Fired for refusing to help a pharmaceutical company kill people...

lthorne submitted 606 days ago

Great site! After reading some other posts, I decided I had to share my story.

I was a developer for a large Internet Service Provider as well as a global financial company in lower Manhattan. After 9/11, the bottom fell out of the market, and I was unemployed (with a nice severance).

In late 2001 I took a position with a development/graphic design company in Midtown that wanted to get into Enterprise Web Development services (they were doing PowerPoint presentations and had a nice little sweat shop downstairs). They also realized their business plan was a dinosaur, considering that the average JR High student could do PowerPoint presentations.

I should have known these people were clueless when I saw all the spelling errors in my contract and offer letter! My second clue was when we met with a prospective client about developing a web based learning system. I discussed the option of using a Content Management System (CMS) to manage content/training packs to generate content dynamically, rather than hard coding a bunch of HTML documents and forms.

The client loved the idea, and after my manager and I left the meeting, they proceeded to ask the VP questions about CMS's and how they worked. He was alone with the client and did not know what a CMS was, nor had he ever even heard the term.

I was later brought into the VP's office and told not to " use words that he didn't know the meaning of".. :confused:

How the hell was I supposed to know the width and breadth (or lack) of HIS vocabulary. They hired me because I was the best! (and still am).

A month later, we were told that one of their other clients (A large pharmaceutical company), wanted us to build their sales team new presentation software.

They wanted to limit the ability to PRINT and LEAVE BEHIND data from Drug Trials. The Drug Trial data showed that a certain little pill was killing people, and they wanted to help their sales guys hide these facts from Doctors and more importantly, Patients. :eek:

I had serious ethical issues with this, it was the VP, CEO and my manager that wanted it built, and I was under a non-disclosure contract at the time, so I wrote some of the worst god awful, useless, non-modular, non-linear, right brained code anyone had ever seen.

Imagine 1400 lines of code in one gigantic If Then statement! HA HA HA
It was truly a thing of horrific, abstract beauty. The BETA version sorta did was it was supposed to - LOL

Anyway, when the religious nutball (who used to pray during lunch after he found out I was non-christian) manager realized what I was up to, I was let go. You should have seen the veins in his simple little head pop out during my exit interview. He had printed out all my code (LOL), and almost lost it when I refused to care about my job! :p

I now own my own consulting company, I don't make what I used to, but I'm happy, AND I DON'T HELP CORPORATIONS KILL PEOPLE JUST TO MAKE A BUCK. :)

-LT