This is a fresh story. The year 2022, I leave a low paying tech consultant role for a 35% pay hike and a better job title of DevOps engineer.
I join a team where the team lead is the MD of the firm. He made it clear pretty soon that he would not be making me or my teammate (who had been working there for 1 year at that point) a team lead. Which is fine by me, since I took this job up for the pay hike. Now my new pay is just above the average salary in the field, not a great pay but a decent one.
MD used a be a developer himself, so he understands tech jargon. He’s also impressed with all my new initiatives for implementing Security in our cloud services. I enjoyed working at this firm for the first 2 months.
Then there is a restructure. Now 75% of my work time is billed to a project where my MD (team lead) is not working. This project is for a huge European client and is run by a PO/PM. This PO/PM is not a technical guy and stresses on following the rules of “scrum”.
Scrum should be a way for clear communication, easing up the workload on the team, but it ends up creating more stress for me.
I continue working as I used to, taking initiative, coming up with creative solutions to problems and just working on my tasks in the project, any way I see fit. This doesn’t fly with the PO/PM. He likes to maintain his control and make sure everyone knows he runs the project. Even though he doesn’t know anything techie, he feels he is perfectly capable of controlling a bunch of Developers, DevOps and QA Engineers. Maybe because his project management training instilled these beliefs in him.
So I continue working like this for 4 more months. Now I have completed 6 months at the firm. Till that point, I used to ask the MD for performance feedback, and he used to tell me the same thing. He used to tell me that he’s happy with my performance and even the team for the other project is happy with my performance. Fast forward to now, when it’s time to convert my probation to a full-time permanent contract, the PO/PM joins this meeting and creates a huge list of things that he feels I need to improve before my contract can be upgraded.
All the complaints that the PO/PM had were related to following the scrum rules, like not informing him before taking on a task, working on tasks which are not in the sprint, attitude adjustment etc. You get the point. So there was no reason like lack of technical aptitude for the job, it was behavioural and general reasons. This could always be fixed with a simple and honest feedback, but he felt it was important to extend my probation for another 3 months to see if my behaviour improves.
During my hiring I had negotiated a deal where my salary would increase by a further 5% (remember 35% increase from my previous salary + 5% increase after probation). Now I was pissed, because I won’t get my 5% increase and my probation gets extended, that means I can be fired anytime.
So I polish up my resume and login to LinkedIn. I apply to hundreds of firms looking for remote DevOps Engineers. Also, I start asking for a much greater salary. So compared to my probation salary, my future salary would be 20-25% more.
The whole process of finding a new job, attending interviews, technical tests, negotiating a high salary takes a month.
Meanwhile, at my job, I figure out that switching off my brain and just doing what the PO/PM wants, makes him very happy. He starts giving me positive feedback. Within a month he is impressed enough to redo the whole meeting with me and my MD. During the meeting he lists all the negative points he had against me a month back and how I have taken it off the list now by showing intent and good behaviour. I could feel the unease he was under while praising me. When I was asked for my opinion, I maintain that I have never had any problems with the team and I haven’t changed my working style as much as the PO/PM is thinking. I just stopped doing anything over and beyond.
After that there was no logical reason to extend my probation or fire me. So after initially extending my probation for 3 months, they offered me the upgraded contract with 5% increase within a month. But I didn’t sign this contract, which sent some shockwaves among the HR and senior managers.
Remember how I was floating my resume in the market looking for a better job and salary? That worked around the same time when my new contract was offered.
I got another contract for a Senior DevOps engineer with a focus on security initiatives (remember how I was doing that over and beyond?). My salary went up by 20% and I was assured that as the team grows I would be made a team lead too (which my MD clearly stated would not happen with my current firm).
I signed the contract with the other company and put in my notice. Since officially I was still on probation, my notice period is only 1 month. Take out 14.5 days of vacation from that and you get my last working day.