I think the immediate problem with setting this up as a legal preceding is that it gives everyone involved a fundamentally wrong idea.<p>It suggests that the employee is on trial, but you can't be on trial if your performance is poor because poor performance is not a crime. Yes, I'm sure everyone involved understands academically that it's not, but reading the article, the comments here, I think the internalized intuition at work is casting this as a matter of justice.<p>Hiring, retention and firing are not mechanisms to enforce some sort of justice, they're about ensuring that employment is mutually beneficial.<p>It's extremely hard for someone looking at being fired to have this kind of detached view of it, especially if you're already inclined to view the world in terms of justice, but you shouldn't because it will mess with your head. The first thing you want to do if you leave a job for any reason is move on, not feel like you've been exiled or ostracized. And if you come into an interview with a chip on your shoulder, that makes it significantly harder to get a new job and move on.<p>And this is not just a problem employees have, many managers are prone to criminalize employees who don't do well or hold grudges against people. That leads to capricious behavior and corrosive office politics, and you do not want them in leadership roles.