I have to admit, I posted a story on here about another company and I added a very nice ending to it. In actual fact, the story does not end happily and I would like to tell you more about what happened.
The story comes to me from another developer who was cheated out of patents and cheated out of credit for their work. In this case, that developer was a woman.
This is the story of the whistle-blower who told upper management and HR about corruption that was going on with the middle management. Upper management did nothing at the time, and years later, when the corruption became much more apparent, they were no longer at the company. Because they were officers of the company at the time the corruption was reported, originally, they were liable for damages to those people who were hurt because of their own inaction.
They went about supposedly cleaning up the corrupt management at that later time, even though they were no longer at the company. They were involved because they were afraid of their own liability. These two upper managers had spent 20+ years in upper management. They knew every trick in the book about how to cover their as--s while pretending to be helping others.
They caught and removed much of the corruption, but only eliminated them from the company, when many of them were actually criminals who should have been prosecuted. Those criminals later went on to harm many more people as no one actually did anything.
The woman developer was at the center of the story, because she was not only the inventor who had been wronged, but she was the whistle-blower on the corruption. No one would take action and she was forced to leave the company because of the corrupt people she would have had to continue to work with.
Years later, she found out about the cleanup effort by the upper management duo in a round-about way. She knew that the two upper management guys were pretty corrupt in their own way. She knew they would likely lie their way through everything and in the end do nothing real about any of the criminal activity, other than whatever was needed to cover their own liability.
She found out that one of the tactics of the upper management was to tell everyone that an investigation would be made, and that all the problems they had had at the company would be investigated. Employees that had been wronged were comforted and told it would all be taken care of. Some were laid off and/or made to sign NDAs saying they would not take action against the company, while all the while being told that an investigation was going to take place.
They were told that some of the corrupt management would go to jail.
When the duo told employees about the investigation to come, they used an example that this woman developer was very familiar with, as it was what was done to her. Patents stolen, credit taken for things that she did. She knew that this had happened years and years ago, and yet the upper management duo was promising to investigate this, and other crimes like it. They promised over and over again that the person responsible for the fraud would be prosecuted.
They lied and told people that there was plenty of time to do the investigation as there was no statute of limitations on fraud. She knew that was a lie.
She was prevented from speaking to people; other people were prevented from speaking to her. She could see that the upper management duo had lots of money and power and she was horribly distressed to see people being lied to about an investigation that she knew was long past the statute of limitations and could never be prosecuted.
She tried in vain to contact people, to warn anyone she could that they should not listen to the duo talking about the fake investigation, because she knew what they were doing.
Promise an investigation but never deliver it.
Time went by and no one took their own action for the things that had been done to them, because they believed an investigation was coming. Years went by, and the duo promised always that "next week" something would happen. The employees wondered why nothing ever happened, but they trusted the men with the money and the power and every trick in the book.
When the statute of limitations had passed for everything the duo were worried about, they then said "Oh, I guess that crime we were looking at has already passed the statute of limitations. Oh, sorry, nothing we can do. Too bad, you should have been watching out for yourselves but you trusted us instead. Too bad for you."
When, really the crime was ALREADY passed the statute of limitations all along, and they knew it. It was just an easy carrot to put in front of everyone. Something where the employees thought it would be taken care of, and they would not have to do much to make it happen.
The duo knew, people would want to believe. They knew. The con artist in each of them knew how to manipulate the people involved.
At the heart of every con, is a lie that the mark WANTS to believe.
The criminals all went free. They were paid by the company when they left, and they went on to just get jobs in other companies and continue to manipulate, lie, cheat and steal their way through the rest of their lives. They hurt and traumatized many, many people.
They had done exactly that for over twenty years at the first company. The developer knew others along the way, who suddenly were gone and did not get jobs for quite some time afterwards. Traumatized people? Seemed likely to her, knowing how badly she was abused at the time she left.
When no one took any action to stop the criminals, they simply started up again elsewhere. Many people were hurt because no one took any action.
That is the real end of the story.
The moral of the story is: If you don't stand up for yourselves, someone else will simply trample all over you, and when there are no consequences, they will do it to everyone else as well.
They will do it simply because you let them and because they can.
She tried, she really tried. It is difficult to warn people when they really want to believe in something.