Many people dream of putting a difficult job behind them for good. But what would you do if, more than a year after being laid off, the company that let you go suddenly reached out asking for help?
That question sparked a lively discussion on Reddit after a former company director revealed that the CEO who had terminated his employment unexpectedly emailed him about an IT problem. The issue, according to the post, was that multi-factor authentication (MFA) for several important company email accounts was apparently still tied to the former employee’s personal phone number.
Posting in the r/InterviewCheaters subreddit, the user said he had worked as a director at a mid-sized company before it was sold. Following the acquisition and a corporate reorganization, he began reporting to a new CEO, who eventually let him go despite meeting his performance targets.
“I ended up reporting to a new CEO, who let me go after about 14 months even though I had met my targets,” the Redditor wrote. “It's been about 13 months since then, and I just got an email from the CEO asking me to help them with something.”
A severance dispute that complicated the IT layoff
The former executive explained that his departure had been anything but smooth. Around the same time, the company also laid off its IT lead and head of accounting. He said the initial severance package was so small that he asked his brother-in-law, an employment lawyer, to negotiate on his behalf.
According to the post, those negotiations resulted in a significantly improved agreement. “They offered a very small severance package, so I had my BIL, who is an employment lawyer, send them demand letters and negotiate,” he wrote. “In the end, he got me about 5x the original severance.”
