So many companies assume that because their IT systems are always up and running, the IT guy must not be needed.

When they fire the IT guy who kept the systems running, however, they discover that they were much more critical than they thought.

That is what happened to the system admin in this story, and when the company begged him to come back and fix things, he turned them down flat.

Check it out.

New boss mobs and then fires admin. Major systems go downhill and boss is in hot water.

So, i worked for this multinational company for over a decade as a system administrator.

My responsibility was in the area of manufacturing, mostly for central systems that work on data flow between the manufacturing systems and the ERP system in near-real-time.

There is never enough money in the IT budget.

Even though the company had lots of cash for stupid projects, IT budget was always too tight for those expensive, customized data munching systems.

So, shortly after starting to work at the company, I started implementing my own (I’m also an experienced software developer, one of the reason my original boss hired me).

I won’t go into too much detail, but i decided to make the stuff web based for easier deployment of updates. It worked great, and over time more and more functions got ported into this easy to enhance/easy to update system.

Partly new stuff, partly decades-old software that was in dire need of replacement.

He is becoming invaluable.

After about a decade, this system was rather central to the manufacturing process in many ways, and yes, there were hot-standby servers, multiple backups each day and so on.

Due to the severe budget constraints, I’m allowed to use open source software for my database. I’m also allowed to use my own open source web system as the base for it all and keep it open source (except for some small, selected parts that are company specific).

I’m pleased about that, because, essentially, the company is paying me to progress my open source project while getting a friendly, reliable system for me to use at work.

Supportive bosses can make a job very tolerable.

I always had the support of my varying bosses over the years (we change middle management a lot).

In comes another new boss. In the first ever talk we have, he complains that the software is written in [programming language] because that’s “so outdated”.

I tell him its actively developed and used by a number of Fortune500 companies for their backend and/or frontend systems. He’s not happy.

He also asks me how i do all the paperwork for the project and how my former bosses managed the project.

I’m not sure paperwork via mail is a good idea.

I tell him i do everything by mail (so everything is archived on the archive mail server as per law) and my former bosses didn’t do any management because the users and department leaders are happy about how I manage the project myself. He is livid.

A few weeks later, my boss accuses me saying that the work was a “separate company within our company” and it has to stop, and it doesn’t matter if the whole company approves of my work and speaks highly of me.

I have to do much more (completely useless) paperwork, get approval for every small change or bugfix from two people and is generally a jerk when it comes to my work.

Some people like to work alone.

He also loudly complains that i work alone on my projects and that i try to ruin the company by doing so.

I have it on file that I asked whoever was my boss at that time for TEN years EVERY month to have someone as backup and got DENIED every time.

You have to understand, I have Asperger’s and I’m generally not good with dealing with this stuff. But so far, I always managed.

This day is the first ever i left early, crying my eyes out in nearly 25 years of work.

Why was this boss ever put in a position of authority.

More bullying follows, and over the next year my boss starts taking away all of my duties, one at a time. This results in me not always making my 40+ work hours per week.

You can only read reddit so much per day before you start going insane.

Now, after everything is over, i realize that was his main tactic after all, get me fired for not working as long as my coworkers. But it just didn’t click with me at the time, because nothing like that had ever happened to me.

This backup is really going to be his replacement I bet.

Boss forces me to train up “Backup” near the end February. I only get one day to train him.

He’s very young and inexperienced and I complain to by boss that there’s over a decade of software development, knowledge about company rules and processes.

He also doesn’t know the programming language.

The NEXT day, after having to attend to an expensive one hours training course (and then having lunch), HR calls me in and tells me it is my last day of work. I don’t have the usual 90 day period, but it’s my last day of being employed.

This is rather unusual in my country and only legal if both parties agree.

If they are giving him a nice severance package, then it is a win.

I agree, though, since i get a nice severance package and unemployment benefits starting the next day. I don’t mention to HR that I was planning to quit the next month anyway because of the constant bullying.

I have one hour to clean out my desk and say goodbye to my coworkers. The last thing I do is to have my “backup” delete my accounts (as per company policy) while i watch. This includes my admin account in my web system, then I leave.

His code was open source, so he has every right to it.

I go home, cut all company access to my privately owned public source code management temporarily, then I work through the weekend to basically fork my own project under a new name, renaming all the classes and stuff, and release it back on my SCM under the new name.

Just so that company will have a hard time implementing all the bugfixes and security updates I do in the future.

What I accidentally-on-purpose forget to mention in the heat of the moment is that all the system documentation for the web system is also stored on the system and is linked to the user account of whomever wrote it (me for everything, in this case). “ON DELETE RESTRICT” is active, so deleting a user account with active documentation is now allowed.

