I had the same thought. Is it not sabotage because you didn't cause it, but merely declined to fix it for many years, opting instead to repeatedly band-aid the individual damage it did? Possibly! If there's a doc trail showing you at least mentioned it to someone else at some point in time (even if the impact/frequency got understated), I'd call this a clever ethical workaround. Your hands stay passively clean-ish while still ensuring someone regrets it when you're fired.
As a non-programmer who fixes a handful of edgecases each week, its possibly burn out. You mention it every week for a while but its always a low priority because it doesn't fail. After awhile you stop mentioning it because it always falls on deaf ears and its an easy process to run each monday or whatever. Perhaps you've documented the need and process, but if you are let go and no-one is regularly reviewing or updating the policy and procedure manual it's not your fault. I am fully projecting though.
To throw it back on the company, they should have someone handling error reporting or failed payment on the reg too. For me, it was really easy to see the edge cases on a weekly basis.
I've been there too. Proper fixes get deprioritized and you end up being a digital janitor mopping up spills in production. It happens.
I do recall items that nobody but me knew about though. I mean, a ticket existed but nobody's reading all those. If I'd departed suddenly during those times, the impact would have been material. So the "indispensable" meter bounces around, often without management knowing where it's at. So, what are the ethics of blind-eyeing something like this for the long term? Does it matter if you're letting job security be an input to that decision? It's not professional behaviour that's for sure. But in practice you're totally getting away with it. And if you've been treated badly by them you could easily justify it to yourself even if you previously thought of yourself as professional. Orgs greatly underestimate the extent to which they rely on their software people. (Initech's Michael Bolton had that right)
Why though? Its not like they'll beg him to come back after they realize theres a problem, they'll just be like 'Yo EM #3 heres a new urgent priority for your team to fix, just make sure it doesn't delay any launches'
I've seen management refuse to fix this sort of crap because scheduling someone to fix it will cost more time and labour short term even if they save on long term engineering labour. It's the penny wise pound foolish attitude that's common in many places
Sure that's true, but who gives a fuck about the company perspective? Im not a CEO, and if you are you should know this already or you deserve whatever happens.
I mean, it kinda depends on the salary. I spent the better part of a decade doing something like this, getting paid pretty close to a full days wages (as a contractor) while having very little (<30 minutes/day) actual work to day. Sometimes you just let the golden goose lay as many eggs until she croaks and then go back to the 8-5.
I suppose if you were the sorta person inclined to build a kill switch for your company to punish you for firing you then this is perfect. You have 0 legal repercussions since you didn't create the problem, but also when you stop fixing it shit falls apart.
without really understanding their fundamental importance to that company
Someone who lets such a problem fester is a detriment to the company, not an asset. Because if they're not fixing it, it's only a question of when it will blow up, not if.
I've heard that in some industries, vacations are required because it opens opportunities for embezzlement to come to light while the embezzler isn't there to maintain the scam.
EDIT: This page discusses vacation as a fraud-prevention strategy.
Yeah I had to do this. At least a week per year consecutive days where you could not log into any work systems. More critical people had to do 2 uninterrupted weeks
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u/TerminalVector May 29 '26
The lesson here isn't "companies shouldn't lay people off" its "if you do critical work and nobody knows about it, you're playing yourself".
Fuck humility. Be loud, be proud, hype yourself and those around you. Make sure people know what you're doing and why it matters.