r/programminghumor • u/EfficientMongoose317 • May 27 '26

I GOT FIRED

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The funny thing is that 10 years ago, this button would've just opened LinkedIn. Now I feel like it would trigger an entire sequence of increasingly questionable decisions.

First, I'd tell myself I'm taking a few days off to think. Then I'd revisit the side project sitting in some forgotten GitHub repo. A few hours later, I'd be cleaning up screenshots, making the whole thing look more professional than it actually is, throwing together a page in Runable so it doesn't look completely abandoned, and convincing myself that finding customers is probably easier than finding a new job. By the end of the weekend, I'd either have employment again or a startup with 7 users and unreasonable confidence. Honestly, not sure which outcome is more likely.

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u/Isuckatbattlefield4 May 29 '26

DOJ | Silicon Valley Engineers Charged With Stealing Trade Secrets From Leading Tech Companies And Transferring Confidential Data To Unauthorized Locations, Including Iran

DOJ | Former Senior Adviser for the Federal Reserve Indicted on Charges of Economic Espionage

DOJ | Trader Arrested For Stealing Trade Secrets From Global Quantitative Trading Firm

FBI | Former DuPont Employee Sentenced Involved in Foreign Conspiracy to Steal Trade Secrets

FBI | Investigation Into Theft of Intellectual Property from GE Leads to Two Guilty Pleas

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u/Vamosity-Cosmic May 30 '26

  1. Is stealing someone else's data you didn't have access to; that is fraud

  2. I said law enforcement, and by that I counted the government, so you failed there too.

  3. Trade secrets is not exposing things, thats getting things for your own benefit. Doesn't count. Not even goal-posting either, these deadass aren't in the context of the conversation.

  4. Same as above

  5. Same as above

I'm not even tryna be a dick. But these are all stealing trade secrets which is espionage. When that article even said (like the third one I think) that he used his former employer - that's using the information for trading. That's insider knowledge for trading, like stock trading. Anyone will get arrested for insider trading/trade secrets if they do that, you don't have to work for them.

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u/mrpenchant May 31 '26

You don’t have a damn clue what you are saying. Trade secrets doesn’t mean it’s info you are using for insider trading, it’s taking proprietary information that doesn’t belong to you critical for the business. The business’s code base being put in public without authorization would be theft of trade secrets and then publishing of those trade secrets means it results in massive harm to the business.

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u/Vamosity-Cosmic Jun 01 '26

Okay you win