Fire Me, Please.
How Underrepresented People Can End Employment Addiction.
Fire Me, Please.
I have been fired from almost every job I ever held, and I am not ashamed. Most people would probably hide this fact, but I don’t. Throughout my 43 years I have probably been fired from about 30 or more jobs. The first was E*TRADE, yeah that little company in Menlo Park. The firing started with the classic “we are letting you go” discussion in a small office, sitting across from the manager at the E*TRADE Sacramento Call Center in Rancho Cordova. That encounter ended with me in the back of a police car, but more about that in a minute.
Even if you don’t end up in a police car, being fired can be a traumatic experience. Research in the Journal of Vocational Behavior states people who lose their job are twice as likely to suffer from depression. “The average number of persons with psychological problems among the unemployed was 34%, compared to 16% among employed individuals.” The study goes on to say, “According to Jahoda’s renowned latent deprivation model, distress is among unemployed people the consequence of a lack of five latent functions of employment (time structure, social contact, collective purpose, status, and activity), which correspond to important psychological needs. Only employment can provide these latent functions in a sufficient amount in modern societies, while unemployment leads to a state of deprivation, resulting in distress.”
Leonard Fein, a well know jewish activist and writer, proposed that Unemployment is an Ongoing Traumatic Stress Disorder. He writes, “The National Institute of Mental Health, often cautious in its language, says that “People may develop PTSD in reaction to events that may not qualify as traumatic but can be devastating life events like divorce or unemployment.”
I thought PTSD was reserved for those who had been in war. I was wrong.
As we continue with my story, it was also noted by the same article in the Journal of Vocational Behavior that the effects of this trauma were multiplied among minority men, who for the most part define themselves by their job titles. The study writes, “Masculine identity is intricately linked to having a job in Western societies and is severely threatened by unemployment” So, it’s easy to understand how the sudden loss of identity can trigger a traumatic spiral. Now, back to me, in the police car.
I didn’t end up in the police car for what you might think. I didn’t start yelling, I didn’t become violent. Previously, I had been awarded the company’s highest honor, an award that only 10 people in the company received. I ended up in this office because the director of the call center didn’t think I deserved that award, and she found some minor infraction that I had committed and used it as her reason to fire me. As I sat there listening to the them speak, my mind was on my family, more specifically my children. How would I feed them, pay rent — I had a new baby at home, what would happen to my health insurance? Then it hit me all at once, I was completely broken, my identity as a provider had been ripped away in an instant. Tears flooded my face and ran down my neck. My hands trembled as I worked feverishly to wipe away the hot streams flowing from my eyes. The two people in the room fell silent. This wasn’t the response they were prepared for.
Much of what transpired next was a bit of a blur. They asked if I needed help, I said no. I left the building and was confronted by two police officers in the parking lot. One circled around behind me. They immediately asked me if I had weapons. Before I could answer I felt handcuffs tightening around my wrists and they were stuffing me in the back of a squad car. I laid down on the plastic seat paralyzed in pain, crying 10 times more than I was before. But that wasn’t enough. The police took me to a county facility where they forced me to relinquish all my belongings, commanded me under the threat of violence to strip down to my underwear and sit in a room with nothing in it but a small square window and a cot. I was considered a threat to myself and deemed “5150", my rights as a human being were suspended for 48 hours.
But Brian, the title of this article is “Fire Me, Please.” You must be thinking, why would a person who went through all of this want to be fired again? Well, I didn’t know it at the time, but I had already taken my first step towards ending an addiction to employment. The events of this day would force me to start learning a very important skill I believe everyone should master — how to separate the way people treated me from who I truly was. “Brian” died that day, handcuffed laying in the back of a police car. He died, so I could be reborn — stronger, without fear and most importantly without an addiction to employment. To understand what I mean by this, we need to break down the idea of employment and what it really is.
Employment is an agreement that creates an illusion of safety from unemployment. When you “have” a job you trade your skills for money. Your manager tells you the rules and what is expected of you. If you want to keep your job, you follow the rules, simple. The structure of the agreement includes the idea that the employer provides you with a steady stream of money, and you provide them with a steady stream of work. Safety is an illusion because you can actually be fired at any time for any reason. California even has a special legal construct that makes employment “at-will”.
At-will Employment has been controversial from the beginning and many studies have been conducted trying to uncover the impact of it’s implementation. This study found that it didn’t effect overall employment, but it did change the type of employment contracts employers were willing to offer their employees.
What this means for employees is that you can be fired at any time, without notice, for no reason at all. There are laws that presumably protect us from discrimination in the work place and unjust termination. These laws are seldom enforced as the burden of proof lies with the person being discriminated against. Everyone knows, including many lawyers, that proving discrimination is next to impossible in most cases. Wrongful termination is also hard to prove and usually requires a small fortune in legal fees.
Ok Brian, we get it. Keeping your job is hard. Most would agree if you work hard, are careful and are respectful to your employer, you shouldn’t have a problem keeping a job. This common consensus adds to the social pressure people feel when they lose their job. I knew that hard work was required to keep a job and of course this made me work harder. But, hard work did not create the results I expected. I was fired from E*TRADE because the managers in the call center were jealous of my award from corporate. But it wasn’t just the E*TRADE job. There were several others.
