I have a similar story. I was hired as an intern at a company that did marketing research (among other things) and, using genetic algorithms on a complex survey

I have a similar story. I was hired as an intern at a company that did marketing research (among other things) and, using genetic algorithms on a complex survey-design problem, managed to slash field costs by about $250k per month. I had a middle manager who resented that I was getting time to work on the cool projects in a language he didn't understand (Java; I wasn't a real programmer yet). So he yanked me out of R&D and put me closer to the day-to-day grunt work. Three months later I was looking for jobs elsewhere, and a month after that I was fired for interviewing. I got two weeks' severance... and they're still making $250k+ from my work.