Incompetence all around

First off, destroying a network of a former employer is a stupid idea, there is always evidence and once you get a felony your life is pretty much over. If you are going to do this, use a connection in another state and use cash the whole day while giving your credit card to a mate to use while you are out of town. Or the best option of not doing it in the first place.

As for the company, who leaves an account that can delete VMs just laying around and still working after several months? Also, why is this even possible from outside of the company, and from an untrusted network at that.

Icon because neither party knows how IT should be run.

Revenge of the nerd

Fail on 2 levels. Fail on the perp for creating chaos and mayhem for his ex-coworkers just so he can feel better about getting sacked. Imagine one of your collegues gets canned, the next day you come into work and key systems are inaccessible, phone is ringing of the hook, panic rages throughout the floor. You know just from the tidbits of information you gleaned that a major meltdown has occurred and that this is going to be a week from hell. You already had backlogs and backlogs of work because your staff has been cut to the bone resulting in your coming into work when it was dark outside and leaving work when it was dark outside. And now this, caused by whats'isname?

Jason Cornish's life is over. I'm sure he's popular (for a few hours) with all the script kiddies in IRC and underground forums, they go for this kind of stuff. Ask them for a job Jason because no one else will want to hire you.

Once again another sod who has no business working as IT admin or the in this field at all. If you want recognition and appreciation IT is not for you. You get your paycheck. That's it. Period. Lose the rose-colored glasses and forget everything you were promised by the tech school adverts. You are and always will be viewed as an overpaid factory worker by management. You want recognition and appreciaton? Become a sales guy bringing in high volume accounts to your firm, you will be GREATLY appreciated. You'd have to lose the neckbeard though and wear clean shirts from now on.

Fail #2 on the company. Most firms I've worked at including this one cancel all system access prior to notifying you of your termination. SecurID, Email, everything. An engineer who worked with my staff called me in June around 9pm telling me that his email wasn't working. He contacted help desk which informed him that his account was terminated and couldn't answer any other questions. I checked my email and found notification that all systems passwords had changed and new passwords would be provided the following morning at a meeting. So basically yea he was canned.

Sad for both of us really since to me he was a valuable technical resource and was always professional in his demeanor (something rare in IT). I forwarded him a letter of recommendation and he has already found another job. But that's part of working in IT and being a professional. It's just a job, you take nothing personal, don't bring your work life home or your home life to work. I see lots of desks with pictures of wives/girlfriends/kids/pets etc. I have no personal effects whatsoever on my desk (only in my phone), there's only calendars, schedules, diagrams and other work-related documentation. It's part of my philosophy and acceptance that I am only here temporarily. The day my pink slip arrives there's no "cleaning out my desk". The only personal propery I have here are my 2 phone chargers, and they're spares anyway. They can keep'em.