Some background, small team and small company. There was a junior, a senior (me), and our tech lead. Our lead quit and someone without a tech background took over. The person who took over is very vulnerable to yes men and the junior is an extremely confident and very well liked person. This has led to what seem like almost daily instances of him convincing my boss to do something, me objecting, and my boss overruling me. Then finding out a couple days later that it was a terrible decision.
Some of these decisions led to something I knew had a risk of downing our entire platform (we’re a software as a service company). The update was going to be pushed through in the middle of the night. I did my best to warn them and really dragged my feet on it, begging them to not go through with it. Or at the very least saying I want nothing to do with it. (They wanted to push this update without doing any sort of testing, in a way that would wipe out our backups, because the junior promised my new boss that it was safe and the only way to do it and I was just being difficult because I was biased against him.). I let our software tester know what’s going on and she got out of bed to test it and what do you know it downed our test environment.
After that whole situation our new boss finally started listening to me and asked me to speak up if the junior is doing something that’s detrimental to our platform or the company. But since he was also implicated in this (he’s an executive that commands a lot of respect within the company) he’s burying what happened. So only parts of it are leaking out and the junior has been spreading rumors that I’m angling for a promotion and I’m doing it by torpedoing him and his endeavors. He’s been highly effective at convincing people and people I once thought of as good friends at work have started turning on me and accusing me of going after him due to jealousy and that I needed to stop. Maybe this is a bit pathetic of me, but I considered several to be extremely close friends that I would trust with a lot and I’ve been absolutely emotionally rocked.
Finally, some closing context as to why I’m bothering trying to protect the company or why I haven’t left. As for why I haven’t left, with the rising popularity of AI, most jobs within my industry have been requiring AI experience and I don’t have it. I did find a Harvard crash course on it, but im having trouble concentrating and focusing on it after work. Finally, the one person left at the company I don’t feel betrayed by is our new chief science officer (impressive contractor who got offered the position after her major contributions to the company). She wants me not only object to but fight against something that would damage the company or our projects. She’s helped me out in the past so I feel obligated.