Getting Fired Can Be Worse Than Divorce

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-27/why-getting-fired-is-worse-than-divorce-or-the-death-of-a-spouse

by kafkaesq • 9 years ago

71 72 9 years ago

What's up with the massive drop in happiness of fired women between years 3 and 4 post-firing? As a group they go from happiest score of any cohort-year pairing to least happy.

Also I wonder the extent to which the male-female discrepancy in the data (men do meaningfully worse than women post-firing, per the graph) is driven by the continued decline in blue-collar, traditionally male jobs, or whether another factor explains it (e.g., women tend to verbalize stress with their friends more consistently, thus they process the grief of getting fired faster/better).

27182818284• 9 years ago

Yeah the article doesn't have a lot of details. Is there a journal paper somewhere? I'd be curious to read it. A cursory search didn't turn anything up for me.

btkramer9• 9 years ago

I've never been married but the other data surprised me too. Both men and women experience increased happiness after a divorce or their significant other died.

civilian• 9 years ago

It's the year of divorice/widowhood that is the low mark, but afterwards people recover. Doesn't that make sense? That are still in the negatives as far as life satisfaction goes.

My close friend killed himself nearly 4 years ago. The first year was really bad, the second year was just a little better. And now, ya know, I'm mostly back to myself. Life satisfaction isn't a finite resource that you can only lose, you can rebuild it.

pixl97• 9 years ago

On the significant other, if the person didn't die suddenly, but had a terminal disease, it may make some sense that happiness increased. Watching someone die slowly, and the associated hospital visits is a soul draining experience. There is relief that their suffering is over and you get to have a life again, even though the person you loved isn't with you for it.

dhfhduk• 9 years ago

I think the dynamics are different in each case, but my guess is in most cases, the widowing event is one that is predictable, especially through chronic illness.

Chronic illness in a spouse or family member is a major stressor. Not only do you watch a loved one suffer, you often have major responsibilities as a result. So when the person passes, there's probably a mixed sense of tremendous sadness, but also a sense that your loved one is no longer suffering, and you can try to move on.

Divorce is different, but similar in that in most cases, problems leading to divorce have been going on for some time. So by the time the divorce happens, it's seen as an undesirable outcome, but one that is better than staying married.

The "missing situation" you seem to be implying or thinking about is one where a spouse/significant other is killed unexpectedly by accident or trauma, like a fatal car accident that is not their fault. My guess is those cases, you'd see a decline in well-being after the event, followed by a recovery to baseline.

The case of women after unemployment was puzzling to me, though. It led me to question the validity of the inferences, or to wonder what's going on with women that's different from men. I wondered if childcare had something to do with it. Perhaps women tend to leave employment because of children, return and then feel satisfied in doing so, but then realize they miss staying at home with the child? Maybe the industries they are in are different from men, and are subject to different trajectories? I have no idea.

ben_jones• 9 years ago

My understanding is that one's perceived social value plays a large role in their overall happiness and that men attach more of their social value to their employment then women.

skylark• 9 years ago

I'd really like to see standard deviation bars on that chart - my interpretation is that the sample size is extremely small.

frgtpsswrdlame• 9 years ago

Looks like it may not be published yet: http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.asp?ID=CRD...

Here's a presentation the authors gave though: https://www.uea.ac.uk/documents/5212420/0/Cigdem+Gedikli+.pd... [pdf]

clock_tower• 9 years ago

What's up with the massive drop in happiness of fired women between years 3 and 4 post-firing?

