I’m 28 and still reeling from what just happened. Five months ago, I was hired by a globally recognized tech company. I moved across the country, signed a one-year lease, furnished an apartment, and made great friends from my orientation cohort. I thought I was building a career.

From day one, my boss seemed to hate me. It was obvious and strange. She criticized me publicly in ways she didn’t with others. She assigned me double the workload compared to my teammates—I know because we talked about it. I worked incredibly hard to figure out what was wrong and fix it, but nothing helped. The more I tried, the worse it got.

She seemed like a decent manager otherwise—not very experienced and only a few years older than me—but multiple teammates noticed her treatment of me and asked what was going on.

Last Friday at 4:00 p.m., I had a meeting scheduled with her and HR. I walked in expecting… I don’t know what. Certainly not to be fired. No explanation was given. Just “This is your last day—you don’t work here anymore” and a list of what I needed to do in the next hour.

I’m in shock. My friends at work are in shock. This company has a reputation for fairness and for moving people to different teams when the fit isn’t right. It’s a huge organization—why couldn’t HR have found me a different position?

They offered generous severance, so I’m not worried financially. But I’ve never heard of being fired for doing something wrong and then offered severance. How do I learn from this? How do I make sense of it?

Balan

The Response

I’m scratching my head right alongside you. What happened to you is genuinely bizarre.

No performance improvement plan? No warnings? No coaching conversations? Just… gone? That might be normal at a chaotic startup, but for a mature, sophisticated organization, this is straight-up strange.

What Could Have Happened? Five Possibilities

Something unusual is clearly at play here. It could be about your former boss, something systemic in the organization, or—and I say this gently—something you did that you haven’t fully acknowledged to yourself yet.

Here are the possibilities I see:

Psychological Transference

I’m not kidding about this one: you may remind your boss of someone from her past who hurt or bullied her. This is called transference. When someone has unresolved trauma and encounters a person who triggers those memories—even unconsciously—it can provoke completely irrational behavior. Your appearance, mannerisms, or even your voice could have activated something she wasn’t even aware of.

A Failed Test of Boundaries

Some people who engage in bullying behavior are actually waiting to be called out. They keep pushing boundaries to see if you’ll ever stand up for yourself. When you don’t—when you keep trying harder and being nicer—they interpret it as weakness and push harder. It’s a dysfunctional pattern, but it happens.

Stealth Workforce Reduction

Organizations sometimes need to cut staff but don’t want to announce layoffs publicly. In these cases, they quietly ask managers to let people go—even good performers—to hit headcount targets without the PR nightmare of a formal reduction in force. This is terrible management, but I’ve seen it happen even at well-respected companies.

The clue here: compare your severance package to what would typically be offered in an official RIF. If it’s unusually generous, this theory gains credibility.

Unconscious Self-Sabotage

I don’t mean to insult you, but you must honestly ask yourself: is it possible you engaged in some alienating behavior you’re not acknowledging?

Did you signal disrespect for your boss—perhaps subtly through body language or tone? Did you display arrogance about your skills or intelligence? Did you judge her inexperience in ways you thought were hidden?

Here’s the truth: no matter how well we think we hide our judgments, people always sense them. And nobody likes being judged.

Reflect carefully on what attitudes you held that you believed were concealed. This requires brutal honesty with yourself.

Personality Clash With No Clear Fault

Sometimes there’s simply an inexplicable chemistry problem between two people. Neither person is “wrong,” but the combination is toxic. In a functional organization, this would be resolved by reassignment. In this case, for reasons you may never understand, it wasn’t.

What You Need to Do Now

Seek clarity, if possible. Since you’ve already signed separation papers and the company has no reason to fear legal action, consider reaching out to the HR person who was in that meeting. Ask directly for feedback. Even if what you hear feels unfair or unjustified, at least the mystery won’t haunt you.

Be prepared: you may not get answers. Some organizations simply won’t engage post-termination. But it’s worth trying.

Consider an alternative perspective. This may sound absurd, but stay with me: what if you simply weren’t meant to be in that job, and something far better is waiting for you?

I know it might clash with your worldview, but I’ve heard countless stories from clients and friends about devastating setbacks that turned out to be disguised blessings. Something they thought was the worst thing that could happen became a turning point toward something better.

I’m not suggesting you pretend this doesn’t hurt. I’m suggesting you stay open to the possibility that this might eventually make sense in ways you can’t see yet.

What You’ve Gained

At minimum, you’ve learned exactly how NOT to manage people. When you’re in a leadership position someday, you’ll remember how this felt—and you’ll never treat another person this way.

That lesson alone has value.

Moving Forward

You have every right to feel angry, confused, and betrayed. This experience doesn’t make sense, and it may never fully make sense. That’s okay.

Here’s what you can control:

Allow yourself to grieve. Wallow for a while. Feel sorry for yourself. Lick your wounds. This matters.

Then choose resilience. Pick yourself up, acknowledge that being human is hard, and decide to move forward anyway. Use this experience to build character and strength.

Remember this: You can’t control everything that happens to you. You can only control how you respond.

Whatever happened in that office wasn’t about your worth as a professional or a person. It was a specific situation with specific (if mysterious) factors at play. Don’t let it define you.

You’re 28, you have generous severance, and you have your whole career ahead of you. This chapter closed abruptly and painfully—but it’s just one chapter.

Best wishes,

Yogesh