For those of you who want the short version of his story, the OP wrote a password-protected program on company time that automated his data entry, and because he was so accurate, was getting most of the bonus money meant for the rest of his group (without anyone knowing he was automating it). He told his boss, who fired him, but then the boss and manager asked for the password to the program. OP refused, called up the boss's boss, OP was brought in to talk, and given a new job as a software engineer.
He negotiated for a salary as good as what he was making before (with bonuses), and negotiated for all the other employees who would be fired from data-entry to get other jobs in the company. OP's original scumbag boss gets fired, all the old data-entry employees/friends are better off, OP gets amazing new job.
Now that being said, perhaps I'm skeptical, pessimistic, or just being negative, but this story seems too perfect. Clever employee gets huge promotion, and negotiates for all of his coworkers to be better off as well. Scumbag boss who fires employee gets fired himself. All within the span of a month.
Perhaps I have a negative view of companies as well, but when he said he programmed it on company time, and wouldn't give up the password, I was surprised that the company didn't just sue him for not giving up company property.
It behooves the company to bring him in for a chat and re-hire him, rather than immediately start a lengthy court process that would cost them money, time, and wouldn't even guarantee anything.
Also, as this is (presumably) in the Netherlands, they don't have the same itchy trigger finger as we do in the States when it comes to filing suits.
Yes, but aren't worker protections stronger over there?
I'm surprised the company's HR didn't notice that there was one worker sucking up all the bonuses. In fact, his manager should've flagged that well before the OP informed him.
...or it makes him post the letter on the internet and makes the company look bad. Amicable solutions frequently make more practical sense than confrontational ones.
This trends pretty far off-topic, but Denmark is an interesting case, in that it's very, very easy to fire someone, but there is a very strong social safety net (we're talking years of unemployment benefits) which creates a pretty distinct environment for hiring and firing.
Contrast that to most of the rest of Europe, where companies are reluctant to hire because it's so difficult to fire people.
Any Danes out there care to elaborate or correct my misunderstanding?
The social security net is indeed very strong in Denmark. If you pay a low monthly fee while being employed, you are entitled to a special unemployment benefit rate for up to two years, which almost corresponds to minimum wage salary (Which in it self is very high, compared to other countries). There are some obligations to actively seek new work and you could be sent on various training sessions, so it's not a complete free ride, but close enough.
I know that at least compared to Germany, it's a lot easier to fire people, legally speaking. I'm not sure if that makes Denmark or Germany the outlier, but probably the former.
Sounds hard to believe. Denmark is in the European Union, and it's EU law that gives lots of employment rights. These laws would have to be in Danish law aswell.
There are some countries (UK, Ireland) that have implemented the bare minimum of EU employment law. There are some that have implemented above and beyond (France). But Denmark wouldn't be able to ignore most of it
In 1994, Denmark modernized a system, which came to be known as "flexicurity," that offered American-style flexibility (layoffs, transitions into new lines of business) coupled with traditional European security. Laid-off workers were offered generous benefits, like 90 percent of their last salary for two years and opportunities to be retrained.
I am a Dane and this makes no sense to me. As far as I know no "benefits" like that are mandated by law. The only thing comparable I know of is during employment your employers notice will grow from 3 months to a max of 6 months (and that is after nine years of employment!). Anything in addition to that has probably been added in individual or union negotiations. Some companies may not require the employee to work during that period but many certainly do.
Edit: I am only talking about individuals. Mass layoff rules are different but I very much doubt they are any worse for the employer.
There are some part of "American style employer flexibility" that they cannot do. e.g. they cannot give people less than 4 weeks paid vacation. They cannot let employers fire people who are gay, etc.
> in that it's very, very easy to fire someone, but there is a very social safety net (we're talking years of unemployment benefits) which creates a pretty distinct environment for hiring and firing.
This seems better for the employers and the employees than what the rest of Europe does.
The password part is a bit silly. You don't even need to do that. Just leave it rough around the edges and give people a technical description of how to use the tool. I've done that accidentally a number of times. It's amazing how many times, people just give up without even trying.
