A brief cautionary tale:
One of the people I’ve had the chance to work with this year just got fired, for good cause (not my company, one of our clients). He’s a nice guy. Has a new kid, less than a year old. He’s completely screwed, and it was totally avoidable. I post it here on the off chance that you’re thinking “I won’t get caught” about some piece of petty lawbreaking / rulebreaking, and thus risking your ability to feed your family.
This guy was selling unused software licenses purchased by his employer. They were just sitting around. Extra inventory, you know? Won’t be missed. His organization had paid for them, but then wasn’t using them. He was selling them online. They were missed, he got canned. End of story.
Dumb? Yes. Does he deserve to be fired? Absolutely. Do I feel bad for him? Yup. In fact, I feel bad for everyone concerned. His boss is a good guy too … and they were just starting to make progress on some really interesting science. Now, this guy is out of a job with a new kid and winter coming on. His boss is screwed for someone who knows how to work his compute cluster. All because the fire-ee got greedy.
So: If you’re breaking some petty rule, stealing a little on the side from your employer, and you assume it doesn’t matter and you won’t get caught, just stop, okay?
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