Ask HN: Angry at a former employer screwed me | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Angry at a former employer screwed me

I can’t get over my feelings of anger at a former employer and am trying to figure out what to do.

Many people have told me I should seek therapy. It was a very emotionally damaging experience.

I am strongly considering taking some sort of action. Talking to the media, lawyers etc.

I have anger flashes about what happened all the time. Like PTSD. These anger flashes can last days.

Some of the things they did I have documentation on which I have been sitting on. How do I handle this? I feel on the one hand I should try to avoid any further action, on the other hand I feel what happened was over some sort of professional line.

In particular, I believe I was quit fired or similar. They over hired way too many people then took the approach of trying to scare people into leaving rather than paying layoff fees. This resulted in me getting stuck in a bad situation for very long.

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Maybe you could check journalists on the tech beat and see if there are any that you feel like you could trust with your story.

It's not like 10 years ago where there was zero criticism of the tech industry in the press and it was wall-to-wall fawning, adulation, and gadget reviews. Nowadays there are several journalists who cover us with a critical eye...

Without knowing more about the specifics, it's difficult for me to form an opinion.

In a general sense, if you have the emotional wherewithal to fight it out, you probably should. I know I would.

I like to think I'm a nice guy, but I refuse to be treated like a doormat.

Since they are a former employee, what if you were to propose your revenge plan to them and see what they thought of it. They can't fire you at this point.

What would the ramifications of your plan be if you were you to execute it without warning them in advanced vs. if they had advanced warning.

It's easy to feel spite and anger. I get the urge for revenge. But before you do anything, think about how it will affect you.

Will it make you feel better? Will it heal your emotional pain and let you move past this? After those, the important questions are:

* would it be justice?

* would doing it prevent them from hurting others that they are in the position to hurt or are actively hurting?

* could this negatively impact you and your loved ones?

It's hard to know without more details, but based on what you've said, there may be a case of constructive discharge (even given the caveat that all but one US state have at-will employment). That would be worth speaking to a labor lawyer about, or your state's labor board. Many lawyers will offer a free first consultation.

This is close to what they did to me. Something close to it. They cut me out of everything related to my job. Then abused people I recruited to the company and cut them off also because they knew we were connected.

It’s really hard to prove. If they remove all your responsibilities they can then say “oh he just wasn’t doing any work.”

The management at this company was all fighting with each other: it started when they brought in an outside VP. They began fighting with my manager. And it trickles down to me.

I have some very embarrassing emails to the ceo.

It sounds like something awful happened to you. Independent of whether you confront the person publicly or not, it might not be a bad idea to do talk to someone about what happened to you and how to heal from it. Revenge is not going to heal you.

Good luck and all the best.

You should chat with a lawyer!

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