Read on Twitter
In this thread (which you may want to mute), give me a company and I'll tell you why they fired me.
I'll start with @F5: because I used the word "refreshing" in their marketing copy.
I'll start with @F5: because I used the word "refreshing" in their marketing copy.
I felt sorry for the princess our customers had to kidnap for ransom to pay for our product, so I bought her a taser. https://twitter.com/agoX/status/1349145908093587459?s=20
I violated their ethics policy by having some. https://twitter.com/matech5/status/1349146025148215302?s=20
It turns out "you can just claim you have a degree; they might not check and you can save $120K" is terrible career advice to give to students. https://twitter.com/KaiPMDH/status/1349146039773749254?s=20
I walked out of a conference room and didn't kill the lights. https://twitter.com/killedbygoogle/status/1349146082366799874?s=20
My memoirs violated their trademark guidelines because I called them "The Sun Also Crashes." https://twitter.com/mlbiam/status/1349146089023299586?s=20
I didn't charge their family a license fee after snatching food away from them. https://twitter.com/VicVijayakumar/status/1349146189304881156?s=20
If you work at the wrong one, you don't suggest that you "go dutch" with a colleague for the lunch bill. https://twitter.com/hondanhon/status/1349146305843511296?s=20
"Shitposting all day" is what users should be doing, not employees. https://twitter.com/olearycrew/status/1349146395794681858?s=20
Violating brand guidelines by putting quotes around "Cloud" all the time. https://twitter.com/zarchasmpgmr/status/1349146516762492929?s=20
I called myself an employee. https://twitter.com/JtFinlay/status/1349146749600886784?s=20
It was evenly split between "everything I said" and "everything I did." https://twitter.com/way_too_meta/status/1349146852654948353?s=20
My constant listening to "Space Jam" by the Quad City DJs was messing up their stats. https://twitter.com/simonwgill/status/1349146927976374273?s=20
I pointed out that Facebook did it better. https://twitter.com/jamesgallagher/status/1349147073267060737?s=20
I misread their former head's name as a very strange DevOps Day. https://twitter.com/Lagniappism/status/1349147161817198595?s=20
I didn't realize I was supposed to lie to the auditor. https://twitter.com/sallybaker/status/1349147184000757760?s=20
The emperor didn't like it when I pointed out that he had no clothes and was also a jackass. https://twitter.com/schnizelbeer/status/1349147210483691521?s=20
I suggested a monolith instead of composable microservices. https://twitter.com/justintstanley/status/1349147379505668099?s=20
I wasn't a culture fit because people took me seriously. https://twitter.com/_msw_/status/1349147674692313088?s=20
I misunderstood the name and thought I worked at Pivotal. https://twitter.com/MDTom/status/1349147703943462913?s=20
I replaced the backup tapes with CD-Rs. https://twitter.com/jf_flyn/status/1349147774223331332?s=20
I pointed out that people only like creepy robots if they clean the floor. https://twitter.com/idanbidani/status/1349148019820797952?s=20
I pointed out that the VCs were going to want them to draw a hell of a lot more blood than that. https://twitter.com/nkoan/status/1349148825525489666?s=20
Even if it's super nice, apparently gifting a rubber ducky is super insulting. https://twitter.com/acvisneski/status/1349148958312972291?s=20
They didn't appreciate the "Rust Evangelism Taken Too Far" tagline. https://twitter.com/billblum/status/1349149198437011456?s=20
While they're aware that "new relic" is an oxymoron, they apparently didn't want to discuss it anymore past hour 4 of the morning standup. https://twitter.com/ARishi_/status/1349149246449201152?s=20
I successfully explained what their product suite did in a single 45 minute meeting. https://twitter.com/_s_hari/status/1349149655846670337?s=20
I asked what I could help work on instead of chanting "5G 5G 5G" all day long. https://twitter.com/vitbyst/status/1349149904363532288?s=20
I suggested they use @awscloud and it turns out they *hate* it when that billing model gets turned around on them. https://twitter.com/djhoffma/status/1349149983254040576?s=20
I snuck into the Product Management group and replaced the 2005 wall calendar with one from the current decade. https://twitter.com/BitIntegrity/status/1349150220198707202?s=20
I suggested that a couple of Post-It notes and a todo list would be fine for a project. https://twitter.com/emptyDir/status/1349150539301355521?s=20
I explained the concept of a "screw off" price tag so they tried it and oops it's all my fault. https://twitter.com/openlabbott/status/1349150675121397768?s=20
Someone reported my twitter activity to @mike_julian and he wasn't amused. https://twitter.com/ahidalgosre/status/1349150709539860481?s=20
Every company has a "you do not EVER ask leadership this question," I just didn't realize that at Yahoo it was "so what do you folks do here?" https://twitter.com/pedroreys/status/1349151659746881543?s=20
I suggested that perhaps as a change of pace they could hire people who were formerly incarcerated instead of the prison guards for their proctor roles. https://twitter.com/TheAngryTech/status/1349151817242959875?s=20
I suggested that "move fast and break things" was all well and good for a tech startup but maybe some things should be designed via Waterfall. https://twitter.com/inkedtater/status/1349152128401514497?s=20
I suggested that maybe making the customers order in Italian but not being able to speak Italian ourselves was less "trendy" than it was "pretentious asshole." https://twitter.com/code_injected/status/1349152838811672577?s=20
I suggested that "a business model" or "a good story for VCs" was a binary choice, and "neither" was the wrong answer. https://twitter.com/lilylapidese/status/1349153398180913152?s=20
I had a crush on the boss's daughter, which was a problem because so did he. https://twitter.com/AbstractCode/status/1349153469932834816?s=20
I told someone I worked at Apple. https://twitter.com/sec_ult/status/1349153850205360128?s=20
I spelled "multi-cloud" properly. https://twitter.com/pedroreys/status/1349153562861989890?s=20
Right about now someone in @F5's social media group is wondering what the *HELL* is going on in their mentions.
