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Now, apply the same formula to folks who got fired from a job more or less as soon as they got hired for it. A recent AskReddit dealt with this very question of what’s the quickest way you saw a coworker get fired? and you’d be surprised to learn how many folks attempted a world record at this point. It’s actually impressive.
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It’s hard to explain why some employees choose to do intellectually questionable things at work. Heck, it’s often hard to pinpoint why people do stupid things in general.
Some venture to say that it’s stress. Even the smartest of people can succumb to the pressures of it. You see, stress inhibits your brain from working in unison with all of the other faculties. In turn, it can’t coordinate well and so bad decisions happen.
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Others suggest deeper causes, like bad habits or self confidence. In the case of the former, unlearning things is harder than learning, and bad habits embedded through poor practice or lack of it altogether (among other things) can lead to equally bad results.
As for the latter, humans have a tendency of turning confidence into arrogance whenever it’s about defending ideas instead of pursuing what’s best.
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This is besides things like success promoting stupidity (because it’s easier to learn from failure), reacting being easier than focusing (as folks tend to lose sight of long-term goals in favor of reactions making folks feel important), and knowing blocking learning (as you do need to be confident enough to believe what you know and humble enough to admit you were wrong).
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And sometimes it’s by design. Sometimes when you work for, say, a bank, that has a set goal of, say, X number of accounts opened per person, which is more than what the current average is, and then the bank starts putting so much pressure on employees to get this done, that the employees start doing absolutely anything to get it done—like cheating the system and opening accounts and juggling money among them without anyone knowing, but the coins still clink in the bank’s favor. And then they got axed anyway while management got payouts for a job well done.
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But even smart people can get fired. After all, a business is subject to things like market fluctuations and supply and demand and other economic forces. So, this can inevitably lead to mass firings.
Other times, smart people become victims of a “CFO budget target” mentality where the most effective way to cut costs is to let people go. People who cost the most, regardless of their actual benefit.
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