Dan Luu

What fraction of programmers with 10 years of experience have been fired? My gut reaction is maybe 2%-3%, but that seems obviously wrong...

when I ask companies about attrition rates, I usually find that involuntary attrition (not incl. layoffs) is at least 2% per year...

If firings are indep, we'd expect the fraction to be 1-(0.98)^10 = 18%. Firings are not indep, but I'll bet they're not too far off...

Anecdotally, I know a large-ish of people who've been fired and AFAIK none of them have been fired twice.

And of the sample of people I know well enough to know if they were fired, the fraction comes in within 2x of the calculation above

I was thinking that it's odd that there are 3 stories about getting fired from github, but the odder thing is that it's 0 for most startups

0 stories, or 0 firings? I've found startups to be much worse at firing people who need it.

(once worked at a place where four engineers quit over one personality before he was fired)