Today I was fired from a software company.. for the 3rd time in 1.5 years. Needless to say I feel like I reached bottom and it's impossible to get out without changing career. Should I change a career? Is it even possible to find a job now?
Fired from a fintech company on the 2nd month for not performing. This was correct since I had a lack of motivation (disinterest in both business domain and technology). I assumed the good culture would be enough to keep me going.
Fired from a web platform company after 2-3 months for poor performance. Applied for a Python role, but was tasked to work with C code for a month. Development thus took longer because of the nature of the language, plus being alienated from the main codebase. I switched to the proper project after - which felt like starting from scratch, topped with a few new things I had to learn. I received a warning that they had doubts about my seniority and mentioned that they will see how many things I can introduce to the project in a single sprint. I delivered a few things but without any metrics it was like shooting in a void. I was let go afterwards for "not being senior enough". This was under probationary period as I recall it.
Fired on 6th month for poor performance. During probation I received positive feedback. I was working on a project in Python and did refactoring and cleanups that I got good comments for while also finishing most tickets in time. Even the manager acknowledged to me in 1-to-1 that I was up to speed (probably he sensed my fears due to my bad past). After that I switched to a new project that was new territory for me. Keeping the same tact of cleaning up and refactoring didn't work out this time. Also tickets were poorly described and the author was not always around to ask for clarifications or available due to being busy with new projects. In combination with learning a new technology, things took much longer this time and I missed 2 deadlines. I received a warning at this point. I had 4 days before going on holidays where I stayed overtime and managed to finish all my due work in an effort to show change in my behaviour. On my return I received a termination letter with the main points raised; (1) not performing adequately and (2) taking time from other devs.
Except case 1, I think the other cases was due to poor management and probably a bit poor communication from my part. However is there even a chance that I can sell that? Generally the issue as I see it, is that I have a tendency to cleanup messy code, refactor and ensure things are well tested - something that can be seen by many as slow performing.
I'm pretty lost at this point. I'm in my 30s without a fallback place, no family around and not many friends. Luckily I have a few savings for keeping me going for 6 months but I'll need to make the right choices.
All this is based in UK. In terms of coding, I would say I'm above average and try to follow general good practices, refactoring, testing, design patterns, etc. I have a very good GitHub portfolio with many high-starred projects built from scratch. Some projects have in fact been used by some companies I have interviewed with.
Other devs do things differently than me
,I keep getting fired
,I'm better than most other devs
. I suggest a seriously hard look at how you could simultaneously believe these, because your logical processing of the situation is demonstrably flawed.