Been at this company for 4 months as a data engineer. When I started their codebase was a mess. All the code was in one folder with subfolders, the scripts were dependent on one another even if they didn’t share the domain problem, their version control was “call the IT guy to grab the backup”. In the first few months I set up a Github organization for them, put all their code into a git repo to start version control, got them to install and use IDEs instead of just VS Code, refactored some of the codebase to use SOLID standards, automated some tasks, transitioned them to a new Snowflake warehouse, and fixed several issues that was breaking their workflow. Today the CEO told me that this is an at-will state and he let me go. Didn’t explain why, just asked for the equipment back.
I didn’t get any write-ups, no one complained about my work, I was always looking for improvements, even the CEO thanked me a couple months ago for writing a word document to my managers on how I think the team can make improvements. They actually followed that doc and have been happy with it. This came from nowhere because no one brought any complaints. Today I am lost. I just need to vent and let this out.
Simple, you fixed the issues and were too expensive to keep on. They didn’t tell you, but they hired you for this and that was it. It’s super shitty of them and that fucking sucks.
If they contact you about anything related to that job you are now a consultant at 5x your previous salary per hour at whatever minimum you choose.
I did just create an automation project that would scrape/download, clean, and load data from one of their vendor’s websites. I was asked yesterday to write documentation on it so others can use it which would have been done today but…
I was also the developer for a project that reduced their accounting team’s work from 1 month to 1 minute. The project would read accounting reports, download data from a snowflake warehouse, match billing items across multiple reports, and provide a summary to the accounting team. They asked be to help them because it took a month for them to go through each report. I was just finishing the project this week…
That’s a lot of changes in four months, is it possible that you made people uncomfortable with the pace of change? Were the other workers able to effectively use the changes you implemented?
I was thinking similar. How much of this was communicated, vs just done without asking. Were there considerations like “does company want their code on GitHub?”
I presented a report after my first two weeks on the changes I recommend. They discussed this with the team, the IT guy, and the CEO. The CEO thanked me for caring enough about the organization to put this into writing. I didn’t get everything I suggested but we got the important things. My plan was to get the team used to the tools I suggested before going on to other tools. All of their code wasn’t on Github because they had secrets hard coded in there so I only put new projects I created on there. I taught them the importance of environment files to keep passwords from git history. I only wanted to improve the place where I worked.
Not sure what might have happened then. Sounds like you took the right approach.
FWIW as a software engineer for 20 years including some time as Principal, this is kind of like, my thing. Identifying areas of improvement, presenting a use case, and implementing based on that. Some people can get really upset if they’re not involved in that process. Like, complain to the CEO upset.
If that’s not the case here, then it’s not. It is a bit of a red flag simply because that amount of change can be very difficult to impart in such a short time. Props for your contributions for sure.
I’ve worked places where fixing what’s broken was actively frowned upon. Short sighted employees will confuse “why do I have to learn X” with “I’m making more work for everyone” instead of realizing “doing X will take 10 hours to learn, but save one hour a week forever”.
These are not places you want to work. You’re lucky to be free of them if this is the situation you were facing.
I don’t believe you did anything wrong. It was a chicken shit move on the company’s part. Right now it is a tough time to be in technology as there have been a lot of layoffs. I would just get my resume polished up and put yourself out there again. Sorry this happened to you!