He states thought that the boss who fired him called later to demand the password. A somewhat likely motive for this was so he could utilise the code for himself, fire a bunch of the workers and then claim the credit for the productivity bump and cost savings.
I'd rather not make life easier for such people. What this kid did turned out to be a win.
The only puzzling aspect of this story is why he took the same money back. He has demonstrated value far beyond his pay grade and was hired back at the same compensation as before. Why?
The same base plus the performance-linked bonus he was getting for doing most of the data entry with his program. It came to more than what his old boss was making, so it wasn't just data-entry wages.
This doesn't consider the value he's creating for the company. Apparently, the company was willing to part with that money already (before the improvement) - so clearly they should have offered him more for the automation.
The bonus pool he was drawing from was meant to go to an entire team of people, but 90% of it was going to him. His pay ended up being quite a bit higher than what it should have been.
I wonder if the story would have turned out the same without the password? It seems like the password may have created a mystery that prompted them to want to see what's inside. If it simply worked poorly/not at all without a trained operator, it likely would have been thrown away instead.
> I was surprised that the company didn't just sue him for not giving up company property.
Perhaps the executives of the company weren't knee-jerkingly litigious idiots, and realized that their money would be better spent improving their operational efficiencies than paying their lawyers to acquire a metaphorical bucket of water while the tap from which it came runs permanently dry.
Litigation is expensive, and sane businesspeople don't casually file lawsuits that deliver no strategic value to their companies.
No matter how legally valid the argument may be that the code is company property, the fact remains that the code wasn't the product of 'company time'; it was the product of skill, creativity, and initiative whose benefits the company clearly does not and cannot have without the willing cooperation of this individual. Why make enemies when you can make friends?
> Perhaps I have a negative view of companies as well, but when he said he programmed it on company time, and wouldn't give up the password, I was surprised that the company didn't just sue him for not giving up company property.
> He told his boss, who fired him, but then the boss and manager asked for the password to the program. OP refused, called up the boss's boss, OP was brought in to talk, and given a new job as a software engineer.
He didn't refuse to give the password to the company, just to his scumbag ex-boss.
Why would they sue him? It would be a huge waste of money for all involved. Instead they could just hire him for a job he was clearly qualified for and then everyone wins.
"...but I was hellbent on refusing to give out the password. Not to be mean/defensive, but the code was not designed for anyone to use, it was very primitive in the way it had to be setup. I didn't want to be liable for someone using it incorrectly."
As somebody from the Netherlands, this makes me skeptical. He's claiming to be Dutch but his legal perspective is American. He also claims to be fired on the spot. There is no such thing in the Netherlands if he had a long term position: it will always be reviewed first by a government institution called Centrum voor Werk en Inkomen or by a judge (there are exceptions for exceptional cases, like if somebody punches somebody else in the face).
I suspect his immediate superior told him he was going to be fired, and when this came to the attention of the senior manager (as it would) is when the discussion about passwords, etc, occurred. So he was never actually fired... just kicked-up a fuss, and saved his ass.
He probably didn't have a long term position. More likely he was hired through a job agency or on a 0 hour contract in which case yes, you can be (effectively) fired on the spot. Same for his supervisor.
A lot of things stink about this story, but this isn't one of them.
and if my memory serves me right, the bonuses were allegedly allocated based on how accurate the data entry job is. Um, how do you validate that without knowing the answer? Conversely, if you have the answer, why do you need data entry monkeys?
Further, if this is a trivial batch script, why don't they grab a random programmer off the street, describe the problem and live happily ever after.
Okay, this is clearly a comment by someone who's never worked a low-tech job. You validate correct data-entry by testing samples.
I worked a job back in high school where they spent months editing Excel spreadsheets full of data only to pass the edits to me as handwritten changes to printed pages. The stacks of spreadsheet pages I was given were meters high.
Since the human-made edits met simple patterns, I was able to write Excel macros to describe and perform them. I finished a week worth of work in one hour. In my case, they saw me reading a book and got irate even though the work was done and correct. I was a contractor, so they just asked me to go home early and collect fewer hours. I got paid less for working faster.
