Boss Fires IT Guy, Makes Him Delete All The Files Despite Being Advised Not To, Realizes His Mistake Too Late
No one likes being replaced at their job, especially if your substitute is a cheaper software grad while you have spent years working hard and earning yourself a name. Well, this is what happened to one experienced programmer, Redditor Oldman712, whose job was “to design and write software prototypes for individual high-value customers.”
Then, one day management changed and he was told he was no longer needed and that he had two weeks to train a new guy. But there was one catch. “Having done this work for years, I’ve accumulated a disk farm of past projects, which can be very useful when a customer asks for something just like we did last year, but with a small change or two,” wrote the author. So he ended up having “$1000 of personal disk drives with old customer data on them,” which was really bugging the management.
Ordered to delete them all before leaving, Oldman712 tried his best to convince the manager that this was not exactly the smartest idea. But hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Scroll down through the whole story below, and be sure that malicious compliance was served and regrets were had. Big ones.
The experienced programmer has shared how he was replaced at his job by a cheaper new grad and the office drama that followed
Image credits: lilzidesigns (not the actual photo)
The new manager also ordered the author to delete his $1k worth of drives with all the company’s old customer data on them and didn’t take no for an answer
Image credits: oldman712
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Others shared their own similar experiences
I've found in my many years in IT that just because it's an IT based company that doesn't mean the management has the faintest clue how their own products and processes work. They're usually business grads who are taught that "a good manager can manage any company" and laugh off the suggestion that their ignorance is actually harmful. (spoiler: their ignorance is very harmful)
And this right here is why the company I work for is being run into the ground.
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If somebody is willing to get rid of you to save money one time, they are willing to get rid of you for another bad reason another time. Don't ever, ever go back to a place that you were forced to leave.
I went through a similar experience. The small company I was working for ran out of work, but the owner dragged his feet laying me off formally. So that's about 2 weeks with almost no income. Then he dragged his feet with the paperwork so that I could claim EI. Three weeks. Then of course it was about 6 weeks before I got EI payments, so that's nine weeks with no income. I found another job a couple months later with better pay, only to get a frantic phone call a few weeks in *demanding* that I come back at once to the previous company because they got some work. When I pointed out that I had found another job, he insisted that I *must* come in weekends and evenings to work for him. Um... nope.
If he really insists, quote him a rate like $1000/hour. Then you can tell how desperate he is.
Load More Replies... I've found in my many years in IT that just because it's an IT based company that doesn't mean the management has the faintest clue how their own products and processes work. They're usually business grads who are taught that "a good manager can manage any company" and laugh off the suggestion that their ignorance is actually harmful. (spoiler: their ignorance is very harmful)
And this right here is why the company I work for is being run into the ground.
Load More Replies... If somebody is willing to get rid of you to save money one time, they are willing to get rid of you for another bad reason another time. Don't ever, ever go back to a place that you were forced to leave.
I went through a similar experience. The small company I was working for ran out of work, but the owner dragged his feet laying me off formally. So that's about 2 weeks with almost no income. Then he dragged his feet with the paperwork so that I could claim EI. Three weeks. Then of course it was about 6 weeks before I got EI payments, so that's nine weeks with no income. I found another job a couple months later with better pay, only to get a frantic phone call a few weeks in *demanding* that I come back at once to the previous company because they got some work. When I pointed out that I had found another job, he insisted that I *must* come in weekends and evenings to work for him. Um... nope.
If he really insists, quote him a rate like $1000/hour. Then you can tell how desperate he is.
Load More Replies...
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