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I worked with a guy once that I wasn't a fan of. Gruff, incompetent, egotistical. Just a general ass.

He got laid off two weeks before we were set to do a huge annual update. I stormed into the interim CTO's office (the CTO got laid off too) and explained that laying this guy off was the dumbest idea ever and that it had put the entire project in jeopardy and no one had the knowledge or access to systems that this guy had, and that laying him off was going to cost the company millions of dollars because the release was going to fail.

I don't know what wound up happening at that release. Two weeks later I was working elsewhere; a few years later that company completely evaporated.



Often the grumpy people are that way because they're lives are filled with fixing important problems that no one else can be bothered to do.


or they're so undervalued because their systems never hiccup so they never get to be seen as the hero. They get laid off because "They work on this stuff that is not high priority" ...


He was grumpy because he was vastly overpaid, but snubbed for the CTO role, and knew his job was on the line.


If one guy leaving costs your company millions of dollars, you were screwed to begin with. What if he quit, or even just got sick for a few weeks?


Yep. Better fire him now, before its too late. /s




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