I’m currently working for a startup company that makes educational products. My department manager asked me to talk privately with her today, and told me she has come to the difficult decision of firing me. I kind of saw this coming. Her reasons are quite reasonable: - I have missed quite a few deadlines, and am generally slower than my 3 teammates. - I usually do things my own way instead of following what the team decided to. - I don’t communicate effectively with my team. My teammates are very young and - I go out too often, and for too long during working hours. I usually go outside about three or four times a day, to refresh my mind, eat something and do some exercises. Each time usually takes 15 to 20 minutes, but today I went out for 45 minutes, which was probably the last straw for her. - She has warned me a few times about punctuality, and I have improved since then, but there were still days I was late for work.
That’s her perspective. Here’s mine: I’ve worked here for 14 months. Before coming here, I had been fired FOUR times by four different companies. The first one was 6 six years ago. I was fired after 5 months by company H because I couldn’t complete the many tasks they gave me on time. I was too inexperienced back then. My job was editing and creating learning materials for English courses. The next one was company J. I worked there as an R&D for adults’ English courses. I actually did quite well here, worked for 2.5 years, had good relationships with the people in my department, but I guess I got too comfortable and after a few fights with my manager for petty reasons such as her not responding fast to my massages, I got fired. I’m still friends with her and other colleagues there though.
Next was company P. I worked there as an R&D for kids’ English courses for 5 months until the managed decided my lack of teaching experience was too critical for that position. Then I got into company S. The R&D was hesitant at first because of my lack of teaching experience, but decided to give me a chance. I failed her. I should’ve spent my evenings after work to improve my teaching skills and learn more about the job, but I was too lazy. I got fired after 1 month. They were very skilled and fun people, so I only had good memories of them. I just didn’t meet the job’s requirements.
After leaving company S, I got into my current company, let’s call it company E. My job is still R&D for English courses, this time to secondary school students. This job doesn’t require much teaching experience, even though there have been many tasks where I struggled because of my lack of teaching experience, but I managed to complete them. Well, until now. Let’s me say a bit more about my current job: The pros: - The tasks are much more suitable for my experience than in the previous jobs. - The company was founded around 7 years ago, and is doing really well for a start-up. - There are many young, attractive girls here. Hehe. - There are about 15 people in my office, and they’re all friendly. They’re all women. Some are older than me, some are younger than me. These 15 people are divided into different teams for different subjects, such as maths, literature, English, Korean, physics, history etc. There is one leader who manages all the teams, let’s call her Ms Hien.
The cons: - My salary is quite low, at 10 million VND a month. - I’m in the English team with 3 other people, but none of them has enough expertise to properly appreciate the quality of my work. Ms Hien’s main job is to manage the overall progress of all the teams, and her English is definitely not enough to see how good I am. Which means she only cares about quantity and deadlines. - The people in my department are not excited about working here. They only work for money. - Every day I come to work, don’t really talk to anyone unless it’s needed, then leave. I haven’t made any friends at this company after working for one year. The main the reason is that I’m really poor and don’t want to expose that to anyone.
Ms Hien was the one who decided to fire me today. I told her my dad is undergoing cancer treatment, so getting fired would be devastating for me and my family. She said I have until the end of October (today is September 23, 2025) to find a new job.
What should I do for my remaining days here? It’s not easy to find a job in this economy and at my age. But I’ve changed jobs several times, and each new job always brought in something new to be excited about, so I’m not feeling too bad about having to leave this company. But I’m in a bit of a financial struggle, so if I don’t find a new job fast enough, I might be in big trouble. Should I try really hard to become a great employee in the remaining days so Ms Hien changes her mind?
Different country, different economy. Quick googling shows that the average vietnamese salary is 12-17m VND a month. A similar google shows Canada as 67k CAD a year. By percentages 10m VND a month is approximately comparable to 35-40k CAD a year, which is (as advertised) pretty low but far from unlivable.
Obviously this is far from painting a complete picture, but at least offers a loose comparison to what one might expect to make working in vietnam. 400usd a month sounds like we'd struggle to pay for groceries, nevermind rent, but... yeah, perhaps not the reality over there.
