CEO threatens to fire last remaining engineer after their teammates quit, forcing the company to cancel the project they were working on: 'You want to fire me? Oh yes please'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Mar 4, 2025 6:00 PM EST

There's a certain value in knowledge and experience and novelty that's why things like patents and copyright and NDAs and noncompete agreements exist. Companies use these types of things all the time to protect their "knowledge" and "retain" it. I even know a barista who was asked to sign an NDA by a boutique cafe over their process for preparing (barista-ing?) coffees… even though they prepared coffee exactly the same as any other cafe in existence. Don't get me wrong, it's really easy to make a bad cup of joe but and NDA… really?

This incessant drive to retain the knowledge and uniqueness of a company is why it's all the more confusing that this same effort and vigor isn't put into staff retention, you know, to keep the people around whose brains and muscle memory hold the keys to that same company's success and processes—whose ideas developed that same success and process.

In fact, they'll go as far as to have mass layoffs of the most experienced staff to keep the cost of labor at a minimum… even though the company is still profitable? 

Wait… What?

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  • The resulting brain drain that comes from layoffs and plain old turnover from toxic workplace culture and practice eventually comes around to bring even the largest, most storied companies down—at least a peg or two. But it comes long after the injustice that the workers have suffered. 

    It didn't take long, however, for this project to come to a standstill after the CEO of this company forced out the last developer on the team, leaving an unmanned project of which nobody knew the ins and outs, hurtling in a burning shell off the bridge of progress into cancellation.

  • 01
    "He was holding a grudge because I once didn't answer my phone at 6:29 PM when work ended at 6:30 PM..."
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 02

    "You want to fire me? Oh yes please"

    I don't know if this is MC enough, but I liked this sub too much and I've never done anything remotely close before so.. here it is. I joined a startup's Al team, which consisted of just three people including myself, with the other two being more senior. We spent about a year developing a product that was gaining traction with new clients.
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 03
    Then everything changed when our CEO decided that regular team-based sprints (basically once a day check-ins) weren't "effective enough." Instead, EVERY team member had to become a "head" of a project, organizing, managing, and running separate daily scrums. Typically, each of us was assigned to 4-6 different scrums, completely destroying any sensible resource planning.
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 04
    This was the breaking point for the two senior members in my team, who promptly decided to quit. I tried to stick it out, but the CEO started giving me sh** all of a sudden. I believe he was holding a grudge because I once didn't answer my phone at 6:29 PM when work ended at 6:30 PM. I called him at 7, but apparently that wasn't enough.
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 05
    After that, instead of talking to me directly, he would just speak to one of the seniors (who hadn't yet announced his resignation), and that senior was supposed to relay that to me. But... he was ready to quit and wasn't really that helpful. And with the work management going nuts, everything was just going to sh**
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 06
    if I mean.. engineering becomes you don't know the intentions, but he just kept giving me tasks without an explanation. So I had a one-on-one with the CEO, and asked him to tell me what he wants directly. This suggestion set him off. He implied that "this isn't working out," clearly suggesting my time at the company was coming to an end. Knowing what I knew about our codebase being built in Langchain and runnables (notorious for their poor readability), and that, well, all of the members are qui
    via Think_Trouble9616

    (The author accidentally leaves out here that they, too, quit their job—as implied earlier and in the TLDR)

  • 07
    That was about a year ago. I now saw them putting out a news article, first PR they've done so far since I left. Yap, the entire project that we developed for about a year, gone and replaced with something completely new and generic. Can't say I'm not happy seeing that product crumble.
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 08
    TLDR: CEO implemented a chaotic work structure that made two senior devs quit. When I suggested direct communication instead of going through a middleman, CEO implied I should leave. I complied, knowing our codebase would be impossible for newcomers to understand. A year later, they've completely scrapped our promising product and replaced it with something generic and inferior.
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 09
    KikiHou 3h ago • Not that I wish harm on people, but sometimes it's nice to see something fail after you haven't been treated well.
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 10
    Divineinfinity 4h ago . I had fun reading this either way
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 11
    Ambitious-Ganache891 · 3h ago I appreciate you sharing your story. It's short, simple, and an entertaining explanation of your situation. Definitely compliant. Borderline malicious at best. But good for you for recognizing the situation and getting yourself outta there. I am sorry your hard work was wasted.
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 12
    Sagaincolours • 2h ago I am missing the part of your story where you left. You only write that in the TL;DR
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 13
    ratherBwarm • 2h ago . I was a IT manager working with senior integrated circuit designers, creating world class cutting edge IC's. I was present several times when the CEO called to ream out a designer for not being "on schedule". The schedule was an arbitrary time frame, because these guys were pushing the limits of our tech. Turns out the CEO had over promised certain big customers, to stall them from buying parts from our competitors. I understand that's the game he had to play.
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 14
    Belittling and browbeating these designers had negative effects. They could get jobs at any of the competitors for more $$'s. In several cases they did finish the design and left.
    via Think_Trouble9616
  • 15
    • jpl77 3h ago You say the CEO's chaotic changes made the senior devs quit, and you followed by complying with the situation, knowing the product would fail. But here's the thing - you didn't mention if you actually left for another job after this happened. You say the product was scrapped a year later, but what happened to you in that year? Did you stick around, or did you just walk away without any plan? If the company's structure was already falling apart, what was your move?
    via Think_Trouble9616

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workplace discussion employment issues antiwork workplace-stories jobs employee employment-discussion job work employees overworked-employees workplace Horrible Bosses employment in the workplace
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