Reddit's Viral Thread Reveals Why Companies Fail: Firing the Wrong Person

A Reddit thread in r/AskReddit just exposed some of the most jaw-dropping workplace failures imaginable, and the common theme is brutal: companies that fired or pushed out their most critical employees without understanding the consequences. These aren’t just cautionary tales from disgruntled workers venting online, they’re documented examples of business operations collapsing because leadership made the wrong call. One of the most striking examples involves The Escapist magazine, which fired editor-in-chief Nick Calandra in 2023. What followed was a mass exodus of the video production team, including 16-year host Ben“Yahtzee”Croshaw, and the channel’s viewership plummeted to roughly 10,000 views per video. That’s the kind of damage that takes years to recover from, if the company recovers at all.

But The Escapist isn’t alone in this category. According to the thread, one salesman’s departure to a competitor cost his former employer 25% of its sales within years. Another story involves a manager who was fired just two weeks before his planned retirement, only for the company to realize they needed him so badly that they eventually paid him almost double his old salary to return for a year and help fix the mess. These stories paint a picture of companies operating without clear understanding of who their load-bearing employees actually are, or worse, losing sight of their value during poor management decisions.

The workplace lesson here extends beyond just keeping popular people happy. It’s about recognizing that every business has critical employees whose departure can cascade into operational failure, employee exodus, and significant financial loss. If you’re in a leadership position, the question you should be asking yourself right now is: if your top three people left tomorrow, could your company survive? If the answer is anything less than a confident yes, you’ve got some work to do.