Comment by hotpotamus

Yeah, it was pretty clear that they were paying you a decent chunk to not cause any trouble; I didn't need a lawyer to tell me that, but I agree that couldn't hurt as long as they aren't exorbitant. Honestly, it's my best piece of advice for any company that has to get rid of someone - money makes it better, and it's one thing that company did fairly well. I had a problematic co-worker who got fired in one spectacular event (like you see in movies) after getting into a dick measuring contest with a director or VP (forget his exact title at the time) after causing a serious outage. As far as I know he got a decent check out of the thing even though he absolutely deserved to be let go.