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Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

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Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#41

Post by ThrustVectoring »

Unlikely to be legal - you aren't authorized to delete software in use on company computers (regardless of whether management currently knows it is in use), and the software you wrote is likely a "work for hire" done during work hours in the course of your duties (again, regardless of whether management currently knows about the software and how it gets used by front-line workers).

The correct way to handle this is to get ahold of the CTO or a relevant subordinate in their department, and inform them of the shadow-IT situation going on at the warehouse. Most risk-adverse IT executives would have a conniption at the idea that work policies are enacted by business logic code that zero employees understand and can modify.

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#42

Post by winrid »

siva7 wrote: post #35
tunesmith wrote: post #13

It's more likely it'll work out like how a situation recently worked out at my employer. We had an employee that was too impatient to set up an internal AWS resource using the more time-consuming channels, so he set it up in our hack-stuff AWS account under his own user account. Our teams found it useful, and began to rely on it. He got laid off. Ops deleted all his user-related stuff, including accidentally deleting…

> too impatient to set up an internal AWS resource using the more time-consuming channels Those are by far the worst software devs, not understanding the implications of their actions. But also that his manager didn't catch up this mishap

I had a solution for a production data sanity check solution that worked better than the one in production, however the architects were making it difficult to deploy it, even temporarily. It was just a script.

My manager offered to give me a 2nd laptop so others could run the system as needed.

(and yes, we had kubernetes, all the fancy cloud stuff, etc)

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#43

Post by ThrustVectoring »

madsbuch wrote: post #33

The top comment is interesting: > If you wrote this software during your working time (nine to five), and were paid for that time, then the company owns the software. I don't live in the US, but copyright laws are quite homogeneous world wide. But I do have the impression that copyright is kept as long as it is not signed over. given that the person did logistics without an employment contract, he could notice the co…

> But I do have the impression that copyright is kept as long as it is not signed over.

The US has the "work for hire" concept - if an employee creates work as part of their regular duties, their employer is considered both the author and the copyright owner.

For example, if you have employees take photographs of finished products, using company devices, on company time, and as part of their assigned duties, there is essentially zero question that the copyright owner of those photographs is the employer, regardless of whether this is explicitly lined out in an employment agreement.

The employment agreement definitely helps in that it preempts most disputes over what the employer's expectations are, but it is by no means necessary.

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ30.pdf

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#44

Post by lodovic »

woutersf wrote: post #21
armada651 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, if you're more of the entrepreneurial mindset, convince management of the value of the software and offer that they can pay you to keep improving it.

I agree. Put a modal in it, the trial period is over, contact x for renewall.

That would probably be seen as an attempt to ransomware though

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#46

Post by mrkeen »

siva7 wrote: post #35
tunesmith wrote: post #13

It's more likely it'll work out like how a situation recently worked out at my employer. We had an employee that was too impatient to set up an internal AWS resource using the more time-consuming channels, so he set it up in our hack-stuff AWS account under his own user account. Our teams found it useful, and began to rely on it. He got laid off. Ops deleted all his user-related stuff, including accidentally deleting…

> too impatient to set up an internal AWS resource using the more time-consuming channels Those are by far the worst software devs, not understanding the implications of their actions. But also that his manager didn't catch up this mishap

His manager might have been standing between him and doing it the right way.

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#47

Post by carlmr »

treflop wrote: post #40
siva7 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> too impatient to set up an internal AWS resource using the more time-consuming channels Those are by far the worst software devs, not understanding the implications of their actions. But also that his manager didn't catch up this mishap

It’s quite possible they understood but didn’t have loyalty to the company.

It's also possible the company has processes that make doing the right thing take so long it's infeasible.

If that is the case, these broken processes will cause far more damage than that one employee.

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#48

Post by lencastre »

siva7 wrote: post #35
tunesmith wrote: post #13

It's more likely it'll work out like how a situation recently worked out at my employer. We had an employee that was too impatient to set up an internal AWS resource using the more time-consuming channels, so he set it up in our hack-stuff AWS account under his own user account. Our teams found it useful, and began to rely on it. He got laid off. Ops deleted all his user-related stuff, including accidentally deleting…

> too impatient to set up an internal AWS resource using the more time-consuming channels Those are by far the worst software devs, not understanding the implications of their actions. But also that his manager didn't catch up this mishap

Shortcuts — another eventual toll booth to be paid with interest

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#49

Post by Taniwha »

If you want to do this because you're pissed at the company and want to screw them over, don't ...... the best thing you can do is to leave, and leave them with this piece of software that no one understands and no one supports, eventually it will become a mill-stone around their necks, trust me ... that's the best revenge
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