Throwaway account, obv.
About a decade a go, I was unexpectedly let go from my position at a family-run business where politicks played *more* than a large hand in my departure.
So, I immediately reached out to some contacts, and had an interview for a position at an international media organization with a branch in my area the same day.
In my haste to secure new employment, I ignored some immediate red flags, including my future manager telling me that “We don't do anything exciting here. Heck, some guys don't even leave their desks all day unless it's to use the can.”.
Yet, I was given an offer, and I took it. More pay with the promise of less work and promised annual bonuses? How could I not?
My first day was was a flurry of HR meetings and trainings, with little interaction with my actual boss. The second day was the same thing, sans the HR stuff. I think the third day I maybe actually spoke to my boss, outside of a quick “Read the handbook and look at the shared documents”. I read the handbook three times, and couldn't do anything else because my accounts weren't set up or working.
Eventually, over the course of weeks, I got working credentials, talked with my new manager briefly, and was more or less just pointed at some outdated “documentation” and told to figure things out.
And I did. We had some antiquated excel spreadsheet that was a checklist for some server setup process I was supposed to review and learn. So instead of just learning how to do every single manual step in this 40-item spreadsheet, I wrote a series of scripts that would just do it for me. Logging, error checking, the whole nine yards. I took a manual process that would generally take someone on our team a day or two to check and verify, and converted it into a system that a monkey could run which took like 2 hours and two user inputs in that time to complete. Heck, the output could even be imported into the old spreadsheet and used to fill out the “checklist” to my Boss' liking.
When I tried to show him this, to say he was nonplussed would be an understatement. He simply didn't even understand what I did, and so by virtue of that, didn't like or trust it.
So, I just stopped telling him when I'd automate these rote tasks he'd had former team members working on. And that became my job…for nearly a decade.
I would work with other team members to help them if they had issues, and occasionally I would be assigned to projects outside the spectrum of “normal system maintenance”, but for the most part, my job usually consisted of creating scripts to do the things that my team members had been forced to do manually up until then, because my boss was a complete moron.
And for a long time, it didn't bother me enough to completely check out. I tried. I pursued bigger projects, other departments, had conversations with senior staff who would publicly promise to help people find new opportunites…only to have smoke blown up my a$$ for years to no avail.
Then, the company switched hands for the umpteenth time, and some room full of a$$holes in suits somewhere decided that our annual bonuses were no longer guaranteed, and that instead, would be determined by the performance review specifically handed out by said manager.
This was also right around the time of COVID, so we were all allowed to WFH 100% of the time. And I took advantage of it. Why not? With higher bars being set every year, a toxic manager and work environment, and a rotating host of team members with no experience constantly coming and going…my motivation was shot.
As the title would suggest – this is where I started realizing that I needed to get TF out of there. But I also didn't want to get another $hitty job doing the same thing for some other faceless multinational corporation.
So, I just checked out. Set my robots on turbo mode, scripted everything, and started diving deep into the generative AI space. I became heavily involved in the open-source community, released some very popular software that I built a whole community around on Discord, and made some incredible contacts in the process. I don't want to call myself a celebrity…but in very specific circles…I have a LOT of clout.
That lasted for about the past year and a half, when I think my former boss finally started to get the impression that something was up…and so I knew the writing was on the wall.
Reached out to some of these contacts I'd made along the way, and with one interview, I had a solid position lined up at a leading startup working with a team of incredible people. I accepted immediately – and after being sure I'd burned all of my sick time (USE IT OR LOSE IT), I contacted HR and asked their official policy regarding required time for giving notice. They were very vague, and never once *specifically* said that I HAD to give two weeks…but I did anyway.
My boss immediately accepted my resignation, agreed to pay me for the two weeks anyway, and I also got all of my PTO paid out. Was he worried I'd sabotage things in the two weeks I had left? Didn't want to deal with the headaches of me being 100% checked out? Don't really know, don't really care.
Remember how I mentioned the company had recently come under new management? Former boss *really* didn't like this, as he knew it would mean greater scrutiny on his department and shortcomings in general – of which there were so many to list it'd take a whole other post. Let's just say the only way this guy could have made it as far as he did in his career is by having evidence of someone above him, or just outright selling everybody else in his path down the river.
Or, “failing upward”.
That said, I also made sure to fire off a *lengthy* email to the new president, vice president, and regional manager for our new company; detailing everything I'd witnessed in the past decade. The beauty of sending these massive back-slapping emails from the desk of the CEO, amiright? I pointed out the turnover rates, the numerous issues over the years that had been shrugged off as a failure of his subordinates, and the general sentiments held by his long-term peers that he was just…inept and toxic.
And I got a response. An official case has been opened with HR, and for obvious reasons, they can't tell me any more than that. But nonetheless, even if nothing happens, thinking about this a$$hat squirming under the lens of a HR investigation is enough to make me smile even now.
I'm at a new job with a new team who appreciates me and tells me every day how amazing I am, and I most likely seriously fu*ked up my former boss' retirement plans in the process. And it was all inspired by you, good people of Reddit. So thank you.