Noise from big data, were I to guess. There's no logic involved in this sort of thing, just a lot of self-reported correlations and just-so stories about the results. I can't say I'm happy that this is what "science" tends to mean these days...

pdelbarba• 9 years ago

I wonder if it's a correlation/causality type thing. Someone getting fired might be more likely to get fired again which messes with the data somewhat. I'd also wager that romantic rejection is something the average person experiences much more frequently than employment rejection.

user59944612• 9 years ago

men do meaningfully worse than women post-firing, per the graph

I'd easy to assume than women rely on the income from the men.

danso• 9 years ago

This is a study with an interesting finding but the article doesn't really add much additional reporting and context beyond doing PR for the mentioned study. Case in point, the only person they manage to quote about the impact of job loss is a teenager:

The impact of being fired is particularly pronounced on younger workers, the research shows. Tom O’Sullivan, 18, was fired from his first job after a three-month probation period. He believes it was because he took a sick day during his first month. “It’s obviously not what you want to happen,” said O’Sullivan, who lives in northwest England. “It’s not exactly good for confidence, especially for your next job; you’re going have to say you’ve been sacked.”

ourmandave• 9 years ago

It's not going to hurt him if he doesn't tell anyone. Does anyone expect an 18-year-old to have an employment history gap?

It's still bogus to be tossed because you took a sick day.

dhooper• 9 years ago

This is the most American headline I've ever seen, so I'm shocked the data isn't about Americans.

kafkaesq4• 9 years ago

The weird part is that getting fired can still suck, very deeply, even if it's from a job you truly hated and were going to quit anyway.

milquetoastaf• 9 years ago

Rejection sucks. I was fired from a job I hated and it did not help my self-esteem at all heh. Also a lot of the time firings / layoffs happen around bonus payout times so it hurts the head and the wallet.

j_s• 9 years ago

Very good point about the double-whammy of getting fired right before a bonus!

octavusprime00• 9 years ago

Yeah I have to agree with you, but sometimes people need help moving on and getting fired could be that push someones needs. Hopefully the next job would be something you enjoy, or you work for yourself.

kafkaesq4• 9 years ago

Sometimes people need help moving on and getting fired could be that push someones needs.

If they wanted to "help" the employee move on they'd (1) at least attempt to engage them in an honest discussion about the situation, and (2) offer something resembling a decent separation package. Heck even (1) by itself would do a lot to soften the psychic blow -- but that's almost always off the table (in part due to litigation concerns; but in part due also, let's face it, to a simple lack of humanity and empathy).

Instead it's usually "Lawyer up. Manipulate (via bogus performance reviews, or simply not supporting the employee to an extent that they're basically destined to fail). And isolate, isolate, isolate."

cmdrfred• 9 years ago

Survivorship bias? Getting fired wouldn't upset me all that much but I'd be upset to lose my fiancé. Perhaps the sort of people who get fired are also prone to depression?

xupybd• 9 years ago

Yeah this doesn't make sense to me either. I'd not be happy to get fired, but it happens. However when I got dumped by the woman I was ready to propose to, that took some getting over. This article just seems off?

erik_landerholm• 9 years ago

This article is stupid. Getting fired has always been a long term positive experience for me.

interfixus3• 9 years ago

Completely. If getting fired ranges up among the ten worst things that could happen to you, you really, really want to rethink your life. Deeply.

kleer0013• 9 years ago

Here are some good reasons, mix and match for most effect:

1 parent earns, two disabled kids, parent has chronic illness, alzheimers grandparent lives with them, relatives are absent or unreliable, job was their visa sponsor and now they have to go back to their war torn country of birth, denied retirement, they are a minority race/creed/color...

kafkaesq4• 9 years ago

If getting fired ranges up among the ten worst things that could happen to you, you really, really want to rethink your life. Deeply.

This strikes me as rather callous, or as well, something that only someone in a relatively secure and high-paying line of work (like software development) -- and of course, no kids to take care of -- could even begin have as a take on the situation.

Yes, getting fired isn't anything like getting maimed or killed, or suffering a truly debilitating illness. But for many people, the resulting financial tailspin that comes from losing a decent job (particularly after one has reached a certain age, after which, keep in mind, they may simply not ever find a comparable position) is an extremely brutal experience to go through (and if one has kids or older relatives to take care of, exponentially more so). In fact it's hard to think of a worse blow one is likely to have to deal with (short of, again, the aforementioned physical deprivations).

iceberg2• 9 years ago

I couldn't agree more!!

xor1• 9 years ago

I've only been in situations where I was hoping to be fired (sadly, it didn't happen).

atemerev• 9 years ago

I don't know why getting fired is such a big deal. I work mostly as an independent contractor, and my contract usually states that I can be "fired" (i.e. contract terminated) without any explanation at any moment (I can part anytime too, as long as I respect the NDA and went through the parting checklist).

