The OP was made in an attempt to anon, but...is this actually a self-dox? How many expecting within months just got released from the company that has been clearly named? Also, fired vs laid off seems like something to inquire about. Did this "tech" company not take advantage of the trend of laying off ~10% of employees during the restructuring?

What are they going to do, fire his wife twice?

(I think there are some more plausible things one could imagine happening but I’m curious how likely they actually are? The things I’m imagining don’t feel very likely to me but maybe I’m missing something)

Countersue for slander/libel/defamation/some other sort of "illegaly saying bad things", and use that as leverage.

I guess I can imagine legal threats but I assumed this poster came from the us where libel cases are not easy to win. And I also assume that if the poster and their wife are working in tech they can afford to pay a lawyer to tell them whether some legal threat has any merit or not (on the other hand, OP posted here, seemingly instead of contacting a lawyer so maybe I’m wrong).

Other comments seem to suggest that OP revealing themselves to the company would be terrible for them but I don’t really understand the mechanism.

Mostly I assume that if some competent company lawyer were to discover this, they wouldn’t go to the CEO saying ‘how do we best seek revenge’ but rather ‘what were you thinking? Here’s how we might avoid liability if it looks like they might fight this’. Maybe you think that’s putting too much faith into company lawyers?

I'm not suggesting this as something to protect the wife. The op created a new account for not wanting this to be connected to his "real" HN account. What I was suggesting had nothing to do with retaliation from evilCorp, but more along the lines of rational decision making for OpSec. There is so much data about us out there that has been collected, that the slightest misstep allows for anon accounts to become doxxed. Again, not for what could happen to the wife, but by using the named corp along with the approximate due date of the wife having just been terminated is pretty strong clues into naming the OP (again not concerned with the wife's info at all for this). Knowing the name of the OP would probably only be a few steps from knowing the actual HN username even if it was another anon account.

It's only anon because I don't want it tied to my main HN account.

okay, but do you really think that you didn't just self-own this one? with all of the data out there about people, you honestly don't think someone can find out your wife's name, then find out who she's married with, and then find out what accounts that person (you) has on websites? hell, your wife's now previous employer probably has teams of people that could do this in 5 minutes.

I'm sorry, but I just hope your emotional state isn't blocking logic here.

And what precisely are they going to do to him if they find out? I mean,maybe its not the smartest if this comes down to a court case, but the most important thing reputation wise is to not have this be the first result when someone googles the wife's name, and the semi-annonyminity accomplishes that.

> And what precisely are they going to do to him if they find out?

Who are "they" in your question. I'm assuming you mean they===namedCorp. I am not thinking those lines at all. The "they" that I'm thinking of is anyone else that might possibly be interested, for the lulz or just practice/fun/games, to find out the info. The fact that a new anon account was created means the OP didn't want it tied to their real account for whatever reasoning they had, yet pretty much laid out a red carpet for someone to walk it back. Okay, maybe not a red carpet, but definitely a better trail than Hansel & Gretel left.

I meant "they" as in the public at large,not the corp.

And then what precisely? So some random internet person doxes them. This is hardly a news story. What would the negative consequences of that be?

i think the point is that his main HN account is anonymous, and by revealing this in a new account, the anonymity of the main account is not affected. the problem is not to find out who posted this story, but to connect it to everything else that he has written here.

What will they do? Help? :)

No, they most certainly will not.

Will they sue? Well possible, but I find that if the facts are on your side, it makes it a tough case for any potential lawsuit.