Here is an article that showed up on my RSS feed: Why Developers Get Fired. While I never have been fired from a job, I have been put in a situtaion where I needed to prove my worth to the company. The advice this article gives is pretty good, and in my opinion are the most overlooked issues. A developer could easily overlook these issues, and get side blinded by a pink slip. Here is an exceprt:
I have learned the hard way over the years that it doesn’t matter how clever you think you are or how much everyone loves you on your team. The fact is, there are always potential circumstances that can come to a head, resulting in the ax coming down on your valuable head.
Sometimes these doomsday series of events are in your control. Sometimes it’s like being blindsided by a bus.
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We might as well start with the obvious. If your job consistently isn’t getting done, then you will eventually be toast. All it takes is a few missed deadlines and your manager will have no choice because “you know what” rolls downhill. A manager can only absorb so many blows from unhappy end users or their own boss.
Why wouldn’t you see this one coming? Well, you might be thinking the missed deadlines are not your fault. Your excuses may include “the design was bad” or “the deadlines are not realistic” or “they are making me code in Java and I am a .NET expert.”
Guess what? Excuses don’t matter. Results matter.
While I hope I never get fired from a job, hopefully these tips can help any developer out.
Justin Carmony 