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Revenge By a Programmer For Not Getting Salaries For 3 months

 3 years ago
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Revenge By a Programmer For Not Getting Salaries For 3 months

Don’t mess with programmers

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Non-technical founders often don’t understand the value of developers. Developers are the fuel of a company if their products are tech products. I heard this story from a colleague. And this story is about his friend Paul (not his real name).

The revenge story requires some backstory. So, let’s get into it.

Paul joined a startup as the only developer

Paul was the first hired developer in their team when the founders started their company, and within one week, they hired two other developers. Paul was in the leading position.

I asked my colleague why did Paul join in a startup that was just forming? He told me that Paul was having some problems in his previous job. He needed a job within a week, and then he found the job and took it.

The founders were very young and totally inexperienced. Being young is not a problem, but it is an advantage in some cases. But the problem is some young founders think they know everything, and their ego is so high that they don’t listen to others.

This was the problem from the beginning. Paul always suggested that they should allocate more money for building the tech. But they didn’t listen. They always told Paul that they were having money problems, but on the other hand, they were hiring new employees ( marketing, sales, and other executives ) every month.

Paul still didn’t do anything. He was not happy, but he was okay as he was getting paid well.

Problems started after one year

Paul worked hard and finished the product within ten months. After completing the products, the founders cut the number of developers in half. Paul was not happy about it. He told this to the founders.

He also told them that reducing the number of developers would put more pressure on the existing developers, and it would be impossible for them to maintain any timeline.

If you are a developer working in a startup, you already know that startups give a very hard timeline because they are already in a rush.

However, after cutting the developers when Paul couldn’t meet the founders’ expectations, they treated him differently. Suddenly, they stopped paying his salary. They said to Paul that they are having some financial crisis.

Paul loved that startup. He cut them some slack and didn’t tell them anything. But later he heard from other employees that all the other employees did get their salary. Paul confronted them about this issue.

They said that Paul’s salary was the highest. So they are having problems paying his salary. Then after three months, they fired Paul because they couldn’t pay him the salary.

The founders even didn’t understand the importance of Paul. He had all the keys and passwords, including all the source codes.

Paul was very angry for two reasons.

  1. They fired him without giving him two months’ notice.
  2. They didn’t pay him the salary, but they were hiring new people in other departments!

The revenge

Paul has access to all the source code with some other developers. After getting fired, the first thing he did was go to a cyber cafe and delete the Collection of users and some other important collections from the Firebase admin panel and save it in his personal Firebase account.

The company didn’t have any backup. So all of their customers got crushes in the apps when they tried to enter into the app. Paul got a call the same day the incident happened.

The founders knew that Paul did it(other developers reported it), but they didn’t have any proof. They could take legal actions against Paul, but it’s a lengthy process, and their startup would fall into the ground if the situation went on. Paul knew it and took advantage of this situation.

They called Paul on that day. Paul didn’t confess he did anything. But he said if they could pay him his three months unpaid salary+ two months additional salary for not giving him notice before firing him, he would solve the problems.

They paid the full five months’ salary within a day, and Paul solved their problems within an hour. :D

Conclusion

Paul said to my colleague that if he asked for 12 months salary, they would give him. But Paul only asked the amount they legally owed him.

These startups often don’t understand that developers also have to pay their bills. In my judgment, what Paul did was justice. But I won’t recommend anyone to do that because it might put you in deep legal shit!

If you ever fall into this kind of situation, try the legal way. It might take time, but it won’t put you in danger.

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