Sounds like half the story is missing. Either the chips were upside down, and somebody wanted to cover something up (which would be really stupid, because it is a really stupid problem and immediately obvious). Or the chips weren't upside down, and he was let go for being a stupid know-it-all (like maybe in 37 instances before this one).

Without more details there's a whole lot of nothing here, however:

> The pins that were supposed to nestle into the motherboard were instead pointing skyward and it was utterly obvious that no electricity could flow through the part.

> Someone had soldered the chip in place regardless.

How can the chip both be soldered in place and not have any electrical connection? I suppose it could be one of a handful of ICs with both a top and bottom metallic thermal pad, but those are incredibly uncommon.

What does

>The pins that were supposed to nestle into the motherboard were instead pointing skyward

even mean? How do you physically solder a chip the wrong way around?

The story seems totally unbelievable. This is a training session, someone asks a potentially reasonable question and then is just let go? Hiring people is expensive and letting someone go over something like that is ridiculous.

The story isn't even alleging that the manager disagreed or that the manager tried to argue there was no defect. If you take the story as told it is completely nonsensical.

The story itself seems incredible, but the bit that is believable is being fired since in an at will state this can be done for pretty much any reason.