Job applicant meets hiring manager who was his firing manager 2 years ago, and manages to get job offer nonetheless: ‘Walked into a final round interview and the hiring manager was the person who fired me two years ago’

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  via bruce mars

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• Walked into a final round interview and the hiring manager was the person who fired me two years ago

  
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  via Af Hfmn

  ^{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}

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• It’s really unlike me to get this charged up with positivity from this kind of story but it really goes to show sometimes your attitude can actually get you what you deserve, in a GOOD way. Because while ome people treat layoffs like a permanent stain, others treat them like a bad performance review they never got to finish. The truth is that getting fired or cut does not automatically erase who you are the rest of the time, and sometimes it even forces you to show the kind of professionalism you did not know you had.  

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  via tokyo_olivermoon
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• This story has a setup that is classic mid‑career awkwardness. A guy gets laid off along with his whole department, leaves on decent terms, keeps his head down, and then two years later ends up in a final‑round interview with the exact manager who once told him the news. Screen turns on, time freezes, both of them do a double‑take, then start laughing like they are in a low‑budget corporate sitcom. The universe really did not have to loop them back together, but it did, and it did it with a playful smugness that says, “You thought you were done with this guy.”  

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  via tokyo_olivermoon

• How the interview actually goes is the actual thing here. Instead of running through the usual interrogation script, the manager skips half the questions because he already knows how the person operates under pressure. No need for role‑play, no need for hypothetical chaos, no need to perform leadership for the camera. The past becomes a shortcut, not a scar. The candidate does not have to sell a version of himself, he just has to show how he is different from the version this manager already saw. The fact that the guy left the old job with some dignity, did not burn the place down on his way out, and kept his word where he could, turns into a quiet selling point that no résumé bullet point could ever fake.  

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  via tokyo_olivermoon

• This is the kind of small‑world moment that reveals how much weight reputation actually carries in tech. It is not just about technical skills or past projects, it is about how you behave when things go wrong and when you are not supposed to be watching. Layoffs do not erase that, and sometimes life will hand you an ex‑manager on a Zoom call just to remind you that the way you walked away from a disaster can become the reason you walk into a new one with a job offer in your pocket.

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