By Today on LinkedIn I read a post by Henry Kirk. Henry was terminated in 2023 by Google after 8 years of employment. His LinkedIn post is his rewrite of that termination letter. I would encourage anyone who gets terminated to rewrite their termination letter like he did, acknowledging all your contributions. Really you should be doing this every year (not writing a termination letter, but writing up your value-add). It’s important for 1) you to know your value and 2) you to make sure that your company knows your value and 3) be prepared to leave if your company doesn’t recognize your value.
Back to Henry…what surprised me was how surprised he was by the coldness of this email. I’m not. I’ve never been terminated…but I’ve been part of small and large companies and have learned a few things about employment. The biggest takeaway is that your relationship with your employer is transactional. As Don Draper said in Mad Man, ‘That’s what the money is for”. Yes there are other benefits to working for a company and yes friendships exist and sometimes people really do care and do the right thing. But most companies do not. Never forget that it is a business. This was further emphasized on an Instagram post about a woman who was denied her request to work from home so that she could be with her newly adopted baby who was in the NICU…and she worked for a baby clothing company. If there was any company that should be supportive of working from home to handle caring for a baby, it should be this one. If you’re following them, you know they’ve gotten some backlash. In my opinion they showed their true colors. It is better to see that and know what you’re dealing with. Do not delude yourself.
Companies weren’t always this way. I remember at my first job at Aetna, the company was referred to as Mother Aetna. Many people stayed there for their entire career. Today that isn’t the case for most.
And to be fair to Google and other employers out there, the termination process often has to be cold and clinical to avoid lawsuits.
Just an FYI – here’s his screen shot. His full post can be found here.
And don’t think I’m a company hater. My problem is more with myself. I didn’t put boundaries up and gave more to the companies that I worked for than I should have. So consider this post, my ‘learn from my mistakes’ advice.