I accidentally said something with enthusiasm while on-air. https://twitter.com/cwinters/status/1349154535659491335?s=20
I ordered coffee at a conference without working a Netflix anecdote into the process. https://twitter.com/speedmeed/status/1349154392847618050?s=20
As a reminder, this thread (which you really should mute) is me explaining why I got fired from companies that people are submitting.
I was extremely misunderstood when I said "We should buy Slack because chattr is awful." https://twitter.com/sec_ult/status/1349154382047309825?s=20
I declined a chance to review a newspaper article before it went to print. https://twitter.com/nkoan/status/1349154916829331460?s=20
I beat the devil at his own game and demonstrated I was overqualified. https://twitter.com/RichSeviora/status/1349154975524429825?s=20
"Learning," "Surfing," and "Building" are all better gerunds than "Drowning" when it comes to marketing copy. https://twitter.com/juliawritescode/status/1349155624622436353?s=20
I suggested my team collaborate with another business unit. https://twitter.com/pkanavos/status/1349156138940583937?s=20
I did a product comparison with RedShift and was terminated for punching down too hard.
https://twitter.com/N4cklas/status/1349156180812304385?s=20
https://twitter.com/N4cklas/status/1349156180812304385?s=20
It turns out you can't call your customers "whiny entitled children" where they can hear you. https://twitter.com/thatcherrw/status/1349156610778624002?s=20
I grabbed a drink in a NYC cocktail bar and didn't tell the server I worked at Goldman Sachs. https://twitter.com/StephanBruijnis/status/1349156809421049860?s=20
I found this really fun game where two dinosaurs box each other, but it was too on-the-nose when I named the other one "Cisco." https://twitter.com/ren_tragger/status/1349157004426805251?s=20
They caught me printing my résumé in the office because the printer jammed. They can't even get those right anymore. https://twitter.com/JustATapIn/status/1349157150115966979?s=20
I asked the product people what made us better than a Google search. https://twitter.com/PierreSchambac/status/1349157307125428224?s=20
I suggested "we're not as shitty as Google" was insufficient market differentiation, and I could not possibly have been more wrong. https://twitter.com/reconbot/status/1349157656381022208?s=20
I tried to give the elevator pitch describing the company but forgot to sabotage the elevator to buy time first. https://twitter.com/shelbyspees/status/1349157740032139266?s=20
I named a product line and discovered that even with an accented letter like 'é', people can still spot the word "douche" from a mile away. https://twitter.com/chris_novelty/status/1349157874782535682?s=20
I dropped one of our cell phones while testing it and it accidentally killed the dinosaurs. https://twitter.com/elnsoxo/status/1349158298235318273?s=20
I forgot that the name has three syllables unless we're referring to our customers behind their backs. https://twitter.com/pedroreys/status/1349158309685825537?s=20
I forgot to put a blog post in between the posts complaining about @awscloud eating our business and the one declaring a record quarter. https://twitter.com/thetechguyravee/status/1349158325959593985?s=20
I accidentally started a civil war and forgot to properly invoice the MyPillow guy. https://twitter.com/ExtropicCrusade/status/1349159056213237765?s=20
I demonstrated an ability to go two consecutive quarters without tripping over my own corporate pud. https://twitter.com/giteaio/status/1349158849257857024?s=20
I admitted in public that @jpaulreed was our very last customer. https://twitter.com/paulosman/status/1349159177457963010?s=20
I forgot to rebase my commits before pushing and every single one became a movie. https://twitter.com/CoreysName/status/1349160510923669508?s=20
I failed the Iron Test by signing for a delivery instead of making the UPS schmoo Docusign me. https://twitter.com/SleepySecNinja/status/1349160576543387648?s=20
I misunderstood the procurement process and didn't realize I needed a hunting license to do what I did. https://twitter.com/jeffbarr/status/1349160787688837122?s=20
I had the temerity to suggest that if we were going to basically wipe our collective ass with the American flag we should at least try to turn a profit in the process. https://twitter.com/6502_ftw/status/1349160820433936384?s=20
I mistakenly thought we were trying to go to space, not win political procurement games. https://twitter.com/JosephGruber/status/1349161244822016011?s=20
And I'm spent. If you enjoy playing games like this, you'll like my free email newsletter: http://LastWeekinAWS.com
It's like this, only more so.
It's like this, only more so.
