I was watching Jurassic Park on TV last night, and I got hit with a question I have never really asked myself before. WTF was the point of the Nedry character? I mean, we got an entire scene at the beginning of the movie introducing him, an ominous rival company, and a sub plot to jack a bunch of genetic research. Then we get another scene that established that he has infiltrated the park, and is working as the head of IT. Then another scene showing him disarming the fences, inadvertently sabotaging the entire park while he takes the genetic research. And a hole bunch of screen time of him trying to flee the park only to just end up as a happy meal. We even get screen time showing the fate of his embryo canister.
It seem like they devoted a shit ton of screen time to his character and the whole subplot only to kill him off like none of it mattered. You could have taken out his entire character, and replaced him hacking the fences with a power surge caused by the storm. The blond chick and Sam Jackson would still have had to go turn the power back on, that little girl would still have to reboot the system and turn the locks back on. It wouldnt have made any difference to the movie if he wasnt there.
The book has more backstory that didn't make it into the movie. IIRC, Nedry, or the company he works for, lowballed their bid on developing Jurassic Park software to make sure they got the contract. Part of the contract had a stipulation that if it didn't work, someone (Nedry) had to fix it, on-site if necessary, and with no additional compensation. The software was a bug fest, and Nedry was forced to go to the island and debug the code for free. The code was such a shit-show that this meant Nedry was essentially forced to be on the island for a fairly long period of time.
This is why there was so much animosity between Nedry and the rest of the staff, including Ray Arnold (Sam Jackson) and Hammond in particular. He didn't want to be there, even for a second, and they didn't want him there.
This is also why he was so willing and eager to steal the embryos, and why the other company approached him specifically. His being on the island represents a rather large financial loss, which in turn makes him angry and resentful. Since he is in a rather unique position (he has unlimited access to anything at the park, but has zero loyalty), he is a perfect turncoat for the other company to approach.
Now, why would Hammond put up with Nedry's shit in the first place? From his perspective, he invested a chunk of time and money into Nedry's company to produce software critical to the park. Now, they are well past the point where they could have someone else write the software, but due to investor troubles, they need it to work, and yesterday. The shortest path to forward to get everything working is to take advantage of the contract and force Nedry to fix his code.