Amen to that. Part of the job of a manager is to look out for the people doing the actual work. Taking ten large from a trusting employee is bad. Blaming the employee for leaving the cover sheet off his TPS reports is worse.
So none of the responsibility of what happened belongs to the OP?
I am not siding with his former employer, but anyone who has any work experience knows that they should make sure the cheques have cleared as soon as they have an idea that they want to leave.
It's a cynical view, but people should always expect a company to be less than cooperative once they leave, even when the company is in the wrong. I have found this to be even more true when dealing with smaller companies and startups.
When money is involved, it's better to be realistic than idealistic.
It's your own responsibility to tie up loose ends before you leave. After you leave, you should work with the assumption that you'll be the only adult at the table when dealing with your former employer.
If you get beat up walking down the street, is that your responsibility? Sure, in the sense that any idiot can always find ways that you could have avoided it if only you had done something differently. And in the very obvious sense that nobody else can suffer through the pain of a broken nose for you.
Seriously, it's not common sense to assume that an employer will behave stupidly once you announce your intention to leave? You should assume that you'll get walked out when you hand in your resignation, and that after that, your former employer will not play nice.
In small companies, I've seen owners contemplate/prepare nuisance lawsuits just to make examples out of recently exited people for sheer pettiness. And these were employers who would have been perceived as stand-up guys before the people quit.
It's a pretty old rule of thumb that you get your ducks in a row before quitting, just like you shouldn't accept any counteroffers from your employer after you hand in your resignation.
The OP gets some sympathy from me for getting shafted, but he gets no sympathy for being naive about how to leave a company.
Isn't it common sense to assume that there are dangerous people in the world? People getting assaulted should have known and taken appropriate precautions. I don't have any sympathy for them. Don't they read the papers?
You're not getting it. With hindsight, you can always find a way to blame a victim. It's great fun: you get the chance to look knowing and smug, and your success rate in predicting the past is 100%.
Don't kick people when they're down. You end up looking like a heartless jerk.
He's not a victim of a random crime (per your analogy, which to me is not apt), he's a victim of his own naivete and inexperience.
In the same way you had better know to take all of your most expensive gadgets out of your soon-to-be ex-girlfriend's apartment before you break up with her (lest they get smashed with a hammer), he should have done the same.
This is not even close to rocket science. To assume that people will behave like adults when you sever a relationship with them is extremely naive.
It was the company's responsibility (too) that there was no database backup when he wiped it.
It will be the company's responsibility when the referred employee hears about this and has a diminished reputation of the company. Will it bite them in the ass? Probably. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, maybe in a year when things get hectic and the referred employee sees no reason to be loyal to these guys...
>> It was the company's responsibility (too) that there was no database backup when he wiped it.
I always say "If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail." I'm seeing a pattern here in the OP's behavior that led to him wiping the database and his naive reliance on his former employer to do the right thing before exiting the company. This guy has no clue about how to contingency plan.
As for the company, shame on them, but that kind of douchy behaviour is rampant in startups and small companies. You always need to look out for your own personal financial interests first with startups, no matter how 'collegial' the work environment is.
