That's not really the point. The point is that the company is patting themselves on the back for firing someone who, by their own description, sounds like they could've provided a ton of value with better management (and even did, at first.) There's nobody who should be patting themselves on the back in this story. It's a story of a bunch of incompetent managers and a programmer that couldn't manage himself, and evidently someone high up in the company that's proud of this somehow.