Would the kid's knowledge about how to operate the program (in this case, a password) be considered company property? I don't think many jurisdictions would consider an employee's knowledge the property of the company, unless it was a trade secret- and even then, he would only be restricted from telling others under certain circumstances- I don't think he would be required to spend his own time (he was fired) telling the company how to operate the program. Of course, I am not a lawyer...
Let's say I'm a system administrator in charge of all my company's servers. I find out I'm about to get fired, and I decide to give myself the only admin privileges on these servers (that control databases, production code, etc). I'm then fired -- does the whole company go under because I can willfully refuse to give up the passwords for the admin accounts?
Now granted, the code he refused to give the password to was not at all vital to the company's continued functioning, but I would assume that all work related to the functioning of the company, produced on company time, should be disseminatable. As in, once they fire me, I don't need to tell them how a script works, or what "use the d-factor automization" comment means, but someone should be able to read it, and perhaps with some effort, get an idea of what it does (so that the employee cannot add a keylogger to the system, or some other malevolent purpose).
* I find out I'm about to get fired, and I decide to give myself the only admin privileges on these servers (that control databases, production code, etc). I'm then fired -- does the whole company go under because I can willfully refuse to give up the passwords for the admin accounts?*
They will sue you and since it's likely you can be shown to have acted with malicious intent courts won't be sympathetic.
I did not read the full article- but just did. He did not add the password only after finding out he was being fired (in fact, the way he tells it, he was escorted from the building). I think it would be very difficult to demonstrate malicious intent. But again, I'm not a lawyer :) Or a judge.
15 years ago, when I was working as a firewall engineer and penetration tester, I was asked a few times to crack or reset the passwords of systems where ex administrators refused to hand them over. It was usually very easy to do, because the people refusing to hand over the passwords weren't really that competent in the first place, hence why they got fired.
>I was surprised that the company didn't just sue him for not giving up company property.
That probably would have required escalation to Corporate Counsel and CEO, which would have exposed the fact that the manager fired the kid for doing awesome work and was likely trying to get the password to run the system himself, fire the other data-entry people, and take credit for the amazing efficiency improvements. He probably didn't want the CEO to find out about that, so he couldn't sue.
What are the laws like about things produced on company time anyways? In particular, is it a two way street? In other words, what if they don't want what you produced on company time - are they obligated to take it and find a way to dispose of it?
> Perhaps I have a negative view of companies as well, but
> when he said he programmed it on company time, and wouldn't
> give up the password, I was surprised that the company
> didn't just sue him for not giving up company property.
When I read that part, I realized I'm quite lucky I took a course on the basics of Dutch IP laws, in particular those pertaining to software and digital rights.
If he wrote it on company time, it just means that the copyright of the program belongs to the company.
I'm not aware of any law stating he should give up a password though. Copyright just gives one the rights to reproduce and make public a work. It does not give a copyright-holder the right to demand a copy of the work from whoever has a copy.
I wonder how he passworded it. The exact way might make some difference. I assume it was a scripting language, so I guess he put the script in a passworded ZIP-file that he unpacked every time he needed it? Any other way would be easily circumvented by reading the code.
I agree it is a very strange story. Not very unlikely, just strange. Also strange that nobody else got the idea this data-entry might be automated.
Company time = company property, even in the Netherlands. In fact I don't know of a single country where it's not the case; even more so when talking about developed countries.
"In principle the person/legal entity that has created the work (such as software), is the owner of the copyrights in that work. However, article 7 of the Copyright Act provides
that if the invention is made by an employee, the employer is entitled to the copyrights."
In most countries (I'm not familiar with Dutch law), including the two I've worked with in the EU, the company would most definitely still own the code he wrote using company resources and on company time.
Probably not unless his contract was written in such a way. If for example you wrote a personal email using a company computer while at work, you would still own all the rights to it. Your work contract will specifically say what rights you assign to your employer and the specific works it covers.
Legislation in the UK creates a presumption that unless otherwise stated, first ownership of copyright works created in the course of employment will vest in the employer. So it is up to the written contract to rebut the presumption.
It's worth noting "course of employment" is different from "time at work", as it's defined by the tasks you're hired to do. If the person in this article was in the UK his data-entry contract could well be drafted in such a way that writing a program for the purpose of automating his job would fall outside his specified work duties.
