I hear you.

I worked with someone for 6 years. He was there before me. I really like him. Present tense, we still keep in contact. We occasionally went out together. We know things about each other that no one else does. I just wrote a program for him.

And then my boss told me he was probably going to be fired in about 3 weeks.

And that he should have not told me.

And if I told him, then we would both be fired, along with my boss for telling me. And I couldn't go petition to keep him, since that would show my boss' boss that I knew, which would then cause my boss to be fired since he was not supposed to tell me.

So I stuffed it down. And I went to lunch with him almost everyday from then on. I tried to guide him into enough REALLY good behaviour that might cause people to change their mind. He wasn't that bad, but he wasn't that good. He was smart, undisciplined, and an occasional time waster.

He wasn't in my department, so it was not like I could pick up his workload. And I don't know that I would, since that is a valid reason you fire people, when they won't do their work (assuming reasonable amount of it).

One time coming back from lunch he mentioned he was considering getting a new car. His was a bit older. I told him he couldn't afford it. He responded that he made plenty of money. His last department transfer gave him 15% raise. I argued against the car, making something up about expensive family stuff coming up. He didn't get it.

He called me right after they fired him. He asked if I was busy changing his password. Not my area anymore.

This guy may have had the highest IQ in the IT dept. He was very very smart, but he was so full of anger & hostility directed at anyone who didn't see things the way he did. He particularly disliked all the current management after his immediate manager departed (others told me that this manager never applied any discipline to him which was why they got on so well).

His new manager 'hated' him (and told me so) his former manager was 'released' as job no longer needed (read that as you will). (I didn't like his new manager any more than he did).

But this guy had lots of very smart ideas & needed someone willing to document them (he was a lousy at documenting) and so I decided to (as an architect) step into that role to support him. He took a liking to me & I did what I could to calm him down & tell him that bitching about the managers was not in his best interests especially as these were 'mostly' reasonable people. I tried to explain to him that managers tended to lose their technical expertise over time & thus would increasingly rely on intuition & playing devil's advocate with new ideas or suggestions and that it was not fair to expect them to have his brilliant insights or to see them straight away, expect weeks or months to pass.

After a couple of months I commented to one of the managers that as much as I liked the guy (I kind of saw him as a son), he was a lost cause. Anyway, I later got appointed as one of two mediators/conciliators in our IT department (250 people). 2 months later this guy and one other decided they wanted to leave.

A lot of the friction & bickering in IT went with him. I was sorry to see a good mind leave but realised it was going to be for the better in IT.

But to get back to the problems you guys have described, it is never easy.

My sympathy is there.

Doug M

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