First of all, I apologize for using a throwaway account, but I feel like I have to, as my real account would dox me with the information that follows.
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TLDR (Spoiler):
Peter Principle Boss of a fortune 500 lied to the whole team for personal gain, spied on people after many people quit at the same time, then got a heart attack when he got caught.
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Prologue
The story starts in autumn of 2020 and I was working as a senior software developer in a fortune 500 company. We had many small teams and I was one of the leads, directly reporting to the boss / manager. For the sake of anonymity, let's call this boss “Adam”.
Adam was a marketing guy and thanks to the Peter Principle, quickly grew into a position where he was incompetent. When presenting software, Adam promised clients the world, many would call Adam a vaporware salesman. This resulted in the team becoming unhappy.
One thing the teams noticed very quickly was, that talking about salary is very important.
So we sat together and noticed that there was a discrepancy of more than 100% for people doing the exact same job at the exact same motivational level. Since we also wrote some financial software, we knew that each of our work was sold to clients for $1.000+ a day, while we barely saw any of that (100% workload).
One on one talks were scheduled with Adam and he promised each and everyone a payraise, starting in January of 2021. One of the teammembers was sick during the talk-time but Adam managed to dodge him due to being “too busy”.
January came and would you look at that. Besides Adam's friends No one got the promised raise. Confronting Adam, he claimed that he can't remember any talks with us. When the absent teammember asked for a raise Adam told him, verbatum:
“Sorry, you should've done that before January. Now you have to wait until December again.”
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Adam's decline
Thanks to contacts in the company, we quickly got wind of what happened. Sources in management told us that Adam got a huge bonus for the lack of pay raises and the performance of our team during the year. He was surely happy, as he could use the money to pay part of the house he bought the year prior.
Word got around fast and I was absolutely pissed. Not only did Adam lie to me, but also to my whole team, who barely got by with their salary, while others got paid over 100% more than them.
My letter of resignation followed promptly.
To finish projects and adhere to the contract, I gave them a 4 months notice.
Adam was furious. In a one on one, the usual manipulation started:
Don't burn bridges on your way out!
Don't tell anyone you're quitting!
Think about it, you will never find a job as good as this before!
We taught you everything you know!
This is highly unprofessional on such short notice, we planned you until December!
Of course I told my team after I resigned and the rest very lies or scare tactics.
What I did not know is that, totally unplanned, 3 other team members quit on the same day.
Adam's boss, let's call him Steve, called each of the people who quit into a one on one and began to tinfoil.
You are all traitors!
You are probably switching to company X!
You will never work in this field again!
If I catch you working at another company in this field, I will personally call their boss to get you fired!
After these talks, I gave them a new notice, instead of the 4 months, it will now be the contractual 3 months.
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Adam's downfall
The next days were weird, obviously. While some of the people who left got written off as sick by their doctors, I decided to keep on working. My team members, those who remained, still needed me and I was happy to help their education to become better devs.
One day however, Adam slipped.
He sent me an email with a screenshot attached that looked like the messenger we were using internally. The screenshot was of a meaningless and short conversation with a coworker, giving them tips. Something looked odd though. Instead of a usual conversation (one person on the left, other person on the right) it was a single column, with other features that should not be there.
That's when I noticed that Adam was spying on us, watching the private chat.
The country where I am from does not allow for such shenanigans and I knew this was something that was illegal.
I replied to Adam, answering his question he had about this conversation, and told him to no longer contact me directly via E-Mail, unless he puts the work council / union, data privacy, HR, and compliance into CC, which is what I did on my reply.
Then I proceeded to contact these agencies immediately, providing the screenshot and an explanation of the situation. They were, to say the least, shocked.
The same night, I saw management pop up in our messenger, from being offline to being online, and then suddenly all being busy, meaning they had a little talk. This lasted hours.
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Outro
The next day, I received an email from Steve, Adam's boss.
All the agencies were in CC and I saw he requested a call with HR being present.
“Hello AntiworkThrowaway_ , thank you for taking the time to have a chat with us. As you can see HR is also present. If you don't mind we would like to talk to you for a few minutes.”
“I am sorry that I have to do this in place of Adam, but he was delivered to the hospital yesterday evening, he had a heart attack.”
“AntiworkThrowaway_ , we would like to offer you, to finish your contractual obligation to work with us here, that means that starting from now, if you want, you no longer have to work for us. Of course you will still receive payment for the rest of the contract”
I said yes. After your boss pulling so much bullshit in so little time, it was enough even for me.
I used the time I got to relax and started freelancing.
No longer is anybody skimming a huge percentage from the top of my negotiated price.
I can choose projects I support. There is plenty of offers and I am fortunate enough to even take months off. My mental health has never been better. I really do not wish to ever go back to permanent employment, if I have the choice.
This is antiwork for me. And something needs to change in the mindset of people.
Employees need to see that they have the power to change things for the better.
Unions, paid vacation, health insurance, maternity leave… these things did not fall from the sky. You have to fight for them. There is always work for you somewhere. Do not let your boss scare you into thinking otherwise.
Employers and bosses need to see that people don't put up with their shit any longer.
As for Adam, he is back at his job as a manager, but he became much more tame after the whole situation (from what I've heard). Investigations are, as far as I know, still ongoing.
Thanks for reading this novel of a story.
Don't be an Adam.