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Tangential, but I almost never get to tell this story. In 2012 I was fired from a job (on my birthday!). I hated this job, I hated my coworkers, I really hate

Tangential, but I almost never get to tell this story. In 2012 I was fired from a job (on my birthday!). I hated this job, I hated my coworkers, I really hated my manager, I was pretty sure that the higher-ups were alcoholics since they always smelled like beer or whiskey, and the work was mind-numbing where quite literally 3/4 of my work was designing nametags even though I was ostensibly a "Java developer". Anyway, I got fired, and while getting fired always sucks, I was a little relieved that I didn't have to show up anymore. The following Monday, I got a phone call from my manager demanding that I provide the password to unlock the Macbook that they had me using. I explained to him that I think it's a bad idea to share my password with people that I don't trust. He then told me that I "had" to provide it, to which I said "I really don't think I do, actually. I don't work for <company name> anymore. What are you going to do, fire me?" This went back and forth for another thirty seconds, and eventually I said "Here's what we'll do, I'll drive over there, unlock the laptop, and drive back home, and you pay for my entire trip. I charge $200/hour." He was clearly pissed off, eventually hung up, and I never heard back from them. A part of me likes to think that maybe they had to trash the laptop because they were too incompetent to figure out how to wipe the drive.

chias 2y ago
As someone who has recently had to start managing a fleet of macbooks: amusingly, this may very well be what happened. Modern macs are not like a PC where you can just wipe it, due to a need to lock down on the secondary market for stolen macbooks. Assuming your old employer does not have an Apple Business Manager account and/or didn't purchase the laptop through it, then if the Recovery Lock gets triggered, then it is for all intents and purposes bricked unless you can provide an Activation Lock Bypass Key or have the user either log in or provide their AppleID password. I think every company goes through a phase of having to call a few ex employees and ask them to please pretty-please let them know their AppleID password before realizing that if you're going to have a Macbook fleet, you had better start doing Apple Business Manager. I don't know if this is how things were in 2012, but at least these days: if they needed your password, and you never gave it to them, they probably did have to discard the device.
- tombert 2y ago
  I'm not sure how it was in 2012 either. It was a pretty old Mac, even at the time, so it's possible that they could have done some kind of wiping. I don't know. I hope it ended up in a landfill or as a paperweight because of their incompetence in setting it up for me, just as a final middle finger to that terrible job. I certainly am not just going to give some random person who I don't like my password for free. I was using that password for multiple things at the time (I know, bad practice, I don't do that anymore), and for all I know they would have written that password down on a Post-It note on the manager's desk for someone to happily steal.

chias 2y ago

As someone who has recently had to start managing a fleet of macbooks: amusingly, this may very well be what happened. Modern macs are not like a PC where you can just wipe it, due to a need to lock down on the secondary market for stolen macbooks. Assuming your old employer does not have an Apple Business Manager account and/or didn't purchase the laptop through it, then if the Recovery Lock gets triggered, then it is for all intents and purposes bricked unless you can provide an Activation Lock Bypass Key or have the user either log in or provide their AppleID password. I think every company goes through a phase of having to call a few ex employees and ask them to please pretty-please let them know their AppleID password before realizing that if you're going to have a Macbook fleet, you had better start doing Apple Business Manager. I don't know if this is how things were in 2012, but at least these days: if they needed your password, and you never gave it to them, they probably did have to discard the device.

tombert 2y ago
I'm not sure how it was in 2012 either. It was a pretty old Mac, even at the time, so it's possible that they could have done some kind of wiping. I don't know. I hope it ended up in a landfill or as a paperweight because of their incompetence in setting it up for me, just as a final middle finger to that terrible job. I certainly am not just going to give some random person who I don't like my password for free. I was using that password for multiple things at the time (I know, bad practice, I don't do that anymore), and for all I know they would have written that password down on a Post-It note on the manager's desk for someone to happily steal.