This is much more convenient for the employer, which is the part of the reason I demand much higher hourly rates than normal employees (and it still worth it). A contract with a regular full-time employee is harder for both parties, which is why the "usual" full-time employment is becoming increasingly rare.

Which is a good thing, if you ask me. We are not in Japan, and the company is not supposed to keep us for life and take care of everything (and even in Japan, it is no longer in vogue).

__jal• 9 years ago

Putting aside everything else, contracting is very different. I'm was a contractor (independent as well as via a firm I co-started) for a over a decade, and getting fired by a client, as you say, is no big deal. Every business deals with bad customers, makes mistakes sometimes, etc. If it doesn't kill the business, you fix the problem (if any) and move on.

Working for The Man is a very different relationship and is looked upon differently by everyone from other people through the tax man. So it is a different thing. Working around the same people daily for a long period of time within the context of employment means building different (and usually deeper) relationships. I won't say it is an ersatz family, but there are similar emotional things going on.

Given that you go in to your engagements with the understanding that you can be fired at the drop of a hat means you think about it differently than the person who gets canned. Perhaps people should think differently about at-will employment, but they don't, and society loads them with different meanings.

toexitthedonut• 9 years ago

The problem is that there is no self-regulation mechanism in place to keep people from going too much into the deep end of un-employability. A feedback loop that exacerbates a bad situation sounds like a quality of bad design to me.

swiley• 9 years ago

What can you do to keep it from happening though? It's not like you can just grab their brain and make them apply themselves.

Apocryphon• 9 years ago

I would hazard to guess in tech this role is being filled up by coder bootcamps and Pluralsight, if such candidates were aware of any knowledge deficiencies.

xexers• 9 years ago

I wonder if the study went deeper into the different types of "fired". Things like:

* Your entire team is being cut because it's not generating enough revenue

* No one likes you

* your position can, and will, be outsourced to India

* you are incompetent at your position

I feel like there would be different levels of upset based on those things.

kazinator• 9 years ago

The last one is best, of course.

"Why on earth did they fire a hot shot like me? They are crazy."

city41• 9 years ago

I'd argue several of those would be classified as layoffs, and my hunch is layoffs sting far less.

Consultant324523• 9 years ago

With the requisite of I'm an anecdote and anecdote != data....

I've been both divorced and fired. I got fired because my position was outsourced to India. I got divorced because nobody liked me :).

The firing was basically nothing. I think the key difference, for me as an individual, is that I'm not a "lifer." I'm generally well liked in my jobs and get regular raises and promotions, but I'm not emotionally attached to the vision or whatever. In addition to that I happen to be the type of person who keeps a hefty emergency savings and all that. Financially speaking getting fired was a minor nuisance. I had another job within a month.

Getting divorced was really tough. It was an existential crisis. One day I was one thing, a married man with a child. The next day I was this completely different person, a bachelor with half a child. I didn't have ANY single friends, or childless friends who could do adult things when my daughter was with my ex-wife. I had to re-create who I was almost from the ground up.

The key factor, for me, is the "lifer" status. I was a lifer in my marriage, but have never been for a job.

cableshaft• 9 years ago

You do not have to be emotionally attached to a job for it to be negatively effected by the job being terminated. The transition from income to no income can have chain effect on all other aspects of your life, especially if it usually takes you time to find your next job (a foreign concept to SV types, probably, but less so for other industries and parts of the country).

I went through layoffs four times in a row after working at each one for less than two years. Each time it was due to a downturn in the company due to poor executive decisions (in hindsight) or bad timing with the market. I actually started thinking I was cursed, and stopped taking as many chances because I saw too many companies struggle and fail up close and personal.

