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When you have a job that you enjoy, it is pretty common to try to find ways to improve the way things work.

What would you do if you wrote a software program in your free time, and then brought it in to help make things run more smoothly at work, but then the company decided to fire you?

That is what happened to the developer in this story, so he offered to sell the program to the company before he left, but they refused. So, he left and let the program fail until they called begging him to fix it. He refused and ended up selling the program to a competitor.

I love it when a story works out like this; it is so satisfying. Read through for yourself and see what you think.

Buy my program when you fire me? No? Okay.

Long story short:

I was employed at a rather large factory, which is one of the largest plant based companies in the world, recently bought by an investment firm not so long ago.

This sounds like an exceptionally useful program.

Anyways, I developed a program which was used at the factory, it could tell whenever any machines were not running, even if it was due to a manual stop or anything else.

My program knew the reason why the machine was idling. This program made it so much easier for the entire factory, workers were happy because they didn’t need to do any manual work and write down every time the machine stopped.

It is awful when a company gets bought out and ruined.

Lead up to about a year ago.

Factory appoints a new chief, all the old employees that were in a leadership position were let go because it was time for “new blood to come in”.

There was talk a lot of talk about selling off parts of the factory, including machines and so on.

I don’t think that this program belongs to the company.

This included programs that I had developed, including the program that identified whenever a machine stopped.

I developed this program on my spare time, showed it to the old management and they liked it enough that they wanted to use it on every station in the factory.

The new management team was warned not to fire this guy.

Every machine was to use this program, all that had to be done was for the program to be maintained weekly. This was around 5 years ago or so.

When the newly appointed factory chief wanted to let the the old employees, me included, leave, it was not known that I was the person behind that program.

This new company will learn its lesson.

Anyways, at my meeting with HR and the factory chief I said that I was willing to sell them the program and teach someone how to maintain the program.

The factory chief laughed in my face and said it was company property and that it was simply “their program” and not mine.

Odd, things are already starting to have problems.

I offered to show them the source code and everything but it lead up to the point where if I was to tamper with the program before my departure, they would sue me. I was officially let go, at which point the 2 month countdown began and after 2 months I was free.

After a week or so, they noticed problems with the program, it would stop loading, stop registering stops and it would mislabel stops.

He is trying to be reasonable with them.

I knew that this was when the fun was about to begin. After a month, I was called in to the office and was told that “I had tampered with the program because it had suddenly stopped working.”

I let them know that someone had to maintain it. I was ordered to teach someone how to do that job and I told them “after you pay me for the program rights”. They wouldn’t budge and I was told to return to work.

Is the new company really just going to let this system stop working?

When I had a week left, I strolled around the factory floor for a while and noticed that no stations were running my program anymore.

I asked some operators why that was and they told me that “it just stopped working, now we need to fill out forms every time the machine stops manually.”

Honestly, that took longer than I thought it would.

I shrugged and told them to thank the factory chief.

I left after that week, got a phone call about a month after I left where they begged me to sell them the rights and teach someone how to maintain it.

Well played.

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I never sold them that program, instead I sold an improved version to another factory nearby, where I am now employed.

It is so satisfying when a regular person is able to get one over on a major corporation like this. I’d love to know what happened to the old company in the months to come.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this story.

Here is someone who got creative.

Good for him.

I hope this guy gets what he deserves.

Yup, never give them that program.

This seems like a great way to handle the situation.

He gave them a chance to buy the program, but they thought they knew better. I certainly don’t feel bad for this company, or any of the new management team. They shot themselves in the foot.

Sometimes you just have to let people make their mistakes and learn from the consequences.

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Author

Michael Levanduski