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Interned at a midsize private company for about 10 months, mainly doing tasks in Excel. My boss asked if I was available over the summer and I said yes. They pitched a new and very complicated project requiring very technical skills. The estimated completion time was 2 years. I said I would require an offer of full time employment as I was uncomfortable working on a large project in a temporary capacity. I was then fired the next day for “gross insubordination due to threat of withholding work”.

How do I address this in future interviews? It will come up on a background check for sure.

Welpimboned
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    What have you learned from this incident? – mxyzplk May 30 '19 at 00:25
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    @mxyzplk What're they meant to have learned? – dwjohnston May 30 '19 at 06:33
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    I think last few lines are missing a step. You asked for full time offer but it is not clear how adamant you were about it. Did you decline to work at all without the offer. How did they react to it before firing you? Did they say anything like "We cannot do this" and you insisted anyways and then you were fired or their response straight was firing you? Were the expecting you to "intern" for 2 years? Unless there is more clarity on exact nature of the discussion between you and your boss, it will be hard to comment on how to address in future. – PagMax May 30 '19 at 10:42
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    You're leaving out some important details. Was the internship unpaid? Would you be working on the project for the full 2 years? If the answer to either is yes, I would say that your request was reasonable as your role would be outside of the scope of an internship. – Skater-Boi May 30 '19 at 10:57
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    What do you mean they "pitched" a new project? Do you mean they "assigned" you a new project and you tried to negotiate a new position as a condition of doing the assigned work? What made you "uncomfortable" about this work? – Peter May 30 '19 at 13:58
  • What impression do you think this story makes and what impression you want to make? Also @peter asks good question – aaaaa says reinstate Monica May 30 '19 at 23:28

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How you address this sort of depends on what you take from the experience. Crucially do you think you would do the same again?

If you would do things differently

You can explain what happened, that you wouldn't do the same in the future and why. Nobody but a fool expects a candidate to never have made a mistake in the past - and the best candidates are the ones who can explain how they have used those experiences to improve.

If you wouldn't do things differently

You can explain what happened, that you stand by what you did and why.

From what you have posted I know what I would do and, (Spoiler alert!) it's not the second one. While your previous employer perhaps overreacted by going straight for the nuclear option of firing you (you kind of have to expect interns to do dumb things - the whole point of an internship is to give them the opportunity to learn how not to do dumb things when they enter the world of work proper) I have to say that what you did was pretty spectacularly bad.

Trying to extort your employer with the threat of refusing to do your assigned duties (when they are reasonably in scope of your role) isn't going to get you very far in most cases. Sure you might be able to pull it off when you hold the upper hand (i.e. they need you more than you need them) but when it's the other way around it's just a fancy way of asking to be fired.

In this scenario you were a kid with an empty water pistol telling an armored battalion to surrender or else.

motosubatsu
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I have no idea what exactly happened. How you sell it to the next company: "My boss came up with a new project, estimated to take two years. He asked if I was available over the summer, and I said yes, but I can't do a two year project in the summer. Next day, I was fired. "

gnasher729
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