There was also a period of unemployment in between each one, and my finances took a beating each time (seemed like I had only just recovered when the rug got pulled out from under me again). It sucked. I'm still struggling in some ways as a result of it, years later.

slantaclaus• 9 years ago

There was a downsizing recently at my company and I remember getting scolded for using the term "fired" instead of "laid off" when talking about the people who were leaving the company. Apparently the terms are different enough to irk some people when mixed and matched.

evincarofautumn• 9 years ago

Simply put: it’s much harder to cope with a blow to your identity than merely your situation.

ovulator• 9 years ago

I'm with you there, I've been laid off multiple times. Within a month I'm somewhere else and everything is fine.

I've been divorced with a kid. It's been over a year and I'm still in therapy. My identity was shattered.

Like you, I have never defined myself by my job, it was what I did to provide for my ... family. Divorce hit me way harder financially as well than job loss. No job every took 50% of my assets and future assets with them.

cortesoft• 9 years ago

Yeah, I have been 'fired' twice when the company I was working for at the time started to go out of business. It did not upset me at all, because it was nothing personal against me. Also, being able to find new work right away probably helped, too.

user59944612• 9 years ago

* you just interviewed with the shop across the street who offered you double, got fired right before you could spread the good news

* your project never had any customer, it was finally decided to kill it after 2 years

* your project, oh wait, you had no project to work on. What were you doing this past year? No even you can tell.

* you got replaced by a cheaper developer who's in his twenties, probably right out of a bootcamp.

* you were at the bottom of the stack ranking.

* your manager doesn't like you and he's got fire power.

* the team was disbanded. half the guys are moving to a new project, half the guys are laid off. you were in the bad half.

* no more budget to pay salaries. Sorry guys.

iphonethrowaway• 9 years ago

What about quitting?

kleer0013• 9 years ago

That would be a different article, I assume.

droithomme• 9 years ago

What he says is true some of the time.

Last time I got fired, for refusing to cooperate with illegal and unethical management behavior, it was a huge relief to me and a net benefit.

I realize this is not always the case for people, but it sometimes is. In general though you have a better shot at claiming unemployment insurance benefits you paid for if you're fired without cause than if you quit. This wasn't a factor for me since I immediately flipped to a new higher paying job, but it's an issue for many people.

On the other hand, my last divorce was also a huge relief to me as well. Good riddance in both cases.

It seems like the referenced study is looking at people who become unemployed and who stay unemployed and are unable to find work. Yes, that is a very bad situation. But it's different from the article title that suggests they are talking only about getting fired. Getting fired and becoming long term unemployed (whether from firing, layoffs or quitting) are fairly different scenarios.

Jimmie_Rustle• 9 years ago

You ever read an article that goes against everything you've experienced as a human being? This is one of those for me

mirekrusin• 9 years ago

Bullshit. Explicitly fired people are more likely to have problems with themselves (poor work ethics, laziness, etc). Those are carried throughout their carrier - of course they won't be happy after years, they (more likely) will carry those bad habits with them to another job.

All this moaning about externals (boss, partner, government, whatever) is quite boring frankly. Yes, in some cases bad shit happens that shouldn't and we should fight with it, but to draw this general picture where responsibility for oneself is shifted to others is just immature. At the end - nobody gives a fuck about you - this adult realisation is liberating: you now have control of your life in your own hands.

As to bosses - it's arguably better to say "we're restructuring business, we've decided to let you go" (more likely in commonwealth/western countries) instead of "you're lazy bastard, you're fired" (more likely in slovian countries for example) - but I'm not sure. Maybe it's just better to say how things are so the person gets clear signal he/she needs to get their shit together? I don't know.

Anyway the best advice is to say "fuck it" and focus on the future.

kafkaesq4• 9 years ago

It's hard to just say "fuck it" when literally 4/5 of your discussions about prospective employment immediately terminate once the person on the other end finds out you were fired. (That is, until you think up a radically different way of explaining it to people).

crispyambulance• 9 years ago

The other dimension to the stigma of laid-off people is the fact that anytime the whiff of impending lay-off starts floating through the office, people GTFO as soon as possible. Usually these are valuable people in the prime of their careers who won't tolerate even a small probability of getting laid off.

