My First Job: Fired and Rehired on Day 1

Entrepreneurs tend to view adversity as opportunity.

You’re Hired, You’re Fired
My first job in Silicon Valley: I was hired as a lab technician at ESL to support the training department. I packed up my life in Michigan and spent five days driving to California to start work. (Driving across the U.S. is an adventure; everyone ought to do. It makes you appreciate that the Silicon Valley technology-centric culture-bubble has little to do with the majority of Americans.)

With my offer letter in-hand, I reported to ESL’s Human Resources (HR) department. I was met by a very apologetic manager who said, “We’ve been trying to get ahold of you for the last week. The manager of the training department who hired you wasn’t authorized to do so — and he has been fired. I am sorry there really isn’t a job for you.”

I was stunned. I had quit my job, given up my apartment, packed everything I owned in the back of my car, knew no one else in Silicon Valley and had about $200 in cash. This could be a bad day. I caught my breath and thought about it for a minute and said, “How about I go talk to the new training manager? Could I work here if he wanted to hire me?” Taking sympathy on me, the HR person made a few calls, and said, “Sure, but he doesn’t have the budget for a lab tech. He’s looking for a training instructor.”

You’re Hired Again
Three hours and a few more meetings later I discovered the training department was in shambles. The former manager had been fired because:

1. ESL had a major military contract to deploy an intelligence gathering system to Korea
2. They needed to train the Army Security Agency on maintenance of the system
3. The 10-week training course (6 hours a day) hadn’t been written
4. The class was supposed to start in 6 weeks.

As I talked to the head of training and his boss, I pointed out that the clock was ticking down for them, I knew the type of training military maintenance people need, and I had done some informal teaching in the Air Force. I made them a pretty good offer – hire me as a training instructor at the salary they were going to pay me as a lab technician. Out of desperation and with a warm body right in front of them, they realized I was probably better than nothing. So I got hired for the second time at ESL, this time as a training instructor.

The good news is that I had just gotten my first promotion in Silicon Valley, and I hadn’t even started work.

The bad news is that I had 6 weeks to write a 10-week course on three 30-foot vans full of direction-finding electronics plus a small airplane stuffed full of receivers. “And, oh by the way, can you write the manuals for the operators while you’re at it?” Since there was very little documentation, my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. As I poured over the system schematics, I figured out how to put together a course to teach system theory, operations and maintenance.

Are You Single?
After I was done teaching each the day, I continued to write the operations manuals and work with the test engineers. (I was living the dream – working 80-hour weeks and all the technology I could drink with a fire hose.) Two weeks before the class was over, the head of the deployment team asked, “Steve, are you single?” Yes. “Do you like to travel?” Sure. “Why don’t you come to Korea with us when we ship the system overseas.” Uh, I think I work for the training department. “Oh, don’t worry about that, we’ll get you temporarily assigned to us and then you can come back as a Test Engineer/Training Instructor and work on a much more interesting system.” More interesting than this? Sign me up.

"You’re Not So Smart, You Just Show Up a Lot"
While this was going on, my roommate (who I knew from Ann Arbor where he got his master's degree in computer science) couldn’t figure out how I kept getting these increasingly more interesting jobs. His theory, he told me, was this: “You’re not so smart, you just show up a lot in a lot of places.” I wore it as a badge of honor.

But over the years I realized his comment was actually an astute observation about the mental mindset of an entrepreneur, and therein lies the purpose of this post.

Congratulations, You’re Now in Charge of Your Life
Growing up at home, our parents tell us what’s important and how to prioritize. In college we have a set of classes and grades needed to graduate. (Or in my case the military set the structure of what constituted success and failure.) In most cases until you’re in your early 20s, someone else has planned a defined path of what you’re going to do next.

When you move out on your own, you don’t get a memo that says, “Congratulations, you’re now in charge of your life.” Suddenly you are in charge of making up what you do next. You have to face dealing with uncertainly.

Most normal people (normal as defined as being someone other than an entrepreneur) seek to minimize uncertainty and risk, and take a job with a defined career path like lawyer, teacher or firefighter. A career path is a continuation of the direction you’ve gotten at home and school – do these things and you’ll get these rewards.

Even with a career path you’ll discover that you need to champion your own trajectory down that path. No one will tell you that you are in a dead-end job. No one will say when it’s time to move on. No one will tell you that you are better qualified for something elsewhere. No one will say work less and go home and spend time with your partner and/or family. And many end up near the end of their careers trapped, saying, “I wish I could have… I think I should have…”

Non-Linear Career Path
But entrepreneurs instinctually realize that the best advocate for their careers is themselves and that there is no such thing as a linear career path. They recognize they are going to have to follow their own internal compass and embrace the uncertainty as part of the journey.

In fact using uncertainty as your path is an advantage entrepreneurs share. Their journey will have them try more disconnected paths than someone on a traditional career track. And one day all the seemingly random data and experience they’ve acquired will end up as an insight in building something greater than the sum of the parts.

Steve Job’s 2005 Stanford commencement speech still says it best:
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

Lessons Learned

• Trust your instincts
• Showing up a lot increases your odds
• Trust that the dots in your career will connect
• Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card.

Read more Steve Blank posts at www.steveblank.com.

Photo: jimmywayne/Flickr