The dead man switch at one of my last places was the companies incompetence and lack of forethought.

When I left, I told them that the files for their system that I designed, built, and maintained was on the laptop I was returning to them.

They wiped it.

They also had zero clue how to use the programs I had nor any other aspect of that system so they really shot themselves in the foot then shot their other one to test of the first one hurt