That's bad for everyone including employers, but especially careerists who need an unbroken chain of employment, because yes, even if you're not laid off there's a stigma to "job-hopping" as well.

patmcguire• 9 years ago

This is maddeningly vague. I've reread it and I can't figure out if it's about continuous unemployment or not. I think that it is but they want to make it about firing.

They talk about firing, then about firing some more, then they need some hard stats so they talk about long term unemployment. "Unemployed people continue to become increasingly unhappy over the next few years." All the facts are about being unemployed long term, they just talk about firing a bunch. The graph is about unemployment.

"People who regularly attended church had a buffering effect from the impact of unemployment" is the closer.

Am I crazy? This seems like an article about one thing dressed up as another.

jemfinch• 9 years ago

Is this surprising at all? Of course most people recover emotionaly from divorce. Most divorces are mutual, and these people have just gotten out of the most toxic relationship in their lives. Firing is decidedly not mutual.

bcx• 9 years ago

I am skeptical of these findings. The graph comes from LSE's center for economic performance (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/), but I cannot find any reference for a related study when searching google.

I also find that it would be very difficult to summarize 4000 research papers into a clean graph about subjective life satisfaction in such a way that you could cleanly compare post divorce well-being and post unemployment well-being.

Given, it's VERY hard to find the root study, and most other peer websites are just referencing the Bloomberg article. My guess is the author of the article is conflating some data.

A few interesting references: https://whatworkswellbeing.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/unemp...

References: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/926/1/02-16.pdf To conclude: "Using a longitudinal study of 24,000 people living in Germany, this study found on average that individuals had lower life satisfaction following unemployment and this never recovered to the pre-unemployment levels. These results held for men and women but were stronger for men."

The authors of this study frame their results slightly differently:

"The findings suggests that even a short period of unemployment can cause an alteration in a person’s long-term set-point. Although there was substantial stability in life satisfaction over the years, unemployment did influence long-term levels, thus suggesting that in addition to personality, long-term subjective well-being can also be influenced by life circumstances"

addicted• 9 years ago

Wouldn't a better comparison be against people who got Fred or quit?

A divorce can both be a good or a bad thing (for at least one party it should be an expected net benefit compared to the situation before)

damm• 9 years ago

I've lived through my other half dying; I have been fired numerous times. It did not lead to any downward spiral of depression; I just got another job.

Perhaps this article is more useful to those in the UK and it's tailored to them; as their unemployment problem is different than what is in America. So most americans who reply won't get it. (I suspect)

garyclarke27• 9 years ago

Utter Garbage, I've experienced both, getting fired is minor hiccup compared to divorce. Divorce is very similar to the pain I felt losing a brother, when he was killed in a car accident. I'm lucky though I soon got a better job and a better (for me) new wife and wonderful kids. But I will never forget how awful and surprisingly painful the divorce experience was for me, after just 10 years together.

Stryder• 9 years ago

Same here. Getting fired is stressful, but losing a loved one is a soul-crushing experience that will kick me into a deep depression for months.

Work is a means to getting money, and curing boredom; precisely in that order.

I suspect this is some clever social engineering to get people to be more fearful over losing their jobs.

theprop• 9 years ago

I'm also highly, highly SKEPTICAL of these findings. I've known MANY people really scarred from divorce. I've NEVER met anyone similarly scarred from being fired.

I think long-term unemployment could have more traumatic effects than divorce, but that's very different from being fired. The way the article was written, it spoke more of unemployment than being fired itself.

scarface74• 9 years ago

My first thought was why would I be deeply hurt if I got let go? Looking for a job is minor two or three week inconvenience but it's not the end of the world.

I had to take a step back and realize that life isn't that easy for most professions as it is for software developers in a city heavy tech.

How would I feel if it took me 6-12 months of looking for a job, rejection letters, not hearing back from employers, etc. at least with a divorce you only got rejected by one person.

Getting Fired Can Be Worse Than Divorce

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