A couple years ago I was working for a mid sized employer (500-2000 employees) with a diverse technical staff. My boss and I were the only ones specialized in our field. Before Covid hit, my boss told me that he would be leaving in 10 months and he was going to train me to take his position (he made ~110k, I made ~80k).
I trained up before anyone knew of his departure and was able to do all the tasks. My boss left during a hiring freeze a couple months into COVID. I immediately absorbed all his work and assumed they would either promote me or I could apply for his position. For the next 4 months I ran both our jobs and the upper management didn’t rehire because “I was doing a great job”. ALSO they refused to pay OT as a COVID protocol to save money, even though they had his 120k salary sitting in their accounts.
With no signs of this letting up, I found a job at a smaller company doing the same type of work but with about half the workload. I let my current employer know and they countered with offering my bosses position at $84k per year and I would still have both our workloads.
I gave the current employer 1.5 months notice and outlined all the gabs in support they would see when I left and noted that they didn’t see the gaps when my boss left because I filled them to support the team. They did not take me seriously and so I did my time and left.
2 weeks after I left they called me saying that they needed support to fill the gaps, so I told them I work full time already so if they needed support at this point that I would need 3x my original salary to make it worth my time. So for nearly a year I supported them at ~$120/hr
TLDR: Company didn’t succession plan and I billed them 3x my base rate