The Brutal Reality of Probation Periods: When 'Not Working Out' Means Nothing at All
I’ve been thinking a lot about workplace trauma this week. Not the dramatic kind you see in the news, but the quieter, more insidious type that leaves you staring at your ceiling at 3am wondering what the hell just happened.
Someone shared their story online recently about being walked out of a senior role six weeks into their probation period. No warning. No feedback. Just a Monday morning tap on the shoulder and an escort to the door. They’d literally spent the previous two days in a leadership planning workshop, contributing to the company’s strategic direction, only to be told “things aren’t working out” and handed a box for their desk trinkets.
The whole thing has really got under my skin, and not just because it’s objectively awful. It’s because I’ve seen this play out too many times in the IT sector, and I reckon we need to talk about how utterly broken the probation period system has become.
Look, I get it. Probation periods exist for a reason. They’re meant to be a mutual trial period where both parties can assess fit without the legal complexities of permanent employment. In theory, it’s reasonable. In practice? It’s often weaponised as a cost-cutting tool or a convenient way to avoid difficult conversations about performance or cultural fit.
What struck me most about this person’s experience wasn’t just the lack of warning, but the deliberate inclusion in high-level strategic work right up until the termination. That’s not just poor management, that’s psychological cruelty dressed up in corporate language. You don’t invite someone to help chart the company’s future on Thursday and then tell them they have no future with the company on Monday. Well, apparently you do, but you absolutely shouldn’t.
The responses to their post painted a depressingly familiar picture. Budget cuts hitting the newest hire first. Internal politics and threatened egos. Someone higher up bringing in their own preferred candidate. One person even suggested the possibility of financial irregularities that the new hire might have stumbled upon. The common thread? None of it had anything to do with actual performance or capability.
This speaks to something I’ve noticed increasingly in corporate Australia: we’ve created a culture where organisations can behave appallingly toward employees during probation periods, and we’ve collectively shrugged and said “well, that’s just how it is.” The legal framework allows it, so we’ve stopped questioning whether it’s ethical.
Working in DevOps for the better part of two decades, I’ve watched good people get chewed up by this system. The senior developer who automated half the infrastructure only to be let go when the CFO decided to slash the IT budget. The product owner who challenged some inefficient processes and suddenly became “not a cultural fit.” The QA lead who was brilliant at her job but made the mistake of disagreeing with the CTO’s pet project in a meeting.
None of these people deserved what happened to them. More importantly, none of them were given the professional courtesy of honest feedback that might have helped them understand what went wrong or, crucially, prevented it from happening in the first place.
What really frustrates me is the asymmetry of it all. If an employee decides to leave during probation, they’re expected to provide notice and conduct themselves professionally. But employers can apparently march people out like they’ve committed fraud, with zero explanation and no consideration for the psychological impact. The person who shared their story mentioned feeling “shell shocked” and experiencing “emotional whiplash.” That’s not just hurt feelings, that’s genuine trauma that can affect someone’s confidence and career trajectory for years.
Several people in the discussion mentioned having experienced similar situations, and I found their resilience both inspiring and depressing. One person said it had happened to them twice in four years. Another mentioned being terminated two weeks after being put in charge of eight critical processes during a planning workshop. These aren’t isolated incidents, they’re a pattern.
The really insidious part is how this practice affects workplace culture more broadly. When employees see colleagues walked out with no explanation, it creates an environment of fear and uncertainty. People become less willing to speak up, less likely to challenge poor decisions, more focused on managing perceptions than doing their actual jobs. It’s the antithesis of the innovative, collaborative workplaces we keep claiming to want to build.
And let’s be honest about the environmental impact here too. Not just the obvious emotional and psychological toll on individuals, but the broader waste of human potential and organisational knowledge. Training and onboarding senior staff is expensive and time-consuming. Ditching someone after six weeks means all that investment is lost, along with whatever fresh perspectives and expertise they might have brought to the table. It’s corporate waste at its finest.
The person who shared their story mentioned they work in AgVet and have a finance background. I wonder if that combination, particularly the finance expertise, made someone nervous about what they might uncover. It’s probably a conspiracy theory too far, but given some of the creative accounting I’ve seen in supposedly respectable organisations, it’s not entirely implausible.
What really needs to change is the culture around probation periods. We need to normalise honest, ongoing feedback from day one. If someone isn’t working out, that conversation should happen early and clearly, not as a fait accompli on a random Monday morning. We need to question organisations that use probation periods as budget management tools rather than genuine trial periods. And we need to acknowledge that the power imbalance between employer and employee during probation requires greater, not lesser, ethical standards from the employer.
For anyone going through something similar, the advice about seeking support is crucial. Lifeline, Beyond Blue, or even just a trusted friend or family member. This stuff messes with your head in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. The self-doubt, the second-guessing, the hit to your professional confidence – these are real and valid responses to what is essentially workplace gaslighting.
There’s a silver lining, I suppose. Sometimes getting out early from a dysfunctional organisation is better than discovering its problems two years in when you’re deeply invested. If a company treats senior hires this poorly during probation, imagine how they treat staff when the stakes are higher. Several people mentioned landing better roles shortly after similar experiences, which suggests that these situations often say more about the organisation’s dysfunction than the individual’s capability.
But that doesn’t make the experience any less traumatic in the moment, and it doesn’t excuse the broader systemic issues at play. We can do better. We should do better. And maybe if enough of us start calling out this behaviour for what it is – cowardly, unprofessional, and ultimately counterproductive – organisations might actually start to change.
Until then, if you’re starting a new role, document everything. Keep records of positive feedback. Build relationships beyond your immediate team. And remember that if things go sideways during probation, it’s probably more about them than you. Though I know that’s cold comfort when you’re packing your desk into a cardboard box on a Monday morning.