Episode 507: I got fired unexpectedly and breadth and depth

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey there, I started a new job in August at a large European retailer. There were ups & downs, but long story short, my weekly one-on-ones with my manager was either positive or neutral. This was my second job after graduating, so the firm factored in, I’d like to think, when setting expectations this was my first time switching codebases and tech stacks. On January 3rd, I was fired in the last month of my 6 month probation. This was a total surprise. My tech lead told me I required too much assistance from others to finish my tasks. Some part of me doubted the sincerity of my boss, since I asked for example pull requests or tickets where this was the case and he was unable to provide a single example, but obviously, like every dev, technical insecurities are a big part of my life. I’ll be starting a new job at a prestigious newspaper in May, so here’s my question. In a remote first environment, how do I determine if I’m meeting expectations? How do I gauge my standing in my team? How do I avoid a repeat? How do I effectively integrate myself into a codebase? Disclaimer: At the end of January, everyone in my department was hauled into a meeting and was told the retailer hired 11 external, Portuguese developers to ‘finish the job’ since management wasn’t happy with the output of the 9 internal developers (aka nearshoring) and no internal would get a pay increase this year. My tech’s boss was also fired/forced out/quit before he could be fired. Trevor asks, How do I balance depth with breadth? At my current job, I am moved around projects/code bases all the time and I am exposed to a variety of technologies and subareas. That’s cool but I feel like I only manage to face the consequences of our choices for a couple months until I am moved again. I think I need more time to really become an expert in any one area. At the same time, I dread getting stuck in maintenance work. It seems like most people around me (at my company or outside) find it boring and soul-sucking, and are only excited about major projects from scratch. Does a job that has a good balance of both exist and if so, how do I find it?

You can listen to Episode 507: I got fired unexpectedly and breadth and depth online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Episode 507: I got fired unexpectedly and breadth and depth is an episode from Soft Skills Engineering by Jamison Dance and Dave Smith.

This episode is 33:15 long.

This episode was published on Apr 6, 2026.

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