Apple ID

This support article describes what to do before selling or giving away your Mac, or returning one to an employer. --> What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

In particular note the bit about turning off the Find My feature. That's the one that makes it so your employer cannot reset the device.

I am not clear what you mean when you say you 'linked' the devices. I am presuming you were using iCloud to ensure items from one to synced with the other. If you were using the same Apple ID on both machines then yes, the content from the account should still be on the home computer.

If you were using separate Apple accounts (IDs) then we would need to know more about this "linkage". If you were using iCloud sharing then once the work ID was deleted, the shared content may no longer appear unless you made a separate copy of the files. However, at this stage we don't even know if you are asking about multiple accounts.

Giving specific advice would require we know a lot more details such as how many Apple IDs are involved, if you still have access to them, where are these computers now, etc.

While officially Apple does not support merging IDs, that largely applies to purchased apps and media. Data can often be shared with iCloud's various sharing services, and often even apps and media purchases can be shared (but ownership cannot be transferred) via Family Sharing.

It is not possible to merge Apple ids’

So your work computer Needs to be completely Reset and your Apple ID must be logged out