Comment by gjm11
16 years ago
Did he stay a long time? It doesn't look that way to me from the article, but maybe I just missed something.
http://thesensibletechnocrat.blogspot.com/2009/06/third-day-... seems to imply that he started there in June 2009. http://thesensibletechnocrat.blogspot.com/2009/10/moral-impe... seems to imply he was still there in October.
... Ooh, and all four parts of the story of which the OP here is part 3 are together in one handy bundle at http://thesensibletechnocrat.blogspot.com/2010/03/dubai-and-... .
So, he was apparently there for at least 4 months and at most 9 months. I wouldn't call that "a long time" in this context.
However long he worked there, he didn't bite the hand that was feeding him, but when the party was over he did turn around to bite the hand that fed him.
Being moral about the NDA does not weigh up against working there in the first place, and I don't know what $16 K means to a high profile Dubai consultant, it may have been substantially less than the severance pay he was entitled to anyway.
I don't think anyone was claiming that being moral about the NDA does "weigh up" against working there in the first place. If he were trying to paint a glowing picture of his own morals, he wouldn't have written the article in the first place.
(Since he appears to have been there for something like 6 months before getting fired, I'll hazard a guess that his severance pay wasn't all that spectacular.)
10 K+ per month is not unusual, and depending on his contract they may have to 'buy you out' (for instance, after three months they might have signed a years contract with you including the first three months).
So the severance could be anywhere from $5K up to a very substantial amount of money. The fact that they're willing to pay another $16K just for signing an NDA suggests it was a pretty high salary.
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Comparing the writing there against the versions published in The Tech is a good case for the importance of editing.