Starting a new job right out of college is basically an extended trust fall. You’re new, you’re learning, and you’re holding your breath to see if you make the final cut.

One new hire spent eight months at a startup company doing exactly what was asked of him. Hitting deadlines, surviving rounds of layoffs, and interpreting vague feedback that left him nothing to work with.

He thought he was doing pretty well, all things considered, but then came the meeting with his boss that flipped the script entirely.

Suddenly he was being shown the door without even really knowing where he went wrong.

The following story is a masterclass in a toxic workplace moving the goalposts.

My manager’s vague expectations led to me getting fired.

I got the boot because of how I was doing my job.

I joined this pretty big startup about eight months ago, right after college, as a software development engineer.

He did his best to get up to speed, but he still couldn’t meet the startup’s standards.

At first, they paired me up with a senior guy who gave me stuff to do to help me learn and get better.

But right before my trial period was supposed to end, I had a meeting with my manager and HR.

They basically told me I wasn’t good enough, so they added another two months to my trial.

When a big shakeup rattled the company, he was called in to meet with his boss.

Then, sometime in those two months, ten percent of our team got laid off.

After all that, I had another one-on-one with my manager.

He told me I wasn’t doing anything compared to these other guys at the company who had double or triple my experience, and who weren’t new to working like me.

AI caused even more disruption, but the employee started to wonder whether the dysfunction was really coming from the top.

And now with this whole AI thing happening, I’m really wondering if it was actually my performance that was the problem, or if it was more about bad management.

I mean, I finished every single task they gave me.

A few tasks went past the deadline, but it was only three out of twenty-one.

The rest were right on time.

The employee feels that he wasn’t given enough guidance on how to successfully do his job.

And, the guy giving me tasks never said that I wasn’t meeting expectations or anything.

It felt like they both never really had clear expectations for me. I don’t even have a single regret that I could have done better.

I thought at first that it was just a formal thing for a manager, that I wasn’t going to get laid off, then things turned out pretty bad for me.

The boss had some pretty choice words for him.

He ended up humiliating me, telling me to leave this field, not just the job. He said whatever I did wasn’t meaningful at all.

When what I got to work on wasn’t my decision. He replied that we have a lot of work but nobody trusts you to get the work done.

No one wants to leave a job under these conditions.

Redditors chime in with their thoughts.

This user advises this employee on how they can be more prepared if this happens again.

Startups do have somewhat of a reputation for being toxic.

This commenter also cautions against these kinds of businesses.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about an employee who decided to push back against time micromanagement.

Twenty one tasks, eighteen on time, zero complaints about missed expectations along the way. On paper, that’s not a failure story. That’s just… a job being done.

But somewhere between the layoffs and the shifting comparisons to coworkers with years more experience, this stopped being about performance at all.

The real gut punch is the mixed signals. Nobody flagged a problem until it was already too late to go back.

Sounds less like a performance issue and more like a company that needed someone to blame.