'Sorry, I deleted all the files': Software designer wipes terabytes of disks clean at boss's request, management panics six months later

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Aug 26, 2024 3:00 PM EDT

Some lessons are only learned the hard way, as these bosses found out after making a critical mistake. 

Backing up your creations, whether it be writing, data, or video files, is crucial. It's an easy thing to overlook: you think to yourself, "Oh, I'll back it up later." But the first time you accidentally lose four days of work on your video edit, or find yourself staring at a blank Word document that used to be 15 pages long, you realize just how critical it is to have redundancies. Suddenly, it does seem important to save that work ASAP! 

This person, u/oldman712, was exceptionally good at saving their work. They'd spent thousands of dollars over the years on their own personal data drive disks. These contained not just their current work, but past work as well. So when this person was asked to leave their job, they needed to take those personal drives too. Their job seemed to barely care about this at all, and just asked that all the data be deleted. Okay, whatever you say…

Up next, this bad manager kept insisting that a teenage worker wasn't qualified to do oil changes, so the worker gleefully bugged him for an entire day, saying, "He seems annoyed." 

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  • 01
    Sorry, I deleted all the files you told me to delete.
    via u/oldman712
  • 02
    My job was to design and write software prototypes for individual high-value customers. If they liked it well enough, then a real software engineering team would build the real product. Occasionally, I would run the prototype for a few months while the customer evaluated if they wanted to buy the real project.
    via u/oldman712
  • 03
    Now these prototypes are not a lot of code, but they do run with a lot of data. Even compressed, it can be a terabyte or more. Having done this work for years, I've accumulated a small disk farm of past projects, which can be very useful when a customer asks for something just like we did last year, but with a small change or two. The company resisted buying hard drives for this, but it saves me so much time, I ended up buying one or two a year myself until I accumulated about 10 of them. Figure
    via u/oldman712
  • 04
    Then unexpectedly management changes, new management thinks they can replace old software guy with a cheaper new software grad and I am laid off, with two weeks to "train" my replacement. (Yes, it's blatant age discrimination, but impossible to fight, so I just went for a graceful transition to my next job.)
    via u/oldman712
  • 05
    Except, I have $1000 of personal disk drives with old customer data on them. Company insists that no ex-employees may take any company data off premises and all files must be deleted. I don't want to just leave the drives at the company, but they insist I must delete all data before taking them home. So I offer: 1. They can buy them from me 2. I will eventually use them for something else, but I can leave the data on them in case someone needs it
    via u/oldman712
  • 06
    Not good enough. New manager insists I must delete all data and all backups before I remove the drives. Okay. That's what I do. Six months later, I get a series of desperate phone calls. New software grad has been unable to build any new prototypes. Old customers are calling to get old prototypes updated, and new software grad has no idea how to do that. Executive VP is calling to ask what would it take to bring me back to do my old job.
    via u/oldman712
  • 07
    Sorry, I've got a new job now. And even if I didn't, I cannot just modify the old prototype because you insisted I delete all old copies of it. If I did want to modify it, I'd first have to re- create it from scratch. The code still exists in their source control, but the data is the heart of the prototypes. And that old series of six month's apart data we collected is gone for good, no matter what.
    via u/oldman712
  • 08
    Sorry, you screwed yourselves exactly like I told you would happen. Hope whatever you saved by hiring a new grad to replace an actual experienced programmer was worth it.
    via u/oldman712
  • 09
    KastorNevierre I had a similar experience while working as a contractor. I was brought on to work on an open source platform, a linux based custom CMS for call center agents at a large firm. 6 months into the contract, they decide we have to integrate with a microsoft LDAP service. I've never touched the thing before, but I give it a try. They give me some scuffed 14GB VMware hard drive files to boot as the LDAP server instead of an actual integration, and I can't get these things to work. Of co
    via u/KastorNevierre
  • 10
    After those two weeks I get a call that I'm being let go from the contract because "it's not a good sign that I can't get the development environment running" - never mind that I've singlehandedly built 70% of their entire platform and demoed it to them 3 times along the way. So after the call is over, they send me an email giving me parting instructions, and one of the steps on the list is to delete all files related to my work immediately and that I have 24 hours to comply. Remember how I said
    via u/KastorNevierre
  • 11
    A week later the project manager calls me up, telling me they have a git server now and I need to upload my code. I say "What are you talking about? You instructed me under threat of legal repercussions to delete those files last Tuesday." He just kinda sounds flabberghasted at that point. He tries to walk through not paying me out for my last month of work, and I say "No no, I have that time billed and labeled out for each thing I did. It's not my responsibility to make sure you have the delive
    via u/KastorNevierre
  • 12
    jippyzippylippy I had a similar thing happen with a small architect firm. I had my own design firm (now retired) and had been designing and updating their site for about 5 years. At the end of the final year, they told me that I was charging too much for any changes to the site (even though I had given them tons of freebies) and they were going to get a younger "more hip" designer that could do things faster and cheaper. They wanted me to give them all the files and delete what I had on my end.
    via u/jippyzippylippy
  • 13
    About a year later, they called me in a panic saying that the new person screwed up their site, it was not running correctly and that they couldn't find the CD I sent them. No back-up! And somehow this person also erased all of the old files on their server as well, so had nothing to start over with. Apparently she was doing a re-design on the fly and just writing over the old files without backing anything up. But they didn't like the re-design and wanted to put the old site back up until they
