Context: a friend is a senior software engineer (contract) at a big banking company. His contract extension budget was actually approved a few weeks ago by the VP (another friend actually works finance in the same company and was in that exact budget meeting). However just this week his engineering manager decided to cut his contract anyways and instead replace him with a junior engineer to save on costs and make himself look good presumably. To add salt to injury, he gave the absolute MINIMUM amount of notice period required legally. The reason he gave my friend for cutting the contract? He finished work quicker than expected, i.e., he overperformed, and there's a small gap until the next project starts. What a humongous asshole – even the VP approved the budget, yet he still wants to save a few bucks an hour by replacing him with a junior engineer, as if the money came out of his pocket.
Since he's a contractor there's not much he can do to “appeal” this, but I'm wondering what are some retaliatory, legal things he can do in the last two weeks against this asshole manager to make him regret the decision?