is it reasonable to be fired if your boss finds out you’re interviewing?

A reader writes:

I’m writing in about a situation a friend is in. He was at the annual convention for his employer organization when he was called into a meeting with his boss and his boss’s boss. They informed him that he was under investigation and they couldn’t tell him anything more, but that he was to leave the convention immediately as they’d canceled his hotel room. (I should note that the convention was an hour’s drive from his home, so it’s not like he had to reschedule flights or anything.)

The day after the convention, they sent him an email informing him that he was terminated. The reason for his termination? They had discovered he had applied for another job, which they considered to be disloyal. (Apparently he sent in an application for a job that would be a step up from this one, that manager knew his boss’s boss, and called to ask for a reference without clearing it with my friend.) He’d only had good reviews from his manager prior to this.

I’m a manager myself. He had only been with this organization for eight months. If I found out an employee was looking elsewhere in that short of a timeframe, I don’t think I’d be pleased, but I think I’d try to figure out why the employee was unhappy or game plan for their eventual departure, not fire them immediately.

Is this as wild a reaction as I think it is? He said he knew it was a dysfunctional workplace, which is why he was looking elsewhere, but still … this seems like such an overreaction and I just feel terrible for him.

Yeah, this is ridiculous and frankly awful.

It’s not “disloyal” to apply for other jobs (!). Employment isn’t a marriage. It’s a business arrangement that is generally understood to last only as long as it remains in both parties’ best interests.

A company that gets angry that an employee is looking around at their options is usually a company that knows on some level that it won’t measure up — because they’re underpaying or not treating people well.

To be clear, I wouldn’t be thrilled to find out that a good employee was actively interviewing after only eight months — but that’s because I don’t want to lose good employees, not because it would be a betrayal of any sort. When a manager learns that kind of thing, the right response is to reflect on why the person might be looking: are they underpaid? Is the job different than what they’d thought it would be? Have they expressed frustrations with the work that I haven’t been able to resolve? Are there actions I can take now that would help retain them?

And sure, I might also do some game-planning for their possible exit, like thinking about any cross-training gaps that we should address with more urgency. In some cases I might get nervous if I was planning something key around them still being here in a few months, and I might think about whether there was a way to talk to them about their likely longevity in the role.

None of that is about firing the person. Firing them is absurd.

And if this employer thinks none of their other employees ever interview for other roles because of loyalty, they are out of their gourds. In fact, ironically, a place that fires someone for job-searching is much less likely to be the sort of workplace that inspires loyalty in employees, because it’s a symptom of the sort of toxicity people are usually actively working to escape, not feeling inspired by to stick around long-term.

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