First let me say I’m not anti-work, I’m anti slavery. I don’t consider myself being that guy who tries not to work. I’m a hard and creative worker and problem solver, I never had issue performing on a job, and my career thus far was pretty successful overall.
3 months ago I left a role as a software engineer in a small software house because I felt like they were unrealistic in their expectations and paid me way under what I’m worth (I have around 5 years professional experience). I found a job post on Linkedin for a remote job that sounded good, they were looking for someone with my level of experience and skills, on the paper it sounded like a great match.
Going through the first interview with HR I asked again and again and made sure that this is indeed a remote job, and they won’t require me to come to the office since the office was 2.5 hours drive away. The answer I got from HR was “yes, this is a remote job, we posted the job as remote because we understand developers want to have that option. Either way you can come to the office if you would like to”. Sounds promising so far.
I ended up having an interview with the CTO and CEO, the first red flag was when they demanded me to come to the office to take a two hour technical interview with the CTO, foolishly I agreed because I wanted the job.
The frontal technical interview went alright, and I made sure to ask the CTO the same question I asked HR, face to face I said “Listen, Is this a remote job? Because It’s really important to me that this will be completely remote as you listed in your job post”. I got the same answer, “Yes, of course, no problem”.
A few days go by and I move up to the final interview with the CEO, this time the interview was over Zoom and I made sure to ask again, “This is a remote job, right?” The answer I get from the CEO was “Yes, but we would like you to show up once or twice a week for the first couple of months to get to know you and make sure you have everything you need”.
At this point, I was completely stupid for going with it, but I liked the product, the pay was great and the other team members seem like fine people, so I said “Yea, OK, fine” and went along with it.
Looking back I was a naive moron for not even making sure my contract listed me as a remote worker, I just took their word and went along with it which was a huge mistake.
I do end up showing up twice or thrice a week for the first month, which was exhausting since it’s a two and a half hours trip, twice a day, but other than that things were going alright.. I did my tasks, learned new technologies and worked as best as I could.
A month in the job I got a pretty bad arthritis infection on my right foot, I could not walk properly for three weeks, which prevented me from going to the office at all. That was when I started to feel like management wasn’t pleased with my job. Suddenly tasks would need to be done twice as fast, suddenly they started micromanaging me through Slack (a messaging platform tech companies use), asking how am I doing like 3-4 times a day while I’m working on a task. I tried to ignore it and just do my job, after all it was our agreement that my position is remote, so it’s all good, right?
Wrong. A few weeks back I had some trouble with a certain task and couldn’t finish it on their unrealistic time frame (two days). The CTO had a one on one video chat with me saying that maybe if I come to the office they can help me where I’m stuck. I told him right there and then that I don’t see why they can’t help me through Slack, and that I don’t understand the pressure they put on me to come the office, because my position was remote.
He immediately stepped back and said “If you don’t want to come, that’s okay. Let me just put this task on someone else, and we can assign you to a different task”. I pushed back and said I want to keep the task, eventually he gave up and let me keep it.
So this is the situation im in right now. I’m a “remote” worker that’s getting manipulated every couple days to come to the office “just for this, just for that” by old and new management. I’m frustrated, tired, exhausted of the tech industry. Everyones a fricking liar these days, and I can’t leave because I’m paying a lot of debt. I ended up agreeing to come once a week for the time being, which is kind of OK I guess, but I feel like I’m being played and manipulated into a situation I thought I made sure was not going to happen.
Bottom line is, if a job is listed as remote, make sure your contract explicitly says so too.