Another Layoff, Another Company Being Its Own Worst Enemy

This is a story one of my coworkers told me while we were chatting in the lab. He’s a recent hire after getting laid off from one of the “big three” car companies… an unfortunately very common history for someone to have in my work area. However, he was cheered up immensely because of how badly they’d screwed themselves by letting him go.

He told me how the company had him specialize in a very technical software project, being the only guy who knew how to use the requisite tools and being the defacto expert on how the code was structured and how it worked. No one else felt the need to get up to speed or brush up on it because he handled it all. He had so much free time, being put on no other assignments, that he ended up working way ahead of schedule and finishing not only the software but the security audits, reports, and all sorts of documentation that would have been necessary once the project was finalized.

He kept these pre-produced deliverables on his personal directory so that he could have them ready in a flash when the company asked for them. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

Layoffs came about, and they decided he was no longer necessary and canned him. In retrospect, their unwillingness to get him started on any other project was a red flag. Knowing exactly what kind of hot water they’d be in without him, he happily deactivated his employee account and subsequently deleted everything on his personal drive.

The remaining project team members rapidly discovered how screwed they were when they tried to provide a status on his software and realized none of them knew anything about how it worked, how finished it was, or how to continue working on it. No one had bothered to have it explained while he was still there.

One of his buddies on the team called him up a few days later begging him to help him out and just let them have the files he’d completed ahead of time. My coworker felt conflicted because he had no real grudge against the employees who were stuck in this situation, but obviously, no one had those files anymore since he was no longer an employee. He basically told his friend that the company had dug its own grave and he couldn’t help in any way besides giving him some tips off the top of his head from what he remembered. He told me he somewhat regretted helping them out on his own time, but ultimately just hoped management learned their lesson.

I told him: “That’s when you call back and give them your quote for freelance work!”