Fired. I got fired.
That’s one hell of a “present”, let me tell you. And I think the story needs to be told, partly to get things off my chest, and partly to warn people about my former employer, because frankly it may look like a dream job — it sure af did to me — but being involved with Bombardier has been nothing but a catastrophe for me, and I wouldn’t want anyone to waste several months of their life on that company.
And I wasn’t even fired in an up front way. That Wednesday, December 17th 2025, seemed like it would be an ordinary Wednesday leading up to Xmas. I’m finishing up a development task, get a meeting invite for my regular one-on-one scheduled for the next day — normal since the company basically shut down from the 24th to January 5th — so I RSVP and continue my work, then noon comes around and I take the dog out for a walk.
Something important to know: at this point my initial 3-month milestone would be coming up the next Monday. I had already received an invite to complete a survey, which I was planning to do the next Monday. I had really not been given a set of objectives to achieve for this particular date, had never received much any feedback on my work, and I was in the middle of doing some Python scripting for my group. We’d had a meeting about that task the previous day and things were proceeding along.
When I come back I have another meeting invite for my one-on-one, which seems weird because I already accepted the other one. I look at it and it’s for Friday, which is weird because my boss was supposed to be off on Friday. Then I open it.
Suddenly my boss would like me to come in to the office for this meeting, and bring my equipment.
Tell me I’m getting fired without having the balls to actually tell me I’m getting fired.
So at this point I reply “Tell me honestly, am I getting fired?” Which was answered by a Teams call. Yes, I was being dropped after 3 months. I got no other feedback. I got the official letter letting me know I was shitcanned, and within a few minutes got that “please sign in again” notification from Outlook that confirmed that this was not some kind of sick joke.
I went in the next day to hand in my equipment. Didn’t even page my former boss at this point. Went straight to IT, gave them back the equipment, and left my ID badge with security on my way out.
So yeah. 54 years old and now jobless in the IT industry. Merry fucking Christmas to me. And in such a galling way. No discussion of performance or anything. Just a big “fuck you” a week from Xmas. And a decision that was taken between 10 and 12:30 on a Wednesday.
I’m just getting over the shock of it now. But Bombardier wasn’t quite done fucking me over. They still owed me pay as well as unused vacation time. That was supposed to come in the next Wednesday, but when I checked my account the deposit was, shall we say, very light. In fact it could not have been more than my vacation time. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that my former boss just didn’t even bother taking care of the timesheet. We all have to file a timesheet, but since my last day was a Wednesday I had not filled it out for that week. If I didn’t have some money in savings I wouldn’t be able to make the January rent. Again, thanks for that Bombardier, which apparently can’t be arsed to fix its own mistake before next week.
There is so much more to say about this awful work experience, but that’s it for today. “I’m tired, boss”. My daughter is over for Xmas and my priority is keeping myself together until she gets on her flight home, for her sake. I’ll continue this story when I have the energy.