The Line of Fire

Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.

  Career Development  

Nasty advice, yes? Wrong. It's great advice. Ideally, it's best to be fired when you have money socked away for emergencies. It's not good to be fired when you're living paycheck to paycheck and you are suddenly catapulted into a state of high anxiety until you find another job.

Whatever financial state you're in, getting fired is an upsetting and unnerving experience. And you're certainly not seeing a positive side of a tenuous and hopefully temporary situation. Once gainfully employed, however, it's a cathartic experience looking back upon the event. If you have moderate reflective powers, you'll learn something.

If you have been fired, I guarantee you'll learn something from the story that's about to unfold. And if you somehow managed to escape this inevitable fact of working life, well, I don't want to give away too much. Read on.

True story: Last year I met a 52-year-old project manager who confessed that he had never been fired. "Wow," I said. "How did you manage to pull that off?"

He shrugged his shoulders and said he was just lucky.

Wouldn't you know, the man called me two weeks ago and told me he had been fired. The guy's luck had run out.

"What happened?" I asked the de-jobbed PM. He said he had disagreed with his boss, who happens to be a vice president and 20-year company veteran.

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