    via u/jippyzippylippy
  • 14
    nofunheremovealongg Workmates partner was in this exact scenario: training inadequate replacement ( IMO- adding insult to injury), deleting all backups over his objections, frantic kiss up phone call 4 months later. "What would it take to get you back?" "I'd consider it for (outrageous eye- watering) figure." A few futile negotiation attempts later, they actually agreed to his figure. At which point he said "Thanks, as promised, I've now considered it. NO."
    via u/nofunheremovealongg
  • 15
    valathel Many moons ago I worked as an engineering liaison to marketing writing prototypes we would demo during the BAFO phase of the proposal process. My company refused to give me access to the CM tool developers used since I was in the marketing dept on the org chart. At a convention I was displaying some of my prototypes and a local competitor offered me nearly double to take the role of technical lead on one of their projects, signed the contract, and handed in my 2 week notice. On my last
    via u/valathel
  • 16
    "We can offer you a raise if you come back" "Nope" click I still laugh when I think about it.
    via u/valathel
  • 17
    b_gumiho omg this reminds me of a somewhat similar circumstance. A SAAS company I used to work for was B2B so businesses would purchase our software to help them run a financial side of their business. Because of US Tax record laws we guaranteed that we would keep customer data, even if they left us, for at least 7 years. (In reality, we never hard deleted anyone's data, just archived it) Well, well, well... this small company owner leaves us and calls in to have all of his data deleted. "Sorry,
    via u/b_gumiho
  • 18
    well, well, well... two years later guess who is going through a tax audit and NEEDS this financial data to prove he wasn't embezzling (or whatever?) HA! We happily sent him a copy of his delete request document and wiped our hands of him. to my dude.
    via u/b_gumiho
  • 19
    PoorlyBuiltRobot Slightly diff but I did audio work for a woman who had her own radio show and she left me hanging one day in the middle of a job. I messaged her a few times to no avail until about six months later when she sent me a and panicky email saying "You had NO RIGHT to delete all our files from Google Drive!!" etc etc. Even though I would never do this on purpose I panicked and thought maybe I had fked up. I spent a half our tracking down the files on an external (I had moved house) on
    via u/PoorlyBuiltRobot
  • 20
    Well F YOU for not even having the decency to tell me you got a new hire and just ghosting, and double f you for freaking out on me for something I didn't do. Lol freelancing can be fun.
    via u/PoorlyBuiltRobot
  • 21
    guster09 "what would it take to get you back on our team?" Well, for one, you can dissolve the worst management team that got you into this mess. Next, you can resign. Only then would I EVER even BEGIN to consider working for your cheap company again. Thank you for your time and consideration on this matter.
    via u/guster09
  • 22
    strangeangelsxx What would it take to get you back on our team? A time machine would be a good start.
    via u/strangeangelsxx
  • 23
    CaptainEasypants "What would it take to get you back?" How much you make, add a zero and then we'll talk
    via u/CaptainEasypants
  • 24
    harrywwc +3. so much pain for the want of a thousand dollars or so... manglement at its best 421 Reply Share Schlonzig One thousand dollars. That's what they would have had to spend. One thousand dollars for harddrives. If OP wouldn't have had to buy the drives with his own money, the company would have retained the data and prototypes.
    via u/harrywwc
  • 25
    themancabbage On a side note, you guys don't keep your project files in source control? 304 Reply Share oldman 712 OP Actually the code is, but part of these projects is a huge volume of data which is collected at the time the project is run. The data is NOT saved in source control. The external drives (at my own expense) was the compromise that worked for me. IT was aghast at the volume of data when I inquired about loading it onto their servers.
    via u/themancabbage
  • 26
    RJack151 +3 I hope they lost all of their business. 78 Reply Share ... oldman712 OP. No. This is just a small part of the overall business, so while it may annoy a few large customers, it would never endanger the business. I hoped (bad I know) that it might reflect poorly on the new management that decided to swap me out for a younger model, but there were never any consequences to the new management that I knew about. Maybe their bonus got reduced because the promised savings didn't materialize
    via u/RJack151
  • 27
    [deleted] This, infuriatingly, happens in sales a lot. "Oh yeah we laid Jim off last week." "You know Jim had all the proposals for the last 5 years on his computer and I assumed you've put them in a dropbox so we can get at them right?" "Ummmmm I think IT wiped his drive when he left as per policy". F ing morons everywhere. The desire to immediately wipe drives and erase emails when someone leaves cost us (at GE) millions and millions of dollars.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 28
    Now the smarter managers insist we use box to backup our systems..., except some of us get told "oh no, you can't keep commercially sensitive docs on box". I did learn in my time there to IMMEDIATELY (like within in a minute) grab IT sand say "don't fing wipe his/her box or drive, we need it" but then it would take at least a month for someone above to "approve" me or others getting access to their data because of "privacy". Like - we all work for the same company - there is NO privacy. Also orp
    via u/[deleted]
  • 29
    oldman 712 OP Any longtime employee likely has a private stash of historic documents that are very helpful in future projects. You can find all kinds of similar projects, often steal the best parts, eliminate anything that didn't work well the last time you actually tried to do it, and come up with a better plan, faster, and usually avoid some subtle pitfalls, if you have the history and knowledge to use it. But there's a lot of management types who don't believe it and still try to micromanage
    via u/oldman712
  • 30
    CoacoaBunny91 The epitome of "Congratulations, you played yourself." 374 Reply Share BrownSugarBare The sheer level of stupidity is staggering. They probably saved a few grand on firing OP and lost a hundred times that in customer base.
    via u/CoacoaBunny91

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