I can’t say enough good things about this story:
The truth turned out to be simpler: The employee had contracted a Chinese consulting firm to do his job for him for around one fifth of his salary
Now, I’ve worked in the outsourcing industry so I know you can’t promote the merits of outsourcing and at the same time suggest that this guy was somehow hurting the company. Well you can but it’s very hypocritical.
At any time, completely out of his control, his job could have been outsourced to China. But he didn’t wait. Sure – he’s clearly done the wrong thing under current contracts with his employer. But that will change over time.
Remember when the internet was new and everybody thought that it would mean “big companies” would be smaller? It didn’t happen because the same technology was available for big companies to use internally and thereby retain their size. This is the same – all of the technology to outsource is available to individuals as well as large corporations.
Information security is going to be extremely important because this stuff cannot be stopped. No organisation wants to waste time forcing individuals to be less productive by forcing them to do the work themselves.