At the next job, my manager smoked a joint at my desk one evening and started talking about how she always wanted a black boyfriend. When I refused her advances I was fired.
Another manager liked to slam his hands on the desk when he got upset, often in my cubicle. When I complained to HR, I was fired.
One manager threatened me with physical violence after I went around him to propose a new idea to other managers ( the idea was online map navigation ), when I complained to HR I was fired.
One CTO denied me a speaking opportunity at SXSW because he had not spoken there yet himself. When I voiced my concern to my direct manager, later I was fired.
One COO noticed that there were no women on the engineering team, I commented that I was also the only Black person ( all the rest were Indian men ). A month later she had my code reviewed by a independent consultant, who remarked that it was flawless, but that same day I was fired.
At another company, the owner promised me $12,000 per month as compensation on a 1099, but then ran the payments through a payroll system. In the process they shorted me about $4,000. When I complained, I was fired.
I worked for one of the Health Care Exchanges. Me and another developer ( who is white ) got in a heated exchange over Slack after he publicly humiliated me in from of my co-workers. He called me a stupid child, I called him a bitch. I was the only one fired.
I have been fired over and over and over again. Each time I had a different emotional experience, each time I learned something new about myself. A recent client said “Brian why do you make everything into a fight?” after I tried to clarify the history of a project’s timeline.
I wasn’t trying to fight him in that moment, but to tell the truth, for me it was always a fight. A fight to stay alive in a world that didn’t seem to want me. Oddly, instead of retreating, I arrogantly ( and rather foolishly ) pursued more employment, at times trying to hold more than one job at a time. Since I knew I was going to be fired, I just applied to everything, tried everything, and worked myself into oblivion. At each job I pushed the limits in many different ways. Sometimes I told the people I was working with I had other jobs ( so I could work remotely), or that I had a team of developers ( I didn’t ). Instead of retreating from the pressure and stress I bathed myself in it. I ignored the fact that I had been fired more times than I could remember, I also had more money than I could ever remember. More importantly I was becoming very skilled, technically and socially. I knew the taboo conversations and business bear traps to avoid. I knew that I would be most likely hated in the end ( and fired), but it didn’t matter — I saw myself as infamous. A dealer of sorts / slanging code / getting money and not giving a f*ck about the people or companies.
The day my bank account read $100,000 and Chase gave me a black card it was like I had gone Super Saiyan. I knew then that nothing could stop me. My fear of being fired had been thrown out the window. I had been fired over a dozen times, and I was still able to find my way. However, being a rich arrogant coder wasn’t the apex for me. In order to be free of my employment addiction I had to become more.
Like a Chinese Monk, who spends decades toughening his body by striking stones and petrified wood, I was toughening myself against the pain of termination. But, I developed more that just numbness against the pain. I began to see past the pain, through the collisions of stone and flesh, and peered deep into my own soul. Instead of only feeling the moment of being terminated, I observed it, as if in slow motion.
By slowing everything down and analyzing the truth of all the separate parts : me, my emotions about this moment, my emotions about myself before this moment, the person who hired me, the person who is firing me, my contribution to the company, the money I had received, what I used the money for, how much money I had in the bank … and on and on. I was able to rearrange and curate the importance of these moments. I realized that the importance and value of each moment was generated by me. Even though my employer created a causal relationship between my termination and the quality of my work, I didn’t have to agree with this evaluation. If I muted their input at the moment of termination, I would see all of the other positive comments they had made about me and my work. I would see that I didn’t have to hate them, even if they fired me. Being fired didn’t have to mean anything at all. I could give it any meaning I wanted, and I did — Now it means complete freedom to make money from my skills in any way I want. I have actually learned to profit from termination and negotiate reasonably good settlements.
The real source of my suffering was my need for employment. Money can come and will come from other sources than employment. This one belief, that my job was the only way to sustain myself was the cause of 100% of my suffering. By cutting that single thread, I was able to release myself from the guilt, shame and fear of unemployment. I was no longer bound to be what my job title declared. That was the moment I became Brian Russel Davis, my full name, a full person, with or without a job title. Today I have many sources of income, most come from ownership. Social norms encourage employment, but what about encouraging creation? What about encouraging entrepreneurship? The stresses of entrepreneurship can be equally as harrowing, but at the end of the day an entrepreneur is an owner who self defines instead of being solely at the mercy of others opinions or criticism.
So, yes please fire me. I have something to learn from it. I am building a business not a one position career. The employment agreement is not the only way to make money. I have seen through the illusion and I understand that safety does not exist. I am safest when I believe in the power of my own brand and the richness of my own skills as the captain of my own destiny. Of course employment offers much more than money. But, many of these things can be found outside of the traditional pre-made employment scenario. As a business owner and the leader of my team, I can be instrumental in re-defining what employment means for Axiom88. And yes at the end of the day I have the power to end the business relationship with any of the people on my team, but I can make sure it happens in a way that makes all of us unashamed, empowered and affirmed. I have much more to learn about this thing we call work. But I know that I don’t need a job to provide for my family or have a positive self image. I am everything I need, and what I am becoming is more than anything I can imagine.
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