Was hired for a lead role for a brand new contract awarded in Chesapeake. I showed up to work on a Tuesday after a holiday and was fired that Friday.
Position was as a lead role and it came with the usual project management oriented job description for such in their online advertising. I had a phone interview and in person interview with the top three folks at various times and answered all the normal PM related questions. I later had an in person interview with the software lead who was an immediate hire from the old contractor and answered all the normal PM related questions. An offer letter was then produced, which I signed and submitted my notice to my old company.
Day one I walked in and had the following thoughts: I was hired for a lead role for a large defense contract overseeing ~50 personnel. I was shown my office, greeted warmly by coworkers and the top three folks at the company who flew in from the west coast and left alone. Lunch with the senior folks? No. Maybe dinner after work with the senior folks? Nope. This was replicated on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. At no time was there a one on one discussion on policies, way forward, directions, or any of the things that one would expect as the head of a major unit of a company with zero east coast presence. It was also a bit eerie as every single person was brought over from the old company that used to have the contract and the only person in the building that was a complete stranger to all was me. Stranger in a strange land as the song goes...
Friday afternoon, I was called in and fired by HR and one of the top three folks from California. The paperwork said, "poor performance" I think, but what stated was:
"There are no roles to move you upwards, downwards, or sideways into and you don't have the necessary skills to set up and configure servers, nor do we have time to get you up to speed on that, so we have to part ways today."
I about fell over. Nowhere in their ads for the job did it make mention of server configuration experience. Nowhere in our talks with any party was this mentioned. Nowhere in my resume speaks to this as I don't have this as a skill set. So with having worked only four days, I was fired. No chance for unemployment claim nor severance. A month later I got a paper check.
My guess is that whoever the lead was from the old company was said no to coming over to the new team and I was given an offer letter. Once that letter was issued, the old lead said yes and the company was then in a pickle....and decided to get out of the pickle by firing me for a bogus reason to get whom they wanted in the first place.
