Never understood “I’ll get fired, haha” anxiety people have walked around me in all my jobs, which reflects in the product and life decisions they keep making.
Logically thinking about it, if you hold your share of the bargain, and you are bloody good at your job, not just get over to-dos:
- It’ll realistically take you 3-5 months to get another job with 10% raise. Ideally: 6 weeks with a minimum 30% raise. Worst case: 6-8 months with a 20% pay-cut on your already high salary.
- You have stamps on your CV and good word-of-mouth from peers. Your previous bosses have either grown at the same company or moved on to new ones to extend a hand when you reach out.
- You shipped work in your current role that made the org money.
- You complain that you should be paid more for your scope. You claim it’ll take 2 to do the work you do alone. You are liberated if you are fired.
- You get at least 3-5 months of free salary if you get laid off in the EU. Up to 9-12 if you found a lawyer who can prove unfair grounds.
- You aren’t a new grad. You should have 1-2 years of runway in your bank to pay the cost of your choices in life. Probably more to throw at all your problems after 25 years of age.
- You can read and write.
Where is the problem?
Your focus, diligence, effort, skills, financial discipline, long hours, and continueous learning should allow you to leave what you find unfair or unreasonable.
If you are living in fear, you are unprepared. This is where lifestyle inflation, mortgages, planting roots, no “fuck around find out” fund, and bad faith make people hostile and bitter. You have no friends to help because you used them for 0 sum gains. Your boss doesn’t want to take you where they are going because you do a sloppy job and can’t be trusted. You spent all the money you made all these years carelessly and don’t even have a penny to buy yourself some breathing room. Those are your problems. Not “I’ll get fired, haha”.
The only good exceptions are “I’m on a visa”, “I’m going for citizenship”, and “I’m dating someone in the city” which I personally still see as non-issues. You’ll get another sponsor. You’ll get a remote job, stay or ride the Euro/USD to INR arbitrage while browsing condos in Thailand. In 2026, you can fly in and out of continents in 11 hours. But I get it if you have a kid enrolled in a school and stuff. Or are in love. It’s wiser to be secretive and walk out of your job in your own time then. It’s wiser to be measured. It’s wiser to keep a poker face. Involves a lot of lying and games. Will secretly rot you inside. Qualifies you for leadership roles. Separate discussion.
But the point is, the world moves on for everyone. When will you stop living in fear that if you say or do something right now, you might lose what you can find again? That’s a scarcity mindset and not psychologically safe. You are missing opportunities to end up with the right people resisting your natural instincts to say and do things that make you - you.
You want to go on the rest of your life holding a fart inside? We suffer more in imagination than in reality.