This isn’t going to go well for the company.

But there is also a known safety in the software that prevents deleting admin accounts through the interface, so my coworker happily types the required command into the database shell directly.

You know, “delete from users where username = ‘the_asperger_admin’ cascade”, and it works. Normal procedure would have the person doing the work assign a different user to that stuff first, but what the heck, i was fired and it was the responsibility of the person doing the work, not mine.

This was well documented in the documentation he has just deleted as well as in an email i sent out a couple of months earlier.

Why would they message a former employee about a system not working?

A week goes past and then the messages starts flooding in (we used a well known messaging app for real time communication and also started using it for private messaging as well, since my group are still good friends).

Parts of the system aren’t doing their job and parts of the manufacturing process has ground to a halt in multiple production plants. The documentation is nowhere to be found and they can’t figure out what is wrong.

From what i gather, after i left they realized that I had a second account on the system, marked “Developer account, don’t change without talking to the_asperger_admin first!!!”.

Oops, that was a big mistake.

Backup deleted it “since i wasn’t working at the company anymore”. This also deleted a number of rather critical maintenance tasks running under that developer/system account and the system went belly up.

Chaos ensued, emergency meetings were held. (The company always held meetings instead of working to fix the problem whenever something went wrong).

That is when they started contacting me.

I’m not sure how this is his problem.

Backup: “You need to come in and fix the problem right away. Company central is already on the phone AND THEY ARE GOING CRAZY!” (adds lots of details on the problem and also on what is happening in the company)

Me: “Sorry bro, i don’t work for the company anymore.”

Backup: “But it’s your system!”

WAS being the operative word there.

Me: “*WAS* my system. Past tense. I got fired last week, remember? I. DO. NOT. WORK. THERE. ANYMORE.”

Backup: “But we are in trouble!”

Me: “First, since i don’t work there anymore, you just violated company policy by telling me all that stuff. Could get you fired for that – but i’m not going to, you’re the SOMEWHAT innocent bystander in this.”

Little did HR know, they shot themselves in the foot.

Me: “Secondly, on the day i was fired, HR told be that they wanted to get me out the door right away because a disgruntled worker with my kind of system knowledge is a security nightmare.”

Backup: “But you aren’t disgruntled, are you.”

Of course he doesn’t want to be responsible.

Me: (playing it safe) “No. But there is no way for you or management to be sure. Are YOU willing to take FULL responsibility if you let me in and I ‘hack your systems’?”

Backup: “Uh… no… boss isn’t paying me THAT well, you see…”

Me: “And third, If i help you in any way, shape or form, I might be in deep trouble”

Backup: “What….?????”

He is right about this part.

Me: “See, the company can’t do a lawsuit against their own employees if something goes wrong by accident. Suppliers have similar statements in their contracts and are also insured. I’m neither of those and if I do something wrong (or the company just states I did even if I didn’t), I’m suddenly in deep financial trouble. I just can’t take the risk.”

Backup: “What if we hire you as an external supplier/contractor”.

This sounds like a lot of work.

Me: “I’d have to open a company, get insurance, go through negotiation with YOUR purchasing department to get my company in your suppliers list, then I’d have to write you an offer which you then have to get signed by [names of four people]. Which would take, all in all, 2-4 MONTHS. After which I will have to wait for the money for ANOTHER 3-4 months. Sorry, I decline”.

Backup: “Please help. Me and my boss [same person as my now former boss] are in very hot water. What can we do?”

Me: “Sorry, i can’t help the company, because it would be a risk to me. And it would be against your own company policy to ALLOW me to help.”

Backup: “Pretty please?”

Me: “Tell you what. Call up company central yourself, don’t go through boss, and tell them exactly what had happened. Tell them you broke the system by deleting those user accounts on your bosses order. And tell them you didn’t know what would happen, because you didn’t have enough training and experience. You just relied on your bosses orders.”

This is not going well for the boss.

Turns out, Backup actually did phone up company central a few days later. Boss went through hell, got fired and got himself on the “never hire again anywhere in this company” blacklist for ANOTHER expensive stunt he pulled, which the company realized shortly after he was kicked out.

How do I know?

I still have lots of friends at that company and hear stuff through the grapevine.

Backup still has his job, and a new, even more incompetent boss. So Backup is ready to find a new job. Yesterday, he asked me about planning his company exit.

Why do people think that they can get rid of their IT guy with no unexpected consequences?

I would love to hear how the company ended up getting things fixed.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this.

They just don’t care.

How can management be so short sighted.

It happens shockingly often.

There are so many terrible bosses out there.

This is very good advice.

Don’t be shocked when things break after firing the IT guy.

It’s a no-brainer.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.