weeks of severance pay – almost one for every week I worked. Mr. Whiteboard said little, as usual. I was graceful, Julie was firm yet nice, and he was stone-faced. I agreed to always speak highly of TCTSRN. Julie looked me in the eye and reminded me that I better, asserting that I should read the legaleaze i.e., if you don’t keep your mouth shut, you will not get this nice package.

“We like to do these things in a dignified manner,” she said. “You can go upstairs, pack your stuff, and I’ll meet you outside to take your badge.”

Mr. Whiteboard had followed through on the threat he made a month ago.

I have a lot of thoughts on how application development should be done. Almost 15 years in the business, and I am now at a point where I have a vision of what it takes to build applications "right". I have also seen a lot of garbage in this business -- this is where I expose it. I may even name names.