devRant - A fun community for developers to connect over code, tech & life as a programmer

This world can fuck right off.

March of 2025. I dove into a depression as a complication of my bipolar 2. Has less mania and more I want to die episodes. I noticed this as losing all interest in everything in my life. I DIDN'T HEED THE WARNING!!!

This results in me being distracted at work and struggling to learn a new platform. It also doesn't help that my supervisor keeps pulling me off the project to work on other shit. ALL OF WHICH I COMPLETED SUCCESSFULLY. They even gave me a 4% raise in March. Apparently it didn't help my depression.

We get to May and my supervisor takes away the programming tool used to program the platform I am working on (embedded processor). I complain and they say I am not getting it back. In my head I should have seen this as a fucking RED FLAG and pushed back.

Then in July the CTO says I need to have my code finished for the new platform in one month. I tell my supervisor I don't think I can (should have spoke up about the programming tool because I CAN'T TEST ANY FUCKING CODE!) He says: "I think you can do it!"

So I am trying to code blindly on a platform I can't test the code. I get to August and report I am testing code on Linux because I have no way to test on the platform. Apparently the CTO doesn't like this. So he starts sending people to walk by my office to "spy" on me because he suspects a character flaw. I don't realize this is happening until after the fact. Apparently I am on my phone too much (which is not typical, but I suspect my depression fucked me here).

I get called to a meeting with HR and my supervisor. They are firing me for performance and violating policy of using my phone outside of break times. This is August 14th. I am compliant and don't make a scene (it won't help). My supervisor is crying and the CTO made him fire me and sign everything.

The CTO also made a statement about how I was never deserving of the job title because I was never creative enough or good enough or some shit. This is the same guy that praised my past solutions for creativity and unique ways of solving the problems. The dude flat out lied and rewrote history. I even found a review from 2022 saying I was good at the role. Also, the dude gave me the damn job title. Up until this point I respected the guy. Now, I have lost all respect for him. It is one thing to fire for cause. It is another to lie about it sell the point.

On the way out the door my supervisor offered to be a reference for me. Several other people I worked with offered the same and couldn't fathom why I got fired. People I worked with for 7 years.

So I get thrown into the shittiest job market in the last 20 years. I can't find anything online or local. My fucking degree is a shit tech degree. So even though I can write decent software nobody wants to consider me because there hundreds of thousands of out of work SWEs on the market. I was already trying to recover from working at a shitty startup after losing a decent job due to a layoff. This was also affected by my un-diagnosed bipolar at the time. I made poor financial decisions because of some of my rare manic phases.

Unemployment from DOL finds that I was not at fault for being fired. They determined the company applied inconsistent policy on cell phone usage. Which is true to an extent. I have seen people take a lunch for 2 hours watching movies. Saw another dude sleep for 2 hours. Snoring and everything. But unemployment has no power other than giving me unemployment. Which isn't enough.

So now I am 3 months into job search and I find out that as much as 60% of the job postings on LinkedIn are fake. So there is a good chance that all of the jobs I applied for are fake.

My wife has a business, but it won't be enough when savings run out in 6 months. Because of the shit market I can't get a fucking job doing anything it seems.

I am tired, and the bullshit keeps piling up. I realize the only way I can survive is to create some kind of business.

I know, my perception of what happened is my perception. But if I was ever a valued employee they would have asked "What is wrong, and how can we help?" Instead I find out the CTO had harbored ill will toward me and NEVER FUCKING TOLD ME! I had asked for feedback in the past about my work and was told it was good work. I asked: "Am I too slow." The CTO said: "Your a little slow, but I don't have to worry about your code." Yet when they fired me they said I was getting complaints from other departments. But guess what? They NEVER FUCKING TOLD ME. This is the most sadistic way I have ever heard of managing people. Hold them to a standard that you never tell them about. I should have been clued into this when they fired the last guy. They never told anyone he was gone. I asked the CTO why they never told anyone. He said something about that is how that works. This is some serious mind fuck shit.