Ask HN: Has anyone been fired because they were job hunting?

No, I actually was able to successfully negotiate a better position and higher salary after getting an offer from a different company.

I've never seen this in any company I've worked at.

Personally, if I saw members on my team looking for work, I would want to understand that decision: is it for personal reasons, is it because they felt unable to grow, is it because of salary, or is it because they find the work no longer meaningful?

There are plenty of reasons to move on from a role. Firing someone for wanting something that aligns better with their future is beyond petty imo.

There are always a few managers who are petty and vindictive. I've certainly met a few over the years.

But beyond that, let's say you knew that a certain bank had a good chance of shutting down its branch offices in the town where you live, for whatever legitimate reason. Would you consider opening an account at that bank? Well, clearly no, because those bank branch offices might not be there for you to use in the future.

Now let's say you were a manager and you knew one of your team members was looking for a new job. Would you feel it to be worthwhile to assign important project tasks to that person if you knew there was a good chance they would be unavailable in the very near future and you'd have to move the tasks to someone else? Are you going to put them up for a promotion or a bonus to reward them, knowing that the effort might (in a sense) be wasted? The knowledge that an employee is considering leaving, no matter how much the manager might wish them well personally, changes the relationship because of the uncertainty about the future availability of their time and accumulated knowledge. It's better either for the employee not to create that uncertainty and/or resolve it as soon as possible.

Firing employees for job hunting is a mistake on so many levels.

1. It signals insecurity about your culture and why anyone should want to work there. (We can't keep people here except under threat.)

2. It's ineffective against your best employees, who will have options and will not fear you.

3. It demotivates everyone and creates a vicious cycle of fear and distrust, which will drive a culture of keeping your head down and hoarding information, which will destroy the efficiency of your remaining workforce.

  It signals insecurity about your culture and why anyone should want to work there. (We can't keep people here except under threat.)

  It's ineffective against your best employees, who will have options and will not fear you.

Let’s add “passed up for promotion or other desirable opportunities,” because that’s apparently a concern, as well.

I haven't seen "he's looking for work so let's fire him". But I have seen "George doesn't seem committed let's promote Joe instead". Or "we have to cut someone we should cut Alex because he doesn't seem committed to Acme Corp".

Depending on what projects you work on, your org might could have installed "monitoring" software on your computer that triggers alerts when you job search. The purpose is to catch insider threat, make sure nobody runs off to the competitor with IP. If you are job searching at competition's website, they may cut you off specific projects, or just "let you go".

I would never job search on company's time or issued hardware, and I wouldn't recommend it.

I worked at a small company (less than 40 people in US and less than 30 offshore and 10 in Europe).

I uploaded my resume to a job site. Within a week I was called to meet the HR. They asked me why I was looking for a job and if I was unhappy here. I told them I was happy (obviously, I don't want to lose my job) They told me they won't inform the CEO because it would upset him and it was never brought up again.

I worked for a while and then had to leave. The place was toxic for me.

It really makes sense for small companies to monitor their employees because they can't afford to have people quit willy nilly. So, definitely, I am 100% sure they have monitoring software which detects employee search results.

A sudden TripleByte search result showing up on Google is definitely a red flag that the HR would notice.

Having said this. I would say TripleByte wanting to award badges and making profiles public is definitely a mistake on their part. I doubt they have malicious intent. They just did not think through all the consequences with this move.

Nobody want to lose their job in the middle of the pandemic. Bad move on their part for sure.

I’ve discussed openly with employees their career thoughts, including many occasions when they were considering leaving. Sometimes that results in them leaving; more often it does not. I’ve never consciously held this against an employee. I’ve also told my boss at times that I was considering my next move and that it might be elsewhere. I can’t see where that’s ever been held against me either.

I don’t view looking as disloyal. If employer N isn’t the best option for an employee, they are welcome and even expected to consider employer N+1.

I have known companies that had that policy, but it was only when there were plenty of people looking for IT jobs. When the market is tight, if they find out they might try to appease you.

However, once you start seriously looking, it is just a matter of time.

I know several people who always put out their resumes, and are open about it. They say they like to know what they are worth. Typically they have not been seriously looking just keeping in practice if they needed to.

Myself I went to a job fair, and I was surprised to see my boss there recruiting. I had to get out as the tech was primitive and I was worried my skills were atrophying. I was given a 10% raise, which was nice and I used it to get another 10% at the new company.

I was fired from my first job by the CTO of my company after telling him I was job hunting.

Context: My first two managers were friendly and we openly talked about what we wanted to do next. My 3rd manager was the CTO, who talked a lot about preparing people for their next jobs/career. I assumed I could be open with him.

After a month or two where several people left, he asked me in our 1:1 if I knew of anyone who was thinking about leaving. Assuming that he wanted to know so they could make counter offers or back fill headcount, I told him I was considering it. I was trying to be helpful, and I guess I was, just not in the way I expected.

Two weeks later he either quit or was fired. I was fired three days after him. Apparently he had already advocated for my firing before leaving himself.

Depends on where you are conducting that activity. A big no-no is if you are using your current employer's infrastructure to job hunt(or any other personal activity, including personal projects) i.e. if you are using office premises, computers, printers, phones etc for you job hunting expeditions.

What I despise though, and personally experienced, is when HR of present employer use external recruitment agencies to spy on you and block your job hunt. And use that information to discriminate against you in various ways.

Why would a company fire someone and pay the severence instead of simply waiting for him to quit?

Apparently, it's a toxic management practice, and I never worked more than 2-4 days in companies, which considered such employees treatment (heard from long-time employees of that companies). Toxic working atmosphere could be easily spotted during first days by multiple factors, like fearing the management, overtimes, unnecessary and formal daily/weekly reports, and yeah, stories like someone has been fired for updating cv online. That's where you should not hesitate and leave right away, it would never become any better.

My wife got fired for job hunting. She was searching on her phone in the work bathroom. She was connected to the company wifi.

Don’t job hunt at work! Many comments here are from people getting “caught” because they were job hunting at work on company WiFi. Don’t do that! Job hunt on your own time.