Reasons I was let go

• [ultimate cause] At Motorola, you could get away with a lot of shit and still keep your job. But things don't work that way at normal companies. (especially when you're working as a contractor; often, you won't get a single warning before being let go)
• [ultimate cause] Right before Walgreens, I worked at two places that were volunteer-only, where they were basically forced to accept you, flaws and all. I started to get the impression that the working world tolerated some of my flaws more than it really does.
• [proximate cause] My boss was under a lot of pressure from upper management. He felt like he couldn't take any risks with anything in his team, or else it would mean that his whole team would be dismantled and his job given to someone else. I had absolutely no clue that this would affect how he saw me. (ie. that, in combination with seeing me as a liability (see below), that it meant that I was on a hair trigger as well)
• [proximate cause] My boss had a very poor understanding of the large improvements to the team's infrastructure that I was trying to make; his lack of technical knowledge made it really difficult to explain what I was doing and why. My failure to get management buy-in meant that he saw my work as a liability, rather than a benefit. (he saw me as a unsupervisable loose cannon, rather than someone who was focusing intently on what would best help the team) At the time, I saw his inability to understand what I was doing as his problem, but now I see that it was actually my problem.
  • partly, he saw my work as a computer security liability. It is true that getting my infrastructure upgrades done meant that I had to have far more intimate knowledge of the firewall than anyone else on the team had ever had. (and several of them had been on the team for ten years, and didn't understand the firewall even though they had to deal with the challenges it presented on a daily basis)
  • I suppose if I had tried over and over to explain what I was doing, even if I failed, it would have at least demonstrated my desire to work under his guidance?
• [ultimate cause] I have long used my high intelligence in ways that aren't healthy: as a way to defend myself in social situations, as a way to make up for other deficiencies in my life that I really should address head-on, etc.
• [proximate cause] My explicit plan to address the communications gap was "deeds, not words". That is, I would prove my value to him by generating products that worked. He didn't need to know their inner machinations. Unfortunately, he decided to let me go literally a few days before I was to release my first serious product. (I'm not BSing — it was 90% complete when I was let go, I was working through the last-minute gotchas that have to be resolved before something can be release-ready)
  • As a script-writer, you can't jump into a new team, knowing nothing, and hope to start coming up with valuable ideas by yourself. It takes a while to understand how things are interconnected before you can really start adding value. (by yourself anyway — if your supervisor is willing to help guide you, they can point you in the right direction ASAP) So there's a time gap there, where you can't rely on "deeds not words".