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Antiwork

Help – my boss put me on PIP for no reason and withholds my paycheck!

Hi all! /throwaway account, for obvious reasons (I am afraid of legal consequences) So, I have been a long-time lurker here and I wholeheartedly enjoy this community. I gotta admit one thing – at first, I detested this subreddit and I thought to myself: “Well, maybe it's just a minority of employers. It can't be that bad almost everywhere, right? Right?!” And guess what… In the past few months, I have hit a wall. Really hard, straight up against my face. Only then I have seen what y'all going through. But let me introduce you to this whole thing and explain the preceding events, just so you understand the context. In October last year, I decided to say farewell to my old company. Although I sort of hated their shady practices when it came to customers and clients, I somehow sucked it up, because my colleagues were top-notch. I really…


Hi all!

/throwaway account, for obvious reasons (I am afraid of legal consequences)

So, I have been a long-time lurker here and I wholeheartedly enjoy this community. I gotta admit one thing – at first, I detested this subreddit and I thought to myself: “Well, maybe it's just a minority of employers. It can't be that bad almost everywhere, right? Right?!” And guess what… In the past few months, I have hit a wall. Really hard, straight up against my face. Only then I have seen what y'all going through. But let me introduce you to this whole thing and explain the preceding events, just so you understand the context.

In October last year, I decided to say farewell to my old company. Although I sort of hated their shady practices when it came to customers and clients, I somehow sucked it up, because my colleagues were top-notch. I really enjoyed working there, gained tons of experience and well, the salary wasn't that bad for a 20 years old. I work in tech, just to preface the circumstances. Anyway, I found this small, startup-ish company shortly before I had left my previous job (it was being sold off to a corporation and a lot of older colleagues decided to leave). It seemed amazing at first – only 12 people, virtually no management, freedom to work on whatever I like! Dream come true. I was hired, blended in rather well with other colleagues. I have been there for 3 months now and I met some frankly outstanding, honest and no-bullshit people. The only thing that was, and still is, bugging me is my superior. He's around 30-32 years old, graduated college with a Masters degree around 7 years back. I have done some digging and apparently his whole life he's been working only for one company. Right after graduation, he was hired by this small software dev company of about 100 people that resides in a different state. About 3 years later, he got promoted and was granted an opportunity to start a new branch and basically become a regional manager. He's basically a CEO of his own small company, but actively remotely cooperates with the other branch. Think of it like a franchise.

The issue is – not that he lacks technical experience, but he's merely average. I have had to explain to him numerous times that his requirements are not based on any real substance and it is virtually impossible. He would ask me to come up with a solution for problem X, but refuse to give me any additional technical requirements. Besides, the client would usually give us a clear list of functionalities they do and do not want. He always opposed for some reason, even argued with the client, saying that “he thinks that point Y is pointless and should be replaced with something else.” Problem is, his technical knowledge wasn't THAT comprehensive and his explanation would be something along the lines “Well, we can implement that thing… that… you know… like directly connects to the database or something.” Due to the fact that I have only 11 other colleagues, some of us are working on small, independent projects, while others (usually teams of 2-3) collaborate on something bigger and more impactful. Right on day one, I was assigned to a brand new project because my boss needed to “offload some work”. During the interview, I have been promised an extensive mentoring. Guess what – he didn't explain anything, just handed me an access to local NAS with some materials for the project and his attitude was clearly “swim or drown, I don't care”. I'm quite decent at picking up the pace and learning by myself, so I finished the project in a timely manner and except for some minor adjustments, he was really satisfied. I even held a meeting with the client by myself and hell, we received an astonishing feedback! I quickly forgot about the lack of mentorship issue. Why would I stress too much about it, when I can do a decent job without it?

Well, here's the catch. The boss is obsessed with going to the office, he's literally sitting there 8 am to 6 pm. Mostly having some meetings, replying to emails on chitchatting with people from the other branch. Due to a change of my residency (as I had to move to a new apartment far from the office), I have been working gradually and more frequently remote. Fine by him, no biggie. As long as I get the work done and manage to have a meeting with him once per week/two weeks to show him my progress, all is splendid. I have been happy and content – ya know, just doing my work, occasionally dropping by the office to have a chat with colleagues, getting some certifications, as long as he's paying for it. That all came to a sudden halt last week when I asked him when I am going to receive my last paycheck. He replied with a blunt, a bit aggressive email stating “I don't have to pay anything now, check your contract”. And there it was – I was eligible to receive money within 30 days after the end of the previous month. I would SWEAR it wasn't in the contract tha I have signed! But whatever, we can resolve this peacefully. So I kindly asked him whether it is feasible to send the payment this week, as next Monday is the last day for him to send the money (it's been 23 days already). There was no issue with a pay check arriving on time at the end of October, November and December. I always received my money around 5-7 days after the end of each calendar month. But last week I finally handed over my latest and biggest project. The client was amazed and even told me that he's never seen such professional attitude and that the results are remarkable. You think I would be eligible to get paid after this sort of accomplishment? Of course not! Yesterday, my boss sent me a hostile email with the following content: “We need to talk. Your work ethic is all over the place, you barely come to the office and I'm starting to think that you don't care about this job at all. By the way, your pay check has been declined by the accountant, apparently there are some important details missing. Therefore I am putting you on an unpaid leave for the next 2 weeks, involuntarily.” Yes, his “accountant” is his wife. She's the one processing all financial transactions. He referred to her in some corporate slang and expected me to play along. He didn't even tell me what exactly was wrong. Everything he wrote just seemed so extremely vague. The last straw was his comment regarding one of my suggestions. I had told him that I could implement a few new features and enhance them. His response was “Why bother, as long as they give us money we don't have to care.”

I don't quite understand. All of my previous pay checks were paid on time, no missing details whatsoever and now my boss is waving around with my contract saying that he basically doesn't have to pay me and that I'm a slacker. Out of dozens of daily stand-ups, I have missed only two – one due to vaccination appointment a few weeks ago and second one today, because I had an appointment with a doctor. All of which I had communicated to my team hours in advance and even sent an email with things I have done during the previous workday. I have completed all of my projects in a timely manner, way before deadline. Neither my boss nor my colleagues uttered a single word somehow related to my performance. I'm starting to think that they hired me just to offload some projects and now they're desperately trying to lay me off. I have no idea what to do. Confront him? Play nice and try to excuse myself for some arbitrary reason of his? I always tried to get along with him. I even worked overtime that he hasn't paid for, obviously.

TL;DR: The boss of a promising tech company refuses to pay me on time, holds grudge against me for something I'm not even aware of and makes an ass of me. Clearly he has some issues that he's not willing to communicate and always tries to come up with new power-moves to keep me in my place. Now he's putting me on an unpaid leave until “I come to the office and explain my behaviour.” He also withdrew me from an upcoming project and delegated it to someone else. I have no clue what I have done wrong. And I would really appreciate any tips or helpful advice. Thanks a lot for reading my rant!

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