Backstabbed in the Workplace

[Terpsfan]

I have just had the worst thing in my career happen to me in the past week. I had been contracting the past 20 months as an in house developer for a leading financial corporation. It became evident in the first few months that there was a person with an agenda against me. On a couple of occasions this person falsely accused me of doing things in order to get me fired.

A week ago I had made an off hand comment that if I wasn't there, I said "I guarantee that these databases will not work". I meant that in my absence that the applications I created would basically go to pot because I wasn't there to enhance them.

Well, this person misconstrued my words to indicate that I intended on sabotaging the databases. Without any chance at clarifying the meaning of what I said, I was released a few days later.

I had no intention of sabotaging the work of my own hands. In fact the very day I was released, I spent my lunch hour bringing the database up from a network failure. I had created these databases from the ground up. In a sense they were my babies.

In a nutshell I am worried that this incident may have ruined my career and impugned my character. I tried to get a few work references from co-workers and managers, but was informed that because of the nature of my release, they could not provide a letter of recommendation. Now I cannot put this job as a reference even though I spent 7 of my working years there, off and on.

I may not be able to receive unemployment benefits as a result, but more importantly I worry about being able to get a job in the future. Software development is the career that I love. I have put my heart and soul into it.

Any advice anyone can give would be most appreciated. Any suggestions on how to move forward from this is also appreciated.

 

[LNBruno]

I, too, got canned by a non-teck manager on a major project. Funny thing is that, of a dev team of 12, 8 were contractors and all were "released" prior to the end of their contract period by this person for various "reasons" primarily because we were constantly at odds over how to proceed. The project failed, the manager got "re-assigned" to a non-tech assignment, and I moved on to greener pastures eventually.

As my mentor said a couple decades ago: "Illegitimis non carborundum."

< M!ke >

 

[ZoomerZ]

I said "I guarantee that these databases will not work".

Seems that everyone will interpret this as very negative and not like
"...in my absence that the applications I created would basically go to pot because I wasn't there to enhance them". So you can't be absent ever in order for this stuff to work?

Last sentense seems like a poor excuse for wrongsaying.

When so much on line and you let this kind of talk fly out - it is your own fault. Job is a privilege, so treat it like one. Good luck and I don't think picture is that bad, it'll be forgotten soon and you'll be back on track - wizer!