How does one get fired as an admissions counselor? Was it just a lay off, or was it something else?

Regardless, congrats on the programming job.

I assume it didn't take more from you than an hour to apply at the most and you got lucky by landing it.

If that's the case, people take dozens of bigger risks every year.

How does one get a job when they're completely unskilled?

1. Many jobs are acquired based on things other than one's skill set. Some that I've seen: friend, family, lives in the area, internal candidate (so less process), spouse of current employee, minimally viable candidate that avoids a public job announcement, need a butt in the seat ASAP or the seat is lost, no skilled candidate will actually apply for the job (e.g., lower salary, bad reputation, etc.)... the list could go on and on.

2. The people doing the hiring might not have had the skill set required to know that he was unqualified.

3. He may be sandbagging his own skills. A lot of times the hard part of a job is problem solving. The tech part, even if he did not know it at the time, is learnable. The problem-solving part is less easy to teach.

4. Due to various unofficial policies that exist at places like universities, there may have been a requirement to find a new place for him when he was "fired". This could be for a number of reasons. Maybe he was actually laid off (e.g., reduced budget for that department and he was junior). Maybe he fits a certain profile that they want to keep at the university (e.g., he's connected to someone important). Maybe they wanted to avoid a potential lawsuit for wrongful dismissal.

Having seen a lot of odd stuff happen at well-known universities, I have to say that my curiosity has been piqued. I hope more of the story is told...