I lived by the saying "Don't burn your bridges." Never know when you might need one.
Do you want Unions? Because this is how you get Unions.
Sounds like he just Empedocles himself for a lawsuit. They paid him for his work. The company owned the product. He destroyed the product. He owes them for said destroyed product.
sounds like the company needs to sue him for everything he has.
What a maroon. Lawsuit coming.
The company I work for has sued and won some pretty big awards against former employees who did such.
He should be sued by the company for damages, and depending on the State where he lives, the company would win.
What company fires a programmer and doesn’t walk them out the door that day and makes sure they don’t get their hands on anything?
First thing to be done is revoke all their access, turn off their work machines and pull it’s network cable.
Make sure all remote software is purged of their credentials and hunt for any subsystem that might allow entry.
The next thing to be done is to negotiate some form of a severance bond that they get after X months if everything keeps going properly.
People are really stupid if they haven’t figure this kind of procedure out yet.
Years ago I worked at a marina where the boss often shorted employees in their paycheck. If you went to the foreman you’d always get the money owed, but it got tiresome. So the lead outboard mechanic just quit, he’d had enough.
He had about 5 outboard motors torn apart, waiting for parts. These were basket cases with parts stored in large cardboard boxes. On his last day he mixed up the parts in all the boxes. The next mechanic had to spend hours sorting. Many could not be found and cost the boss plenty.
Over my career, I had four former employers reach out after I left to see if I was willing to come back.
I took one of them up on the offer. I was working for an engineering firm and left because we moved to Texas. They didn’t have a spot for me in our Texas branch so I took a different job after settling in.
The President of the company realized what happened and tracked me down. He created a position for me to get me back on the team. I stayed with them for another 5 years.
Work like a pro to the last second of the last minute of the last hour of your last day. Don’t destroy your reputation on the way out the door.
Stupid move on this guy’s part.
I’m not buying it. The story was fake to begin with. The only way to get that type of revenge is to do something that cannot be traced and you won’t be suspected at all.
I remember my dad talking about a secretary who was laid off. The company had to rehire her with back pay and a raise because no one could figure out her filing system. This was pre computers.
So, essentially, if these people were not provided lifetime appointments…none of their work would survive.
So, why were they paid when working on a project?
In the construction industry the saying is “Lay them off, pay them off”, in other words, hand them their last check and escort them off the job site.
With regard to the ethics of such retribution, it's not news that all your work as an employee or contractor is the intellectual property of the employer. If you execute a career-breaking temper tantrum for your misfortune, expect to be un-hirable in your future choice of jobs.
The story itself is a pom-pom shaking, rah-rah exercise in woke victimhood. Those mean, mean employers. How dare they.
Companies don’t inform you you’re going to be fired in two weeks so finish up any pending projects, etc. you’re working on before we terminate you in two weeks. That’s not how it works.
This is why a lot of companies just escort you out the door and don’t give you two weeks.
Layoffs generally, in my experience are you go into the office, told you are gone and escorted out.
A few years ago my wife was working for a Japanese company in town. One of the guys came to her and said that they were letting him go and he was very concerned because he said they can’t do without me. He said they literally cannot do without me.
My wife smiled and said don’t worry about it. Give them a little time and they’ll be calling you up to come to do that same work as a contractor. Sure enough two weeks later the company called him and he charged them something like $100 an hour. I think it went on for several months, he said he made about $90,000 laughed all the way to the bank