Good point. It does depend on the terms of the contract, but "course of employment" is defined quite widely so if the contract was silent, there would be an arguable case to say the presumption kicked in as the work was done for the benefit of the business, during work hours, and at the company's premises (as far as I'm aware).
Fascinating. I've never thought of this. What is the law in the US? If I e-mail a friend during work hours (or write this comment during lunch), does my company own the rights to this?
If you were hired to do some work, the result is "work for hire" and the copyright resides in the company. If you write software, emails, etc unrelated to your job you would ordinarily retain copyright to those. Cases like the one in the story are rather ambiguous. That's employment agreements almost always elaborate on the topic, saying that, for instance, code you write on company computers or on company time belongs to the company.
How is it best to avoid issues like these without having to get approval by a 3rd party? Is coding it at home and sending it to one's office email address enough for documentation that it was done in non-office time?
It's not even a matter of developing it on non-office hours using non-office equipment. Clauses are usually more broad to stop someone from creating a competing product, even when not on company time. Having built an app designed specifically for company systems, the company would likely have a legal claim against the invention, even if it were developed outside of office hours.
I can see that problem for a situation where the outcome turns into a marketable product. But in these automatization cases it looks more to me like when somebody running a horse-drawn carriages business starts suing an employee for working in his free time on developing a car. The skills by the employee applied to solve the problem seem often unrelated/overqualified for the reason they were hired.
It's probably relevant that the company was in the Netherlands, not in the US. In my experience Dutch companies are much, much more reluctant to sue than American companies. Even though under Dutch law as under American law it would probably come out in their favour (I say probably because his boss fired him for writing the program on company time, if the company afterwards claims that this was work for hire rather than abuse of company time then they may have screwed themselves on the legality of the firing).
I'm also skeptical of such a perfect story, but the company not suing is not such a red flag to me.
I'm guessing he wasn't working in the US (boss speaking Dutch, etc.), if he were to try to pull that "I'm not giving you the password" thing here, he could've got a visit from FBI and/or/most probably face jail time if the company cast his program as a type of virus (i.e. any unauthorized software on their system) and complained.
Not exactly the same scenario - but at the end of 2001 I worked at a company that went under - our parent company decided to close our doors, fire everyone in one shot and then didn't pay us our final paychecks. About 4 to 6 weeks later I get a call asking for the server passwords as I was the only one with them - I refused to hand the passwords over until all of us got paid. We all had paychecks within a few days and I released the servers to them.
Are you from the U.S.? I am, and also had a hard time believing this story when I heard coworkers talking about it. Then I realized this guy is from Netherlands. This is a much more believable story set in NL.
I agree. this story plays out exactly like every teenage coder's wet dream. It's got everything: persecution, vindication, crap boss who for some reason gets fired for firing the teenager (in the real world, firing someone who refused to turn over company property is not a reason to get fired), teenager saves everyone else's jobs, and even gets a promotion to a much better job.
This kid apparently also has insane negotiation skills, and somehow managed to negotiate his own salary increase and salary increases for everyone else around him.
All this, in a month...
We'll probably see an update in the next day or two that this story was a hoax.
UPDATE: More evidence of a hoax: the kid was making more money in an entry-level data-entry position than a manager-level employee in the company. And that entry-level data-entry position paid substantial bonsuses (which is the alleged reason the kid was making more than his manager.) And on top of all that, the boss was not eligible for bonuses bases on the productivity of his supervisees. Finally, the kid is now apparently the lead programmer in his own frigging department but somehow does not have the authority to change his desk chair. Yeah, that's all completely believable.
> Finally, the kid is now apparently the lead programmer in his own frigging department but somehow does not have the authority to change his desk chair.
Sadly, this is probably the most believable part of the entire story :(.
This is actually more likely in a big company. Money means little to big companies; unless they screw up in a very serious way, the money available for individual trinkets like desk chairs is almost unlimited. In a small company, an extra Aeron can put you in the red.
