> Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired?

Not great at all.

For anyone reading your resume in the future, it's impossible to know if you were let go due to no fault of your own, or if you were let go for cause after a probationary period expired.

I personally don't hold a single short job against people, but the reality is that having a 6-month job followed by a couple months off on your resume will have a negative impact when some hiring managers read your resume.

It's also 6 months (+ time off) that you can't accomplish much of anything because you were ramping up and then had the rug pulled out from under you. Having a 6-12 month setback in your career isn't a huge deal when you've been working for 20 years, but it can be a huge setback for juniors.

> For anyone reading your resume in the future, it's impossible to know

Just write why on your resume? The dates will check out or not.

Unfortunately, most of the fired-for-cause people also claim that they were just laid off, hence the uncertainty.

Honestly, the sort of hiring managers who rely on heuristics like that might not be the best ones to work for.

Even juniors can structure their resumes as a narrative. Mine has a brief "felt stagnant and decided to try #vanlife for a year" section.

People like a story. The trick is to avoid automated hiring funnels.

Really? Especially in a market like this, I would have assumed more hiring managers would understand.

What do you think about new grads having to switch not long after because of bad work environment, bait-and-switch, etc? I hope such a negative outlook is not that prevalent.

> Really? Especially in a market like this, I would have assumed more hiring managers would understand.

Depends entirely on the job and company.

If someone is hiring average developers for average or below-average pay at a no-name company that gets 1 organic resume submission per week, they're going to overlook it and bring the person in.

If someone is hiring top developers at a hot tech company with high pay that attracts 1000s of impeccable resume submissions per week, they can't interview everyone. They might only screen 10% of resumes because that's all they can handle. At this level, competition is so fierce and the applicants are so strong that you have to look for any reason to drop someone from that 10% who get through. Having a short job followed by a resume gap could be enough of a signal to get you bumped in favor of any number of perfect resumes.

Adjust expectations accordingly for companies between the two extremes.

> What do you think about new grads having to switch not long after because of bad work environment, bait-and-switch, etc? I hope such a negative outlook is not that prevalent.

I think everybody gets a mulligan and I personally wouldn't hold it against a junior. A single data point isn't a trend.

However, I would still question the candidate thoroughly about it. Unfortunately, there are many people who leave otherwise decent jobs because their expectations are too far detached from reality. When someone's definition of a "bad work environment" is being expected to participate in code review (true story), the problem wasn't with their employer. Some basic questioning can usually get to the bottom of this, but it's more common than you might expect.

I've stayed at crappy companies for a couple of years to avoid this on resume.

With how racist and sexist many companies are now, it's getting harder to find a safe one to hire into where I can just do my job and not get involved in political stuff.

> For anyone reading your resume in the future

Then don't list it.

Sounds like an egoist perspective, which is fine if that's your ideology.

I think most people would see this as a loss for the small firm (note that the firms size matters). The cost of an employee is pretty high for small shops and salary is just one of the line items that come with OP's employment. Additionally, severance is rarely offered in positions less than 1 yr, even then it's optional.

No thanks. Spending 6 months getting ramped up and finally productive only to be let go and have to start the search all over again sounds like my nightmare.

Wait, you take it easy for six months when onboarding? That’s an interesting strategy but can’t say I’d recommend it to a junior to mid-level engineer.

>Isn’t that pretty great? Get paid for 6 months of relatively light ramp up time and then a few months worth of severance for some time off once fired?

Nah that'll torch your resume for years. Unless you're a total rockstar otherwise, I'd be terrified to explain a 6 month stint.

You only need to worry if you have a series of very short stints, especially if there's any gap between them.

But one six month stint is fine, especially if you can explain it away with something pithy about how the economy tanked and the company shed a significant percentage of its workforce.

Depends honestly. If you have a collective experience that affected the industry it’s easy to explain. It’s more of a red flag if it’s a constant even during good times IMO

As a one-off, during a rocky economic time? Not really. And I say that as someone who has mostly (except during dot-com) long employment times.

Then don't put it on your resume!