Just wanted to run this through a few more people to check my sanity.

Last year wasn't so good for our company and we had to cut down the salary of the four shareholders in order to avoid firing an employee. I took a pay cut of 30% and my boss took a pay cut of 80% (equating his salary with mine). This allowed us to ensure that our business plan will carry us through 2009 no matter what. At the beginning of this year we informed our employees of the facts, assuring them that no one would be fired during 2009 for economic reasons no matter what happened.

At that point, one of our employees asked that we keep him informed if anything changed because he has a family to fend for. This guy worked as a software developer. Super-smart as a coder, with a lot of personality quirks that affected his job but I lived with it because the guy delivered, and who hasn't some rough edges anyway?

At the end of September we started laying out our business plan for 2010. Some new leads have turned up but the sales process for our products is rather long so we had to look at best-case and worst-case scenarios. As it turned out, the worst-case scenario necessitated that we slightly reduce our costs even further by firing one person. We selected the person that had the least involvement in projects and that turned out to be the aforementioned developer. At the beginning of October I broke the news to him. I indicated that if no new sale or a very strong possibility of a new sale materialized until the end of the year, we would have to let him go at 31/12 - until then he would still be with us and paid his normal salary. If we had to lay him off, he would get his legal compensation which was 3 monthly salaries. I was very careful to explain that this was a possibility and not a certainty and that it had nothing to do with him as a person or developer. He wasn't thrilled with joy of course but was reasonable and even thanked us for giving him this heads-up.

Three days later he said to me that he preferred to be fired immediately because he didn't feel to be a part of the company anymore. He also indicated that he thinks we played him, that we're just trying to make him quit so we can save up on his salary and compensation. When I asked what happened that changed his mind about the subject so radically in three days he said to me to forget what he said three days ago. For the next few days he was in the office for a few hours only without asking anyone for permission or taking a leave of absence. Just today my boss returned from an international trip and he had a face-to-face with the guy. Upon hearing that he thinks that we're just trying to make him quit he went ballistic, a lot of angry words were exchanged and he was fired on the spot. After the guy left, my boss said that he would pay him his salaries for this whole year plus his proper compensation but he doesn't want him to set foot in the premises again - I'm not sure that he won't rethink and just pay him his legal compensation but, knowing him, he may do just what he said.

This situation is obviously not very pleasant for anyone, especially for the ex-employee. It was a bit of an emotional blow for me personally to have a person that worked for me more than three years think that we were just trying to con him, especially after the fact that all shareholders of the company voluntarily cut a good chunk out of their own pay checks before considering firing people. However, I feel that we did all we could and were extremely fair with him.

I'm posting this here because I'd just like to hear opinions by people in this forum who are detached from the situation.