My mom gives me shit for how much I fake call in sick to work, but I’ve been with this company for five years and have been paid below average the entire time, ignored and had to fight for raises, and denied a senior title when they hire people with less experience than me and have me conduct interviews with senior candidates, while other seniors even refer to me as senior implicitly when discussing junior devs. My bosses haven’t even given me a simple bump in pay to adjust for inflation which I do bring up in one on one meetings, which they even acknowledge is a thing. So because I am overworked, underpaid, and have provided the company with so many completed projects that are profitable, and they feel the need to tell the whole company in every all hands meeting that they made record profits every quarter (like hundreds of millions of dollars), and none of that is every reciprocated back to me or anyone else, I am taking so much time off (THANK YOU “UNLIMITED” PTO), and making the most out of my salary.
Here’s another kicker: my new manager who was just brought in a few months ago and does nothing except be a fake culture warrior, asked me if I was in the “bonus program”, where people get paid a bonus 10% of their salary every quarter for those that contribute a lot of value to the org. Well, I’ve been here 5 years and delivered MANY projects, been on every team, been one of the first 100 employees, in which we’re now over 2000 strong, saved face with so many users by fighting fires and squashing critical issues, and yet I’ve never been offered this bonus program, but my boss who’s been here for a few months and literally does nothing but try to put up a facade of happy culture, fake morale, delusional really, is given a bonus… so yeah fuck them, I don’t care, I’m taking as much time off as I want. If I feel even a smidge tired, unmotivated, sick, I just tell my team I don’t feel good and take the day off. The best thing about doing this is seeing others on my team follow suit and also take time off after I announce mine. I feel like I’ve empowered some of my coworkers to consider taking care of their mental health, and to not be an obedient cog in the wheel that just makes investors and the C team millions of dollars for scraps in comparison. There are so many more issues with the company, such as skimping on quality, cutting corners, taking shortcuts, rushing projects, everything being an MVP (minimum viable product), shifting focus to new initiatives every quarter, no cross-team cohesion, high turnover since the pandemic, decrease in benefits. The list goes on.