@OP if you still have a decent relationship with an old boss, why not ask her for feedback? If she can offer you honest advice and you can take it (and not take it personally) then that seems useful. Good on you to recognize that you had your shortcomings in your position, that at least gives you things you can work on.
You don't want to have a great last month in order to get rehired.
You want to have a great last month so when the next job you get, which will be better, calls Ms. Hien, she will sing your praises without contempt, and they will hire you happily and also give you more than 10 million VND and you have a fresh start.
There are a couple things that seem like they're true and I think you will realize are true: Being right hasn't mattered. You shook a tree expecting delicious fruit to fall and you got knocked down by a branch.
It sounds like you're saying your work is better but your team is faster. Not realizing that the company values speed over perfection is partly your fault. Even if your work is better I don't think you can convince boss you're critical. You might have a different and even better perspective than your teammates, but it's probably not THAT much better. And if it is, then over the past long time, not taking the social steps to make sure people around and ABOVE you paying your checks knew that, is partly a failure on your end. Your boss is also busy with 15 people and doesn't have the time to notice every nuance of you and your workflow - they're a boss, a human, not God.
There is an adage, it's easier to quit your job than get hired - it's also easier to change jobs than get a job from being unemployed so get on that immediately.
Shitting on your teammates and being an outcast, even if true, didn't help anyone. Their excitement or lack of it is not your concern. Their excitement is they complete tasks faster.
And these are still things you can do in the remaining time. When you say "team" it sounds like they are the team. Do they communicate with each other, even if you don't? That makes them efficient. If their work is worse, how often do you chat with them? Make small talk? Ask them how their projects are going and if they have any obstacles? Get into a discussion where you can give advice in a "what about this" way rather than an "I'm better than you" way. At the same time you could have received advice on how to speed up and not be a perfectionist or something. You could have traded parts of projects to play to each other's strengths.
I don't know. If their work is worse but faster, did you ever take a few examples of it, improve it and show it to them? Or take a few examples of it, improve them and show them to your boss, explaining you think a weakness in the structure is differential quality of output? Like what you produce isn't all of an equal standard? And suggest incorporating that into the workflow? Like make yourself the quality control guy and say, just like I just showed you in the examples, I can do that for all my team's projects? I mean, okay we've got the problems kind of identified. What are the actual solutions?
Are you distracted by they're all "pretty girls?" Don't shit where you eat, be professional, it's a job.
Some of these you can fix now on the way out, some are really hard without a reset which a new job will give you. Mainly that's the attitude inside you that's been brewing. Maybe you take a lot breaks because these days it's hard being around them, because you remember the last time they were wrong and nobody listened to you, or the time you wanted to speak up but didn't, or the time boss went to someone else instead of you? Just spitballing. If there's stuff like that going on, it takes absurd discipline and control to get over and there's no shame in just resetting somewhere else.
It's difficult because you have to be humble in order to see the big picture of how you can fit in and help something bigger than you. Because it's not all about you. But you also have to be arrogant in order to negotiate and get more than 10 million VND. The control is knowing how to channel each emotion when it's needed. Fingers crossed for you. Legitimately it just sounds like you got in your own head too much overthinking certain things. I agree with your last paragraph 90%, and again, the next is always better. I have no idea why, but it truly is. And remember at the next place it's your boss who is the #1 person who has to worry about people hired at the company. Not you. Just do your best to make sure you aren't the one they worry about. (Some people do that by preemptively attacking everyone else, causing drama, and stirring shit, to distract the boss away from themselves. Don't do that, just do everything constructively and respectfully, and you'll be on good footing in the future.)
Brother, what the fuck? If you are so self aware of yourself being a bad and lazy worker, have you considered, like, not being bad and lazy at your job?
I guess I mean at your next job, but you know I mean...
On September 28 2025 15:17 Jealous wrote: Brother, what the fuck? If you are so self aware of yourself being a bad and lazy worker, have you considered, like, not being bad and lazy at your job?
I guess I mean at your next job, but uou know I mean...
EPT
