At my second job, the company terminated an employee for poor performance and intended to let them stay on a short term to wrap things up and then start their severance. The first evening (or maybe the first Friday evening), that dev stayed late in the office and deleted the source trees from as many machines as he could get access to (this was 1996, so most machines didn't have logins) and wiped the hard drive on the revision control server.
That experience (and the amount of loss and wasted time in reconstructing as best we could) heavily colored my view of the risk-reward ratio of letting terminated employees have continued access to premises and systems.
If I have any doubts about the future behavior of someone who just received very shocking, disorienting, and angering news, it is my job to protect the company and other employees much more than it is to allow the terminated employee continued access.
That experience (and the amount of loss and wasted time in reconstructing as best we could) heavily colored my view of the risk-reward ratio of letting terminated employees have continued access to premises and systems.
If I have any doubts about the future behavior of someone who just received very shocking, disorienting, and angering news, it is my job to protect the company and other employees much more than it is to allow the terminated employee continued access.