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Similar things have happened in my ~12 year career which leads me to believe it is not as uncommon as your comment would portray it. The first instance I can r

Similar things have happened in my ~12 year career which leads me to believe it is not as uncommon as your comment would portray it. The first instance I can recall, a developer was terminated and his access was revoked. He goes home, waits until midnight, then tries logging into as many systems as he can. He apparently had saved a WordPress password on his Google Drive. He logs into WordPress and defaces a bunch of pages on the corporate website. FWIW he was one of my reports and he did not come off as a sociopath or unstable and his actions surprised me. Second instance at a different startup, a marketing guy is terminated but was allowed to hang out at the office for a bit (for some reason management decided to fire him on a Thursday morning knowing he carpooled with several other employees). I felt bad so I took him out to lunch. At lunch he tells me he had a feeling he was about to be fired so he dumped the ~400K+ database of emails in our HubSpot account to sell to a competitor. I told him that was easily the dumbest idea he's ever had. I text the CEO from the bathroom to warn him. He's trespassed from the building upon our return. Oh, and he suspected I tipped them off and so he keyed my car. Third instance at my own company, I terminated a contractor and removed their access to all services immediately. They attempt to run a series of reports on vendors, contractors, and other sensitive data from the admin UI without realizing their session was invalidated. I get the error notifications and add more granular permissions to the admin panel. Is it inhumane? No. Is it rude? Yes. I think you have no choice _but_ to treat these people as humans. Humans do human things and act out for a variety of reasons and you have to expect that. Are they inherently bad people? No.

Draiken 3y ago
I can definitely understand that assuming everyone is not a sociopath is very naive. But the reason I say this is inhumane is not about the security implications. There's a whole plethora of issues around layoffs that are often ignored. I recall looking at Slack's people list constantly to see which accounts were suddenly marked as "deactivated". People I had great relationships with but never exchanged personal emails simply gone. That dread of "what the fuck is happening" and "am I next?" overcoming you. Some people scramble to create sheets with contact information from those who were laid off. That's absolutely inhumane. I survived 3 layoffs in the past few years and I can still distinctly remember the awful feeling each of those left me with. I can only imagine how much worse that is for those affected. We can separate the security parts from the human parts. Companies choose not to do that, for whatever reason that I simply cannot understand. Especially companies with so called "human resources" should be extremely prepared for situations like this, to make sure everyone is actually treated well. Recently we had that viral video of a person that recorded themselves getting fired with zero reasoning of why. That's the kind of shit that happens with these layoffs. Bad management at its worst. In short, I agree with you with regards to security implications. But those can be solved with proper access controls and planning. What I don't agree with is everything else around it. Not once I have seen companies laying off people handle this in any manner that I would describe as humane. We can do better, I don't know why we don't.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > Especially companies with so called "human resources" Never forget that "human" is an adjective in that phrase, not a noun. HR's duty and focus is on serving and protecting the company, not the employees.

Draiken 3y ago

I can definitely understand that assuming everyone is not a sociopath is very naive. But the reason I say this is inhumane is not about the security implications. There's a whole plethora of issues around layoffs that are often ignored. I recall looking at Slack's people list constantly to see which accounts were suddenly marked as "deactivated". People I had great relationships with but never exchanged personal emails simply gone. That dread of "what the fuck is happening" and "am I next?" overcoming you. Some people scramble to create sheets with contact information from those who were laid off. That's absolutely inhumane. I survived 3 layoffs in the past few years and I can still distinctly remember the awful feeling each of those left me with. I can only imagine how much worse that is for those affected. We can separate the security parts from the human parts. Companies choose not to do that, for whatever reason that I simply cannot understand. Especially companies with so called "human resources" should be extremely prepared for situations like this, to make sure everyone is actually treated well. Recently we had that viral video of a person that recorded themselves getting fired with zero reasoning of why. That's the kind of shit that happens with these layoffs. Bad management at its worst. In short, I agree with you with regards to security implications. But those can be solved with proper access controls and planning. What I don't agree with is everything else around it. Not once I have seen companies laying off people handle this in any manner that I would describe as humane. We can do better, I don't know why we don't.

sokoloff 3y ago
> Especially companies with so called "human resources" Never forget that "human" is an adjective in that phrase, not a noun. HR's duty and focus is on serving and protecting the company, not the employees.