Getting Fired is the Best Career Move I Ever Made
“Hey Michelle. I’m really sorry to call you on the weekend while you’re at your other job, but the owner is making me do this now…
“I’m sorry, but you don’t need to come in Monday.”
My manager’s voice was quavering, like she was going to burst into tears at any minute.
“No, you didn’t do anything wrong. I think the owner just didn’t like the way you questioned his choices in that last meeting. I think he took it as an insult.
“Yeah, I know it wasn’t an insult, and that you’re right in this case, but I couldn’t convince him not to fire you. I think his ego took a hit.”
I’d been working for this tiny startup in California for a while at that point. It was the only job I could find after my husband and I packed up everything we owned and drove across the country.
I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but getting fired ended up being a good thing for me.
The next job I would be offered was to work with Google, and that position would put me directly on the path to owning my own company.
But in the moment I sat alone, on the lunch break for my second job that I’d just announced I was leaving a week prior, trying hard not to cry.
It wasn’t until a week later when I went to the office to get my things that I started thinking, “maybe this isn’t my fault.”
It wasn’t until the owner’s wife said she was refusing to talk to her husband because he fired me after everyone else said not to that I started feeling like my worth wasn’t tired to someone else’s opinion of me.
And it wasn’t until a year later when I met up with that manager who cried on the phone and she told me they’d gone through 7 people trying to replace me that I felt vindicated.
I sincerely wish someone had told me I was still going to do great things in life in that moment. Instead, I got lots of, “getting fired is a normal part of life, and it makes sense for your age,” and, “well he must not have known what he had.”
So I’m here to tell anyone here who is struggling with a defeat right now this:
You’re going to go on to do great things. You can’t imagine what they are yet, but you are needed in ways that you can’t fathom. Keep moving, keep struggling forward, and keep your mind open. This too shall pass, and it will become your strength.