Also, if money belongs to a faceless entity and does not directly effect the individuals that hold the purse strings, people tend to be much more loose with the cash. This is a big reason why B2B is almost always a much better course than B2C. In a small company, there's still a founder who considers overall income vital to his sustenance, and as such is much stingier than a big corp.
I guess you have not worked at a company where these types of things can and do happen? It's a plausible story in my book since I had something similar happen early in my career. My boss hated me and another new hire (fear) and kept telling the VP that were were "not working and slow" well without letting my manager know the VP started logging all of the work and found that in a given week I produced 40% of the work, the other new hire produced 30% and the other three people on the team produced 10% each (including my manager) She was fired and I was given her position after being with the company for only a few months.
We're making wild guesses about the pay scales there. I've worked at places where employees make 30,000 and the boss makes 35,000.
Also, the bonus system sounds like it was based heavily on quantity, where it is believable that one automated system could substantially out-perform the sum of the other employees. In a system designed to split a bonus more normally (say 10% for 10 employees) it's not hard to imagine that in the scenario described it could have gone 90% for 1, and 10% split among 9.
According to reddit commenters, the reddit poster was making 6 figures (in Euros) for a data entry job (another HN commenter put this number at 250,000, but I couldn't find anything on reddit to support that). The manager was apparently only making 5 figures.
I'm willing to believe that managers can make less than their underlings (for example, project managers can make less than programmers depending on experience, sales managers can make less than salesmen once commissions are factored in) but I am not willing to believe that an entry-level data entry position pays 6 figures. Especially not in the Netherlands.
If data entry was that expensive then they'd have outsourced it to Poland pretty quickly. Or have invested in one of the many document scanning and OCR companies.
I've worked in The Netherlands for 6 years now (5 as consultant in this area), and am pretty sure that this story is bullshit. I've seen nothing like it.
I agree that level of bonus for data entry smells funny.
Although, the one exception could be some kind of government or hospital data where it cannot be exported out of the country, and therefore the only option is to pay local wages. Even then though, the bonus does sound bogus
Here in The Netherlands, it's very hard to sack people. For that reason you don't see the kind of salaries that you do in the US. An employer has less insentive to offer massive salaries, because with the massive salary comes an even bigger liability.
There's no way he's earning 250k a year in a data entry position. Or even as a developer.
Additionally, I've read nothing on the biggest dutch-language IT/Developers community. I can't believe that someone would boast about this on reddit and not on tweakers :)
I still find that odd, perhaps I should quit my current job and do exactly what he does? after all automating data entry has to be a lot simpler than most programming jobs.
Lets play with the maths of this, lets say that he is generously making 40 euros, which is a lot for data entry (think like double what specialist data entry people are normally paid)
That leaves us with a bonus pool of 2100000, the claim is that he was taking 90% of the bonus, that would make the bonus pool 233333, lets round up to 250000
Ok so lets split this evenly across several employees
5 clerks = 50,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 90,000 each !
10 clerks = 25,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 65,000 each !
20 clerks = 12,500 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 52,500 each !
Thats a stunning salary ! really, I would be motivated myself to get my bonus, even if I was only taking my _equal_ share of the magic pot.
Ok lets assume that his department is huge say ....
50 clerks = 5,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 45,000 each
Sounds reasonable right? but the 50 clerks would be costing the company
2000000 Euros ! At that cost even the most stupid of organisations would be looking at automation (human via india or say the meat-cloud), or computers)
Now you might say that 40K is generous for the type of work, that he would really be earning something like 25K, still a lot for data entry which is a low skilled job that is typically hourly paid; a fine argument but if that is the case then the bonus pool becomes larger which still makes all the numbers look suspect.
Maybe he got a raise (and didn't really declare it, for some reason), even then that is somewhat higher than a basic internet search gives me for someone in Holland as a programmer (http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Country=Netherlands/Sala...). Now the company he works for might be clueless, but I would be surprised if they did not do a wage equivalence as most companies are low that way.
So colour me extremely skeptical, the _only_ way it makes sense is if he misplaced a zero
Upper-level bosses probably never had any intention of firing all the workers just because some script automated a portion of their work. If it's a large-scale, decisions like that probably wouldn't be made without considering MPL abstractly or without considering the costs and bad PR incurred when laying off a significant number of people. That part of the narrative was likely more significant in the kid's mind than reality.
