[Coda]

I lost my job... *sigh*

They didn't specifically say why they were firing me, but I'm pretty sure that I was the scapegoat for a project being so far behind schedule.

They had given me a list of things that they wanted me to do better on, and I was like, "yeah, of course I can do that, the only reason I was struggling before was because I had to do both an engineering job and a management job at the same time, and now we've hired someone to do the management job, so you're just asking me to do what I would have done anyway."

And sure enough, I did exactly what they asked. It wasn't even hard. But nothing I could have done would have solved all of the complications that my team had been facing.

My manager is pissed. They didn't consult him at all. And now my team has to try to finish the project without their most experienced engineer.

The head of the infrastructure team is also pissed. I was one of the most tenured people at the company and I knew more behind-the-scenes details about the product than all but a handful of people. Losing me like this made his job that much harder because I was the one that was most likely to provide that background information, and now that I'm gone they've lost a lot of institutional knowledge.

Fortunately for me, I had a lot of vacation time stockpiled and they gave me a severance package on top of that, so I have plenty of runway to find a new job before I start having financial difficulties... but ugh, I really liked that job. It was the best job I'd ever had -- I felt like I was making a difference, I felt like my managers and coworkers actually recognized the value I brought, I felt like I was actually invested in the product enough to be proud of what we as a team were able to create.