Boss fires employee after completing crucial project — ends up 'begging' them for help

Getting laid off is not a great feeling! Ask any employee who has been shown the door, and they will tell you the pain of losing their livelihood. Apart from the struggle to get another job, the real pain point for a terminated worker is the helplessness they feel in such situations. However, not everyone simply takes their company’s orders at face value. Some create their own ways to ensure their voice is heard, including u/RecommendationOk7537 on Reddit. The software engineer claimed they were asked to leave without any prior notice by their employer. In a widely circulating post, the employee revealed that a day before their firing, they were asked to work late at night to complete a project.

Like any dedicated employee, the person working in the IT industry worked day and night to finish the arduous task. It was late Thursday evening when the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of the company asked the employee about a long-pending software feature. The employee had been working on the configuration for quite some time, and as per the post, the employee wanted it to be finalized before Friday morning. It simply meant that the employee would need to spend their night on the configuration to make it work, and they did just that.

“Fine, I don't have an issue working late, but it was a strange request given that they'd postponed the project for several months to have me working on other stuff. Still, I stayed up until about 2:00 am to finish the project,” the employee wrote. Despite working late into the night, the employee reported to work the next day. Instead of recognizing their efforts, the employer chose a different route where there was no going back. “The next morning, when I arrived at work, the CEO and CTO called me into a meeting to let me know that I was being laid off,” the post added.

Additionally, the employee was told that it would be their last day at work. They were denied two-week or severance pay notices. They were simply told by the employer: “We'll need you to finish out today, working with [name redacted] to log all your logins and passwords and show him the rest of your code.” The employee was raging inside. “So, you knew you were going to can me today, that's why you made me work late yesterday? Does that seem wrong to you?” they wrote. Instead of offering an apology or showing empathy, the CEO and CTO simply stared at them.

The employee claimed it was the perfect time to play their “final card.”

“Alright. If you're gonna play it this way, then it's both personal and business,” they wrote. “If you want me to sit here and generate a list of passwords and train my replacement, then I want a two-week severance package, or I walk right now,” the employee told senior management. As expected, their request was declined, leaving them with only one remaining option.

“I walked out the door. I called one of their vendors and let them know I was open to work, and had a new job within a week. They were still emailing me to beg for ‘help’ weeks later,” the former employee concluded. They then turned to the online community for their take on “withholding passwords after being laid off.”

Among the various reactions, u/Careful-Natural-5217 suggested, “They knew and decided to use you. So what you do is email them back; as a consultant, you have the right to set your rate of pay for your time.” u/RichardKopf agreed: “What they did was beyond dirty. If they still need help, tell them to hire you as a consultant on your terms.”