Today's the day 📚

Fuel from Mary Carns and Halftank Studio

The eBook version of Bad Fit is out today. For launch week, the ebook is 99 cents.

→ Buy on Amazon​

I wrote this book for one reader: the person who's been fired more than once and concluded, in private, that they're the problem.

I was that person. I know that I’m not the only one. Over the years I have encountered so many people who have been through the same thing. It’s such a common experience nowadays, and yet when I searched online for any data about people who have been fired more than once, I found nothing. This needs to change. I spent years carrying shame that was not mine to carry, and I suspect that many others are doing the same thing.

Here's what I learned while I wrote: getting pushed out repeatedly doesn't mean you're broken. Often it means you kept telling the truth in places that punish truth-telling. That pattern has a name, and it isn't "bad employee."

Here’s an excerpt from early on in the book:

Often in business, we read publications and share online articles that tell stories about failures, framing them as good things, like learning opportunities, blessings in disguise, or necessary pivots. One could say that most business-focused mass media fetishizes failures, particularly those that occur at large companies or government agencies.

On a personal level, however, stories about failure are told in a very different way. When a layoff event occurs, it is an organizational decision that weighs very heavily and negatively on the people who get cut. Even though layoffs—particularly those in tech—become big stories, they are forgotten as soon as the next news cycle. Although layoffs are almost always an indication of organizational failure or a result of the ever-shifting technological landscape—it’s easy to roll your eyes when people say AI will take all of our jobs until you look at the number of AI-induced workforce reductions at Amazon, Intel, Google, Tesla, HP, Meta, Verizon, Microsoft, UPS, P&G and hundreds of other companies on the Fortune 500 list—a layoff becomes a personal failure, and those failures are rarely if ever shared publicly.

If you recognized yourself just now, the whole story is 99 cents:

→ Get your copy​

And if it helps you, an honest review on Amazon this week helps it find the next person who needs it. That's genuinely how books like this travel, one recognized reader at a time.

You're not alone in this. That's the whole point of the book.

-Mary

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