I joined the company after their Series A financing around. I was personally recruited by the VP of Engineering, the CEO, and several other employees with whom I'd worked in the recent past. I'd known the management team and many other employee for ten years or more.
After three years of hard work, I got fired for being chronically ill, only a day or two after being assured by the CEO himself that the company would help me through my illness. I never missed a deadline or dropped a deliverable; instead, management decided I wasn't doing my job because I wasn't in my chair 24/7. A few weeks before I was fired, I'd pulled two 36-hour "shifts" to prepare a deliverable for another short-notice release. However, no one bothered to mention that the release had been postponed.
When I later ran into the CEO in public and gave him a smart-ass salute, the company retained a *private security company* to track and intimidate me. I wonder how Avere's financial people accounted for that expense.
Let's be clear: By terminating me, management disregarded ADA, FMLA, local laws, and *their own employee policies* (I was not given the 'bad performance' warnings required by the employee handbook). But hey, Bianchini made yet another kajillion bucks for himself by selling his soul and then (another) company, which is the only thing that counts.
The kind of employee Avere wants is the engineer who had frickin' walking pneumonia and missed only half a day of work. I'm sure the big bosses appreciated his and others' sacrifices when they made personal killings upon finally finding a willing acquisitor.