Call me Captain Obvious, but I feel like quite often the time spent in obfuscating code in many cases might be a major component of why programmers that do this sort of thing get fired in the first place.
What goes on in someone's mind that says: "Maybe if I spend some time making my source code hard to understand I can better preserve my job." ?
In reality all it does is slow them down, waste their time and lead to the firing of the developer. (At which point we get to hear funny stories from people like jacquesmatteij)
If that time was spent improving/refactoring their code and working on new things, they'd actually have the job security they were so desperately seeking.
While this is true, there's a lot of space in between a model developer and a purposely-obfuscating twit. There's definitely a line that lazy developers can walk where they contribute just enough to make firing them more of a pain than putting up with them. I suppose the lesson for businesses is: be very careful about who you hire in the first place, because you may end up stuck with the person whether you like it or not.
And there are a lot of subtle little ways in which a developer can drift into this state. For example, not bothering to document how systems work, or opting to make band-aid patches to brittle systems rather than refactoring. After a while of doing the easy/lazy thing, you're eventually lording over a complex black box that only you understand.
Some may find that a comfortable place to be. You become an expert; you have opportunities to be the hero. And it doesn't necessarily even happen via malicious intent. Sometimes you just don't have time to document or refactor anything, and you find yourself in a suboptimal local minimum. (Speaking from experience.)
Yeah, it didn't save this guy from getting fired and it only made life harder on a another guy who he's never met. The whole "stick it to the man" mentality is childish and its shameful that this strategy is so common in software development.
What goes on in someone's mind that says: "Maybe if I spend some time making my source code hard to understand I can better preserve my job." ?
In reality all it does is slow them down, waste their time and lead to the firing of the developer. (At which point we get to hear funny stories from people like jacquesmatteij)
If that time was spent improving/refactoring their code and working on new things, they'd actually have the job security they were so desperately seeking.