One of the devs was let go after his probation period. Today was his last day. I didn't review a lot of his code, but it seemed to be fine. I'm not sure if his output was just slow.

Either he wasn't working out or the startup decided maybe they shouldn't have hired new people yet. There's been a freeze for a while and this guy started in October. The company's revenue targets keep slipping. Profitability was moved from 2026 to 2027.

We're on a slowly sinking ship.

Yeah, sad when it happens.

I was once hired with four others. We had a half year contract. It's bad but i didn't care about that. But that was a kinda probation too, the four others didn't get their contract extended. It just wasn't a company for people that just do their job. This company drove on motivated developers. There was quite some competition going on so not a lot time was spent on the new devs.

That sucks. I've been that guy more than once and the thing is they need basically no reason to cut you during probation.

The first one, I started at the company in November, cleared out the entire backlog on my team's project by Christmas. Then the company closed for the annual shut down, a few days after opening back up they told me they needed "someone more senior" I was junior at the time but the position has been advertised as junior. Much sus...

The next one, well the CTO was just an asshole and I didn't fit in. Still scummy that he left until the last day of probation to cut me.

Most recently, joined, monster project, team and pm keep telling me I'm doing fine and that it is indeed a monstrous mind fuck and it'll probably take 6 months to really understand. Higher apparently disagreed. Turned the guy who interviewed me for that job was actually standing for the guy who would actually be my boss.

Point being, it's not always something tangible. Good luck to him