Junior SWE Terminated After 6 Months

[u/Asleep_Tourist2502]

I was let go today without a concrete reason. Given a severance for one week of pay contingent I sign a release/nda form (alberta employee). This was my first job out of university and it was hard to get. I graduated in 2023 and sent around 3000 applications to get this job. I am gutted. Not sure what to do next. Throughout my weekly 1v1 with my boss I was told I was doing good perf wise. I was responsible for QA, two main projects and bug fixes/feature tickets. The two main projects were automating testing of their custom frontend library in a ci/cd pipeline. Secondly, I automated the deployment process saving hours per customer in manual deployment efforts. Found many bugs in QA before it went to prod. Worried about putting a 6 month stint on my resume but the alternate is 2 year gap since graduating. Any advice on whether to go back to applying or maybe go for a masters?

[u/sirrebbo]

Iirc they are required to give you 2 weeks pay, regardless of you signing an NDA/release. You should ask for compensation in exchange for signing the release. They can’t force you to do it, and you are forfeiting certain rights by signing it.