Yesterday morning I was terminated from my IT role at a company I was employed by for almost 9 years.
In my time there I have never received a review that was less than “meets expectations” and my last review at the beginning of this fiscal year was an “exceeds expectations.” I had received multiple awards, bonus payments, and pay increases outside of our standard yearly merit increase due to my performance with the company. I had worked for 4 CIOs and 6 direct managers and none of those people had ever seriously reprimanded or disciplined me in any capacity. After my last manager resigned in August our IT director got the team together both individually and as a group to assure us multiple times that we were all in good standing and he was proud to have us on the team. He shared a particular story regarding work I had previously done that impressed him.
I was given no notice that there were concerns about my work or any indication that anyone in leadership was unhappy with my ongoing performances. However, while working on a ticket the week before I was dismissed I accidentally clicked the wrong button in one of our management portals and started a disk type conversion. There was no confirmation given before the process started and I was unable to stop or pause the job once it began. This caused a 17 minute outage in our production environment. I immediately reported what happened to my current manager and at no point did I try to hide my involvement with the outage or pretend I didn't know what had caused the issue.
During the call yesterday morning the IT director referred to this as my “unapproved escapades” and thanked me for my 8 years of service. When I tried to plead my case or give any explanation for what had happened I was dismissed outright and told nothing I said would change the outcome.
Never forget that if you live in an “at will” state in the US you are one misclick away from losing the career you love, one simple mistake. There is no amount of good will you can earn, compliments from leadership you receive, or awards given that will protect you. You are a simple cog and they will replace you without notice or warning.
[TLDR] I, a long term and highly decorated employee, was dismissed yesterday morning from the career I loved after a misclick caused a brief production outage.