There's a story that has emerged today about a developer - as yet referred to only as "Bob". He worked for a US-based infrastructure company. He made a six-figure salary. Here was his typical day:

• 9:00 a.m. – Arrive and surf Reddit for a couple of hours. Watch cat videos.
• 11:30 a.m. – Take lunch.
• 1:00 p.m. – Ebay time.
• 2:00 – ish p.m Facebook updates – LinkedIn.
• 4:30 p.m. – End of day update e-mail to management.
• 5:00 p.m. – Go home.

(Schedule from Verizon.)

Unbeknownst to the company, he had outsourced all his work to China - at the cost of less than a fifth of his salary. And according to reports, he was also running the same work model at multiple companies, earning “several hundred thousand dollars a year”. He had been known as one of the best developers there - he won several awards for his work.

The company described him like this:

Employee profile –mid-40′s software developer versed in C, C++, perl, java, Ruby, php, python, etc. Relatively long tenure with the company, family man, inoffensive and quiet. Someone you wouldn’t look at twice in an elevator.

Yet clearly this "family man" had spotted something his company hadn't - outsourcing development work to China was a very good idea. They didn't see it like that though - Bob got the sack. This is a shame: after all, according to his colleagues:

His [work] was clean, well written, and submitted in a timely fashion. Quarter after quarter, his performance review noted him as the best developer in the building.

Someone give this man another job (or six).