And apparently, the sub-boss was already on thin ice. This may have just been the final excuse needed to get rid of him.
Also, much empire building happens by headcount; if the work's all still getting done, better to retain the headcount than to faff around with redundancies.
I got my first real programming job because I automated dumb work and my then-boss handed me a bunch of extra unautomatable administration work; I went and explained this to his ex-boss at the company he'd left and started competing with, and said ex-boss figured anybody the idiot wanted to shit on was worth a try.
Now, in this case we're talking about two people still within the reporting chain, but if $redditor->boss->boss hated $redditor->boss as much as my first programming boss hated the previous boss, and $redditor->boss->boss managed to look good screwing him ... then it seems entirely plausible.
I still feel like it doesn't smell quite right, but it is to my mind way more plausible than people are giving it credit for.
Regarding your update, I'm pretty sure that he was making more money at the entry-level data-entry position than his manager because he was ALSO getting 99% of the bonus pool.
In the Netherlands he wouldn't be let go immediately, there would be a variable legally-required period of time before he is shown the door, during that time he is still technically employed by the company. I suspect that it is during this period that he spoke to the senior manager.
That would be standard operating procedure. The kid's program (if it really exists) would be company property, and his failure to turn over the password could result in civil litigation (or potentially, but unlikely) criminal prosecution.
Luckily all of this happened, i think i believe it did, in The Netherlands where litigation over this sort of thing is just not very common. Especially in smaller companies as this one seems to be.
A password is not property. The company holds the copyright to the software, but the employee has no obligation to have made the software usable for any purpose. (No more than a cabinetmaker who creates an innovative jig is reqyired to write a manual or provide training.)
You're wrong. Anything you produce in company time that is even remotely jon related, is company property. The code, the binary, the password and any intellectual property rights protecting them is the company's property. Every contract clearly arranges that, so you can't extort your former boss, as in the story. If your contract doesn't contain such clauses, your company is incompetent.
Property is tangible. The computer that stores the software is property, the software is merely a configuration of the property. Certain monopoly privileges regarding that configuration (copyright) might be assigned to the company depending on the details of the contract and local laws.
Providing a password is an activity. Whether the employee has a duty to perform that activity depends on the contract and circumstances. In this case, the employee was not assigned the task of writing down the password, so failing to write down the password was not a breach of duty. His boss attempted to negotiate a new employment arrangement involving writing down the password, and negotiations fell through.
Extortion is the threat to perform an unlawful act unless demands are met. This case was not extortion because the employee did not perform any act, let alone an unlawful one.
Put simply, if an employee goes beyond the call of duty, the employer cannot compel them to continue going beyond the call of duty. All the employer can do is fire them.
So if I buy a safe secretly with the company credit card, and fill it with material I completed on company time, and they fire me, I'm not legally obligated to tell them the combination to the safe?
The fact that you did it "secretly" might get you into trouble- using a company credit card for unauthorized purchases is fraud. I suppose you could argue the kid defrauded the company by spending his time programming rather than doing data entry. I don't think that would be as easy to get a judgement for as credit card fraud.
If your job was securing their stuff, which was before in piles on the grass outside the offices and they fire you for putting it in a safe instead, then probably not. You haven't stolen anything and they fired you for doing your job too well. All safes are openable and they opted for the hard way when they fired you. Would probably depend on the court though.
He negotiated for a salary as good as what he was making before (with bonuses), and negotiated for all the other employees who would be fired from data-entry to get other jobs in the company. OP's original scumbag boss gets fired, all the old data-entry employees/friends are better off, OP gets amazing new job.
Now that being said, perhaps I'm skeptical, pessimistic, or just being negative, but this story seems too perfect. Clever employee gets huge promotion, and negotiates for all of his coworkers to be better off as well. Scumbag boss who fires employee gets fired himself. All within the span of a month.
Perhaps I have a negative view of companies as well, but when he said he programmed it on company time, and wouldn't give up the password, I was surprised that the company didn't just sue him for not giving up company property.