Is it legal for an employer to post as you on Slack?

The ops engineer was probably trying to do you a favour / make it so you don't look ignorant and grumpy. Try to assume the best in people and their actions and your life will likely be better for it.

The job is over, with very little to be gained dwelling on trivialities.

Is the only thing that was ghost-posted as you "Thanks"? If so, I'd think you'd have very little in the way of damages here. If they had posted something substantive, like "I'm sorry for all the mistakes I made", then you could have a cause of action.

In many cases, whether there is a lawsuit worth pursuing depends on both (1) whether a wrong was committed, and (2) whether there are any damages worth recovering based on the wrong.

In some cases all you need is (1), for example if there are statutorily-specified damages. But in most cases, the recoverable damages will depend on how much you were actually injured/prejudiced by the wrong committed.

I think it's deliberate and it could be quite harmful. Someone who knew your real name and was thinking of messaging you out of work could have thought you'd be lonely or stressed and seen it and figured you were feeling fine, and not bothered to reach out. This could have been the difference between a strong friendship and falling completely out of touch. They shouldn't mess with people like that! The person doing it deliberately (if I'm right) probably didn't think of the harm. If it was accidental they should have deleted it right away.

Best of luck, both in finding a new job and maintaining connections/friendships from this job! I have seen you on HN a lot and am surprised to see you let go. Chalk that up to the halo effect and years of corporate culture programming me to think that productive people are seldom let go.

In the United States? May depend on your location, but as far as I’m aware based on the (large, tech heavy) states where I’ve been in the unfortunate position of executing firings and layoffs, probably not illegal. It’s not uncommon for off-boarding procedures to include taking over the terminated employee account to set up email and chat auto responses, which aren’t materially different than “thanks”.

This is shady as hell. A simple "thanks" message might sound innocent enough but you have no idea what else they are saying on your behalf. They have zero reason to pretend to be you in front of coworkers, period. I have no idea why everyone here is defending the company's actions so hard.

As for the legal part, I'm not a lawyer but I'm fairly confident in saying that you don't have a case for anything. They haven't caused you any real harm. Just forget about it and move on with your life.

Is there any chance someone was cleaning up your laptop/backing up IP and simply forgot it would be signed in as you and not them? A simple "thanks" on a public thread is ambiguous enough that it's not obvious which comment they'd be replying to.

Posting from your account accidentally would likely be fine, legally. I don't have any idea about the law if it was intentional, though.

I can't imagine anyone would be able to answer this definitively without knowing the country you're in, the state you're in if you're in the US, and a copy of your employment contract.

Understand that emotions may be running high, but they said "Thanks". It was a little shady to post as you, but it did no harm.

The corporate account and everything you do under it belongs to them, not to you. It's probably legal but certainly unethical.

Your work account and resources are not yours. The company can use it's slack account which you were given access to previously to post anything. That said, whether they pretended to be you or not, if they said anything slanderous, harmful or materially damaging or if you can at least reasonably claim their posts were of that nature then you can absolutley sue the crap out of them.

Now I'm thinking. As someone who's started businesses before and hired people - am I not empathizing enough with the employer? What would I do in this situation? I guess the answer to that is simple: first and foremost, I'd abide by my original agreement to end our contract in 2 weeks and not today. That would have side-stepped all of these concerns. Second, not having done that, not posted as me in Slack, indicating a blase lack of concern for my coworkers as I exited. "Thanks" isn't harmful, but it isn't helpful either. I had an opportunity to leave one last impression, and they squandered it with "Thanks". So, to all those saying there is no material harm: I ask, how much value does a person's last impression of you have? How much value does "Thanks" squander in that moment? I don't think that number is zero.

Posting "thanks" as you is not something to be offended over. It's poor form socially, and that's about it. You're upset that you got fired, and you're over reacting to something that isn't a big deal.

I'd encourage you to delete this, since it contains an alias you apparently also use as your email and can therefore be easily linked to you. You don't want this to be something prospective future employers see.

Something I needed to hear when I left my first company: you lose all battles you were fighting, you lose all investment in the work being done, you lose everything you've built when you leave. Just let it be, it's part of life.

This is not important now, it won't be important in a week, and you won't remember this in a year.

Look forward.

Is it their slack account or your personal account. Just like email, if it is theirs it is theirs.

IANAL

Perhaps an unpopular leading question/answer, but who owns that particular Slack account?

If the company owns @’s as the login, they own it and it’s not really “you”/“yours” ~

Honestly, if it weren't, what would you even do about it? Do you really have the time and resources to pursue it? Did you suffer damages from such?

I’m sorry this happened to you.

I think you’re upset and this is where you’re directing your anger. It’s weird, but not a big deal imo. Maybe sleep on it first.

it's frustrating to lose a job. don't take it personally.

Seems like in this case it was pretty innocuous if all they said was "Thanks"