Seven Signs You're About to Get Fired

Yahoo lists seven signs you're about to get fired as follows:

• There's been a "change" in your boss' behavior towards you.
• One-on-ones are consistently canceled.
• The boss has a new attention to detail.
• No more talks about planning and the future.
• The "insider" stops talking to you.
• HR doesn't have time for you.
• Your complaints get answered with, "You're right."

I've never been fired, but I've certainly experienced the "you're out" sort of attitude as I've lost favor with my superiors for one reason for another. For details, see these posts:

• My Jobs, Introduction to the Real World


• My Jobs, Promotion, Success, and Failure


• My Jobs, The Dream Job Turns into a Nightmare


• My Jobs, The Blame's on Me

In these situations, the one of the above that I've noticed the most is the first one -- a change in the boss' attitude toward you. You can tell by words, tone, assignments, and a whole host of other clues that something has changed. You don't know what, but you know it's not good.

On the other side of the desk, I've had to fire people (mostly as part of company downsizings/reorganizations) and I can say that this list is pretty accurate. Once I knew someone was slotted to be fired, my attitude toward them changed (though I tried not to show it), they got less insight into business issues, and so on. In addition, I usually felt sorry for them, knowing they would soon be let go for (mostly) no fault of their own (the company was just doing poorly.) I can say from experience that firing brings up a terrible feeling whether you're the firee or the firer.

How about you? Any of you ever been fired or lost favor with your boss? What happened? Did you experience any of the signs listed above?

Comments

[Rod]

List is pretty accurate. I haven't been fired yet. Though I have seen the "writing on the wall" once. Having fired someone. I must totally agree with your last thought that on either side of the desk it is a horrible situation.

The one thing I would add. If you have a feeling that the whole team is against you. Your probably right and you should probably be looking right away.

And I was discussing this with my children the other day. Always be ready to move onto another opportunity. No job is worth extended periods of stress. You can always find something else.

[Crystal]

I haven't ever been fired, but that list sounds like a bunch of good indications.

I've made it pretty clear that I will not be in my current position for much longer (I've told my 2 supervisors my plans to blog full time by next year) since I was hoping they'd hire a 3rd for our department so my coworker will not be left alone, but I haven't seen anything change yet. Maybe when I give my actual 2 weeks notice...the problem is that it takes 6 months minimum to train someone to do our job at all and another year for them to do it well, so my coworker is going to have a very rough 2012.

[Mike Hunt]

Other signs:

You get missed on meeting invites or being put on important projects / activities

The rumor mill is acting up, often there is truth to the rumors.

---
Getting fired or firing someone sucks but it happens all the time.

-Mike

[crashdamage1957]

Yes... all of the above. But, I have been very fortunate that I have never been let go for cause. In each case, it was part of an entire department or division layoff. In fact, not a single one of those companies is still in existence today. I, however, managed to end up in a better situation each time;)

The other thing that I noticed is that simple direct questions were responded with vauge and obtuse answerer...the way some one who is hiding something answers a simple, direct question.

[Sanctimonia]

It's pretty accurate, but I've seen a lot of these signs from a boss and it turned out that they were on there way out because a few weeks later we found out he put his two weeks in.

[Old Limey]

Another ominous sign is when the company you work for gets gobbled up by a larger company. I know a woman that is a manager at National Semiconductor and I worried for her when I read that it had been acquired by Texas Instruments. Sure enough, she just learned her job gets eliminated at the end of the year. She was telling my daughter how pleased she was to be getting a nice severance package. Since she is the only wage earner and her husband is a stay-at-home Dad, that severance package may have to last her a while, especially since she is over 50 and her degree is unrelated to the work she does.

I also read that the aerospace company I retired from in 1992 after working there for 32 years is laying off 1,600 out of a total nationwide workforce of 16,000. What also shocked me was that after I retired they gobbled up their nearest competitor and yet their workforce is now only 16,000. At the height of the Cold War when we had huge missile and satellite contracts there were 32,000 just where I worked in Northern California, not counting workers in Southern California and other major locations in several other states.
That's downsizing!