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Antiwork

Warning to those who work at scapegoat jobs

I worked at a highly visible website company that made its money from ads. I got innocuously hired as a website monitor. I put in the hours to learn the website and the process to monitor the website. At first glance, it appeared to be a scapegoat job. They wanted someone to blame when ad revenue went down. They never blamed the person who created the bug that got integrated into the system just the guy who needed to catch and fix the problem. As it was, a group responsible for software deployment and maintenance hired external contractors to monitor the website. I thought as a low paid contractor that we took the blame from the highly paid developers. Well, I was proven right when they started yelling at us not diagnosing the problem fast enough while we were on a steep learning curve. I got a basics lesson and…


I worked at a highly visible website company that made its money from ads. I got innocuously hired as a website monitor. I put in the hours to learn the website and the process to monitor the website. At first glance, it appeared to be a scapegoat job. They wanted someone to blame when ad revenue went down. They never blamed the person who created the bug that got integrated into the system just the guy who needed to catch and fix the problem. As it was, a group responsible for software deployment and maintenance hired external contractors to monitor the website. I thought as a low paid contractor that we took the blame from the highly paid developers. Well, I was proven right when they started yelling at us not diagnosing the problem fast enough while we were on a steep learning curve. I got a basics lesson and spent many hours after hours to diagnose problems. I put together a process that covered. The supervisor of the dev group rewarded me by saying I could work for min wage! I put together a webpage that integrated all charts in a single location. After 2.5 years, I was able to perform the job tirelessly without vacation and long hours and caught, coordinated, and repaired issues so that revenue was never disrupted for that period. It contributed to the company getting sold. Then they decided I was too expensive. They offered me a full time job at 2/3 the pay in the middle of nowhere. My job became training other cheaper labor to catch and fix problems. The hours became longer – 12 hour days. Relocation reimbursement never occurred and I lived in cheap hotels because I could find nothing that fit my budget! I moved back to minimize my living cost with the same low salary by working remotely at the original office and living with family. They then sprung the 16 hour shift with 24/7 oncall starting at 4 am and tasked me to train outsourced contractors. I quit. The company revenue dropped like a rock. Pretty sure they still blamed me. A few years later an ex coworker bumped into me and harassed me like a child! Did I make money? – only to pay for the hotels, moving costs, car repairs, fast food due to the horrible hours. Worst job experience ever!

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