1. At all times, you should tell the truth.

2. As long as you're employed, you either speak the company line, or carefully avoid commenting, in order to avoid breaking rule 1. If you can't neither avoid commenting or lying, you should quit.

3. Once you're no longer employed, you should avoid spilling company secrets, disclosing confidential information, etc. Beyond that, see rule 1.

I'd be concerned if he:

1. Went to conferences and recommended MySQL, despite thinking it was a bad product

2. Went to conferences and trashed MySQL, despite being employed in part to promote MySQL

Both of those would be, in different way, unprofessional. But what he did? Seems fine to me. I certainly don't think he was obligated to share his unvarnished thoughts about MySQL, but I don't think he was obligated not to either.

They are entitled to write whatever they want, but not taking into account the feelings of the people they were presumably working close with in posting something like this shows a startling lack of empathy.

I'm sure this developer is a genius, but I would take empathy over brilliance every time.

Edit: To be clear, if there is anything unethical or toxic about the workplace culture, they should absolutely post about it publicly to help fix it if that's the best route to address it. This post did not read that way to me. But that's just my opinion.

I mean, presumably your confidence in being a good employer? People don't decide to trash talk their previous employers at random, right? Surely there is some cause-and-effect involved.

Wouldn't it be a good incentive as an employer to not do things that would get you trashed by your employees ?

Sure some people could be revengeful for all the wrong reasons, but I don't think they're many, nor that they usually have a huge platform to throw trash, and these thing would also be denied on the spot by other people in the know.

Not giving people loads and loads of things to feel bitter about. And an eggshell-strewn environment where it's basically impossible to air these concerns with anyone upstream.

It's really quite simple, actually.

This happens in every field, even in "tech", even though organised labor could absolutely leverage the insane demand for qualified worker to get a better deal, but I guess that's being a largely depoliticized and generally ignorant workforce for you : you get less.

Anyway you are released from any and all restrictions on your free speech the micro-second your contract doesn't specify it anymore.

If your previous employer sucked, feel free to say it if you want to. The gag order you sign in your contract regarding bad mouthing your employer has nothing to do with professionalism, and everything to do with a power equilibrium between employers and employees.

The problem to me here is, OP dumps on the work of their former colleges and the criticisms of MySQL aren't backed up and seem a little naive.

E.g., only very useful software survives a long time with many users, and such software also very typically has major warts, especially looking from the inside.

Reading between the lines and subtracting OPs tone, MySQL actually looks like it's in better shape than I would have thought: when OP arrived the optimizer was a mess. Now it's in good shape. Better yet, management is fully supportive and investing in major improvements. Awfully good for a long-lived open-source project.

I might be a little skeptical that OP could thrive on Chrome, except that we all mature as our horizons widen.

I find this sort of behavior to be slightly unprofessional.

I find it highly professional, in the sense that he was being 100 percent honest -- and true to his craft. And not in the least vindictive or spiteful in regard to his previous employer.

They made it very clear that while they've held these opinions for a while, they've avoided situations where they would be presented with either lying about their opinions or bad-mouthing the company they work for whether out of respect or fear. I think that's as professional as you can expect people to be. If, as a company, you expect people to not speak about their subjective opinions after they are no longer getting paid as an employee, you need to be willing to offer them something for that, because what you're really asking for is an NDA.

Can he do it? Sure. Should he? Maybe, depends on his values. Hopefully he understood how the message would be received and is OK with the possible consequences, and valued self-expression and making an authoritative critique of MySQL more highly than the negative impacts of rubbing a few readers the wrong way as they perceive a breach of generally accepted professional decorum.

I'm responsible for vetting possible hires to work under me. What this person did falls well within what I would accept as responsible behavior for someone I was considering hiring. The fact that they note they went out of their way to avoid conferences where they would likely be forced to compromise their morals in some way, either through going against the wished of their employer or being untruthful, speaks very well of their character, if it's to be believed as presented. People that have no problem lying for the company, or badmouthing the company to external people while they work there, are both types of people I would desperately try to avoid.

I don't think there's a reason to push the former, as it's got plenty of natural support from the unequal relationship between employers and employees. We may not be able to throw off the shackles entirely, but let's not shame those who rattle them a bit, you know?

Stop mincing words, please.

If it's deemed "unprofessional" to talk about it, then to all intents and purposes -- "if he knows what's good for him" as the saying goes -- he can't.