Well this is pretty much as the title says. My husband will never write down this story, at least in English, but I really think it deserves to be documented somewhere. Note: English is a foreign language for me, I’m sorry for all the mistakes, please have mercy.
Backstory: my husband is a software engineer with years of experience in his field. As many do, he was hopping jobs every 2 years to get his paycheck increased and it worked, so in the beginning of the year 2023 he started with a small international company that outsourced him to one of those extra ambitious startups (new technology, we will change the world, flying business-class to every international conference, you name it). Everything started out fine, but a bit stressful: he needed to learn about that new rainbow unicorn of a technology, deal with tons of legacy code, understanding a pretty complex business logic, and all that without any kind of onboarding. I said fine, because he was enthusiastic and took it as a challenge and an opportunity to learn a lot. And he did great, in my opinion, sometimes working until the night, attending meetings at 7 am our local time (very international team, it was the time they considered comfortable for everybody).
In couple months he was already receiving congrats for his great presentations, passed multiple code reviews, nothing seemed to be strange or alarming. Until… and here I think I will make a timeline.
3 of July: his lead, let’s call them L for lead, called him and expressed their concerns regarding his performance. In their words, the rest of the team worked even sundays, and how dared he not attending those work sessions and not answering his Slack. This happened out of nothing, as he was delivering his tasks at time and even still had some days left until the next deadline.
3-14 of July: a period of silence, nobody said nothing, they presented some demos with a good feedback, no more complaints received.
14 of July: another call from L. This time they expressed that all the bosses are unhappy about the performance of H (let’s call my husband H for Husband). That was strange, because during their recent presentation nobody expressed any concerns or complaints. So, H decides to speak directly to the Top Manager (M), as they were among the others who complained. M was being very rude to him, saying directly that he lacks seniority and his work is far from what they expected. The call left H very upset and concerned, so immediately he decided also to speak to his supervisor (S) of a company he was officially employed with. S said that the situation H described is coinciding with a mail they recently received from the M, although it seems strange to them that nobody from the client side ever complained the previous 6 months of his work. Usually it’s pretty obvious first months a person is not a good fit for a project, this is exactly why exist a probation period. Also S asked H to just remain professional and keep doing his work, anyways the monthly review with the client is scheduled next week, so they can discuss the issue.
17 of July: S sent a short text saying the client is satisfied with H’s work, no complaints, he can keep working as usual.
18 of July: a big BOOM: the client sent a mail to S accusing H in using “external tool, probably AI, likely ChatGPT” to generate his code. H explained every case when he used ChatGPT and it was always for a research purpose, and never for generating anything, though he doubts it’s even possible to generate anything useful, as the client’s project is so specific any documentation barely exist, they are building something from zero. Also S notify H this is his last month with the client: they requested to replace him with someone else.
20 of July: H received a call from the client’s project manager (PM) directly accusing him in using ChatGPT. This time H kinda lost it and was a bit toxic when speaking to PM, asking him to point directly that part of his code was generated. PM was not prepared that H, usually very pacific, will defend himself in that way, and couldn’t hide they actually don’t have any evidence but they “suspected that might be possible”, and hurried to end the call.
21-28 of July: H helped to another engineer to prepare for the interview explaining what kind of technology is using the client. Surprise surprise: during the interview they asked something completely different and very outdated stuff, later also accusing the other candidate of being incompetent. This game is becoming more and more awkward.
31 of July: another freaking bombshell! This time the CTO of the client sent another mail to S, this time accusing H in sabotaging work during his first months. Boom. Exactly that time when he spent afternoons and often nights studying the new diamond precious technology. Around that time arrived a new PM (the current one) and suggested they change of a task-tracking platform, so all the tracking of H’s first months was lost. Well, “lost”, because the next 2 days he spent collecting the evidence from his e-mail and repositories, preparing the report and describing in detail that was happening. As a result he compiled a massive document proofing the enormous amount of work he did during the months in question.
1-2 of August: the client is still pretending nothing is happening, assigning H new tasks as they never accused him in nothing and he should keeping going with his work as usual (I didn’t mention, but it was happening all this time, the L never ever stopped assigning him tasks and asking for results despite all the scandal).
3 of August: the outsourcing company fires back with all the evidence they collected, only for the client to admit… oh, you know it already, that they actually don’t really have complaints against H but they don’t have money to pay. So, they will actually not pay a cent of their contract obligations starting from this month (the audacity of them still assigning tasks to the engineer they know they can’t pay for). H is free, the outsourcing company will pay him all they owe for his termination.
What I can’t finish to understand… So, another super-duper ambitious promising innovative hi-tech startup failed. Well, that’s fine, it happens all the time. Companies like this come and go, some survive, later one crazy billionaire buy them and cut 3/4 of their stuff, some fail and disappear. Why should they try to destroy the life, the reputation and self-esteem of a simple worker just for don’t admit they don’t have money anymore? Like, the blamed him for: being not productive; lack seniority, not creating quality code; using ChatGPT; sabotaging work and doing nothing for months. And when they failed to proof any of their nonsense, just take a deep breath and say “oh well, it’s because we don’t have money”.
Moral of the story? Companies don’t give a single shite about us, people. Ask them for the proper onboarding and go to kiss your wife good night instead of waste that night studying for them. They will not even say you thx. Your wife will.