> I agree it's probably a bad idea to post it publicly. This. I completely agree with you here. I would take it a large step further and say it was a despica

> I agree it's probably a bad idea to post it publicly. This. I completely agree with you here. I would take it a large step further and say it was a despicable idea, particularly in the manner it was published as "Best decision ever". Yes, letting the guy go was a good decision and a good correction to a big, expensive, problem. Best decision? Far from it. It was a correction to a massive failure that amounts to paying a few hundred grand, letting a problem fester too long and finally stepping in and "starting over". Worse, though, is that they've maligned someone in the process. Yes, "Rick" was anonymous ... except to Rick, Rick's family and friends, and probably prospective employers who will know where Rick last worked, who will know he was "let go" from his last job, and who will hit up Google, happen upon this post, bin his resume and pat themselves on the back for dodging a bullet. Never mind that they've presented exactly one side of a complicated story with all of the biases that come into that. Never mind that a large number of the comments here are from people who correctly suspect that maybe there's something about this organization that caused this massive failure to happen and that those things, whatever they are, might have contributed to Rick failing in his position. And never mind that Rick, now that he's had a bit of an opportunity to reflect, has (hopefully) figured out some of the things he should have done differently and has (hopefully) made positive life changes that will likely cause him to be a fine employee in the future. Or the fact that he might just have not been a terribly good fit there in the first place and could thrive very well elsewhere. The person landing on this post, using basic deductive skills to decide "Candidate X is Rick", will pat themselves on the back for avoiding hiring the developer equivalent of a BOFH. Of course, this company will inevitably lay some other male employee someone off in the future for reasons that are not the employee's fault, and now they might be assumed to be "Rick". There was a small benefit to the world-at-large for them having written this, but it came with huge downsides in the manner in which they've shared. They could have written the piece as an argument with hypothetical components strewn throughout in more of a philosophical manner including no anecdotal stories about former employees and provided the same benefits, but without the myriad of downsides. It might not have been as interesting of a read, or reached as large of an audience, but then is the conclusion they've drawn really all that mind-blowing? The story, summed up, amounts to "We spent a large amount of money on someone and after two years of continuing to spend that money, we realized that we would have been better off if we had just decided to not work on that project and had, instead, turned that money into cash and flushed it all down the toilet[0]. So we stopped spending that money. Best. Decision. Evar. /s" [0] Because every once in a while the toilet will plug, and some of that money will come back up.