Been at this company for 4 months as a data engineer. When I started their codebase was a mess. All the code was in one folder with subfolders, the scripts were dependent on one another even if they didn’t share the domain problem, their version control was “call the IT guy to grab the backup”. In the first few months I set up a Github organization for them, put all their code into a git repo to start version control, got them to install and use IDEs instead of just VS Code, refactored some of the codebase to use SOLID standards, automated some tasks, transitioned them to a new Snowflake warehouse, and fixed several issues that was breaking their workflow. Today the CEO told me that this is an at-will state and he let me go. Didn’t explain why, just asked for the equipment back.
I didn’t get any write-ups, no one complained about my work, I was always looking for improvements, even the CEO thanked me a couple months ago for writing a word document to my managers on how I think the team can make improvements. They actually followed that doc and have been happy with it. This came from nowhere because no one brought any complaints. Today I am lost. I just need to vent and let this out.
You have it backwards. They can’t fire you for an illegal reason. These are known as protected classes. But they can fire you for any reason that’s not protected. And “no reason” isn’t protected, so it’s legal.
For the curious, the protected classes are: Race, color, religion or creed, national origin or ancestry, sex (including gender identity, pregnancy, and sexual orientation), age, or disability.
So you can’t fire someone for being black, but you can fire them because you don’t like the way they smell, because you don’t like their personality, because their favorite color is purple, or just because you feel like it. As long as you don’t say you’re firing them for one of those illegal reasons, it’ll be very hard for them to sue.
And employers know this, so they almost always list it as “no reason” to avoid any potential lawsuits from words getting twisted against them. For instance, maybe you fire someone because you don’t like the way they smell, but then they try and twist that into “you fired me because I smell like curry, and therefore you fired me for my race.” So to avoid anything potentially being used against them, they’ll simply list it as “no cause.” Unless the firing was for cause, (which basically means you fucked up while working there,) and they want to avoid paying your unemployment insurance. In those cases, they’ll build a case against you, then fire you once they have a binder full of real/imagined company policy violations to throw at you.
The only way OP would be able to sue is if they’re able to prove a pattern of behavior against a protected class from the employer. For instance, maybe a new manager gets hired, then every single black person gets fired within the next few weeks. If those workers come together, they can show a pattern of behavior that the manager is racist and fired them for being black, even though the manager didn’t explicitly state that the firing was due to racism. But that’s hard to prove and requires a lot of documentation on the employees’ part.