We don't have the right language for job loss
The shame of losing a job often belongs to the employer, not the employee
In 2022, I was working at a marketing agency. My manager was... not good at his job. In my prior role at a tech company, I’d been a manager for many years and recognized all the ways the company was spiraling under his indecisiveness and lack of experience.
After a few months of struggling under his leadership, I admitted to him that the job wasn’t working for me. I wanted to come up with some type of exit plan that could allow me to transition out, something I thought he’d be open to as a purported “people-first” company.
His response? He fired me the next day. The role had changed dramatically from what I was hired to do, and we both knew that its current iteration was not the right fit for me. When I said the words out loud, it gave him permission (in his mind) to cut me loose.
As someone who cares deeply about words, I found myself stuck in a strange linguistic limbo. When people asked what happened, I didn’t know what to say. “Fired” implies wrongdoing — like I violated company policy or didn’t perform. But I hadn’t done anything like that. But “laid off“ wasn’t the right phrase either, since it implies business decisions, like restructuring or budget-driven factors.
What actually happened was different: I lost my job because the environment was dysfunctional. The management was bad. The fit was off, not because of some failing on my part, but because the company didn’t know what it wanted from the role and then failed to set me up for success.
I found myself struggling to describe how the job ended, because we don’t have words for that scenario. In the end, I usually say simply, “I lost my job.” Sometimes I’ll say, “I was laid off.” But I refuse to say, “I was fired” because I didn’t do anything wrong.
Without the right language, employees absorb shame that doesn’t belong to them. And employers face no accountability for their role in the situation.
We don’t have employment protections
In many countries, employers can’t just fire someone because the situation isn’t working out. They have to prove cause.
In Japan, “at-will” employment doesn’t exist, and arbitrary dismissals can lead to serious legal consequences. Japan’s Labor Contract Act explicitly states that if a termination lacks “objectively reasonable grounds and is not found to be appropriate by general societal terms,” the termination is considered void. The Philippines takes a similar approach. Employees have a legal “right to security of tenure” and can only be dismissed for “just” or “authorized” causes as defined in the Labor Code. The burden of proof falls on the employer to justify why the termination was necessary.
The United States, by contrast, offers almost zero protection outside of organized labor unions. According to the OECD’s indicators of employment protection legislation, the U.S. is the least regulated country when it comes to dismissing individual workers. At-will employment — which is the default in 49 states — means you can be fired for almost any reason, or no reason at all, as long as it’s not explicitly discriminatory.
Americans have internalized a uniquely individualistic narrative around job loss. We assume that if someone lost their job, they must have done something wrong. The absence of structural protection becomes an invisible weight we carry. Institutional failures become personal shame.
How to reframe your story
Bad management is one of the leading causes of employee departure. According to data from BambooHR, 58% of people leave their jobs because of bad managers. Yet somehow, if the employer makes the decision to part ways instead of the employee, it’s the employee’s fault.
Employers often lean on vague language like “not a good fit.” It sounds neutral, but carries an implicit accusation: that the employee was somehow wrong for the role, rather than the role (or the management, or the culture) being wrong for the employee. The vagueness leaves you holding the bag (and on the financial hook) for a situation you didn’t create.
If you’ve been in this situation — or you’re in it now — here’s how to think about moving forward.
Document what actually happened. You may not need to use it, but having a clear-eyed record of the dysfunction helps you own your story. Write down the specific incidents, the patterns of bad management, and the moments when you tried to make it work. When you write it down, you have clarity. You’re less likely to rewrite history with yourself as the villain.
Don’t use their language. If “fired” doesn’t capture the truth, don’t use it. You can say “the role ended,” or “we parted ways,” or “the job wasn’t sustainable.” You don’t owe **anyone **an explanation that makes you the bad guy in a story where you weren’t.
Recognize the shame isn’t yours to carry. When a job wasn’t a “good fit,” that’s a problem with hiring. You were brought into a situation where you couldn’t possibly succeed. It’s not your fault that you got mixed up in it.
The standard career advice world tells us to never badmouth a former employer. There’s some truth to that. Bitterness isn’t a good look, and interviewers don’t want to hear you trash-talk.
But maybe the real problem is that we’ve made it taboo to call out dysfunction when we see it. We’ve created a system where employers can create toxic environments, make poor hiring decisions, and provide inadequate management — and then frame voluntary or involuntary departures as the employee’s fault.
Until we have language for “I lost my job because the company sucked,” employers will keep escaping accountability. And employees will keep bearing the brunt of those decisions.
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Thanks for your piece! Over the past year I've come out of two very dysfunctional work environments. The decision to leave wasn't mine either time, and was not based on the quality of my work - I'm confident I gave my very best. But I did feel the shame of being left jobless and I didn't have the right words to accurately express the intricacies of what had happened. And it's hard to do it when you don't want to go down the path of bad-mouthing your previous employer while interviewing, but still want to do yourself justice.