118
Root
6y

toxic workplace; leaving

I haven't wanted to write this rant. I haven't even wanted to talk to anyone (save my gf, ofc). I've just been silently fuming.

I wrote a much longer rant going into far too much detail, but none of that is relevant, so I deleted it and wrote this shorter (believe it or not) version instead. And then added in more details because details.

------

On Tuesday, as every Tuesday, I had a conference call with the rest of the company. For various, mostly stupid reasons, the boss yelled at and insulted me for twenty minutes straight in front of everyone, telling me how i'm disorganized, forgetful, how can't manage my time, can't manage myself let alone others, how I don't have my priorities straight, etc. He told the sales team to get off the call, and then proceeded to yell and chew at me for another twenty minutes in front of the frontend contractor about basically the same things. The call was 53 minutes, and he spent 40 minutes of it telling me how terrible I've been. No exaggeration, no spin. The issues? I didn't respond to an email (it got lost in my ever-filling inbox), and I didn't push a very minor update last week (untested and straight to prod, ofc). (Side note: he's yelled at me for ~15 minutes before for being horribly disorganized and unable to keep up on Trello -- because I had a single card in the wrong column. One card, out of 60+ over two boards. Never mind that most have time estimates, project tags, details, linked to cards on his boards, columns for project/qa/released, labels for deferred, released to / rejected from qa, finished, in production, are ordered by priority, .... Yep. I'm totes disorganized.)

Anyway, I spent most of conference call writing "Go fuck yourself," "Choke on a cat and die asshole," "Shit code, low pay, and broken promises. what a prize position," etc. or flipping him off under the camera on our conference-turn-video-call (switched due to connection issues, because ofc video is more stable than audio-only in his mind).

I'm just.
so, so done.

I did nothing the rest of the day on Tuesday, and basically just played games on Wednesday. I did one small ticket -- a cert replacement since that was to expire the next day -- but the rest was just playing CrossCode. (fun game, fyi; totally recommend.)

Today? It's 3:30pm and I can't be bothered to do anything. I have an "urgent" project to finish by Monday, literally "to give [random third party sales guy] a small win". Total actual wording. I was to drop all other tasks (even the expiring cert lol) and give this guy his small win. fucking whatever. But the project deals with decent code -- it's a minor extension to the first project I did for the company (see my much earlier rants), back when I was actually applying myself and learning something (everything) new, enjoying myself, and architecting+writing my own code. So I might actually do the project, but It's been two days and I haven't even opened single file yet.

But yeah. This place is total and complete shit. Dealing with the asshole reminds me of dealing with my parents while growing up, and that's a subject I don't want to broach -- far too many toxic memories.

So, I'm quitting as soon as I find something new.
and with luck, this will be before assface hires my replacement-to-be, and who will hopefully quit as soon as s/he sees the abysmal codebase. With even more luck, the asshole king himself will get to watch his company die due to horrible mismanagement. (though ofc he'll never attribute it to himself. whatever.)

I just never want to see or think about him again.
(nor this fetid landfill of a codebase. bleh.)

With luck, this will be one of my last rants about this toxic waste dump and its king of the pile.
Fourty fucking minutes, what the fuck.

Comments
  • 27
    You, you put in your resignation right now. No... NOW!.

    No one deserves that shit, I’ve been on the receiving end of that before, I quit on the spot and now have the best job I’ve ever had, granted I was unemployed for 6 weeks but worth it over that bull shit.

    * sends virtual hugs *
  • 5
    Stay strong, friend!
  • 18
    As @C0D4 said, quit right now! You're one of the people on DR that I follow, not because I share their thoughts/belives but because they're decent devs! Judging from your past rant's you're a fucking decent coder, so all I can tell you is to quit.

    Quite right fucking now, before that asshole of a boss destroys you!

    Although you might be tempted to fuck shit up, I'd still advice you to finish your term (by the books only do what's required, but do that), so they can't give you a bad name, if future employers call them.to ask about you.

    Stay calm, be the adult and just fuck them by leaving. After a few months, when every thing collapses, your former boss will be sweating blood as his boss will call him to ask why shit hit the fan and that's the point he will know what he did. No need to speed it up and simultanously fuck yourself.
  • 5
    @Wack No, I'm not going to destroy anything -- I'm not like that. The most I've considered doing is committing some comments to future devs about the toxicity of the company, but that's probably not wise either.

    The boss I'm talking about is the CEO -- there are no other bosses or authority figures of any kind. I don't like calling him by that title because the company is so small, and "CEO" doesn't make sense when there are no other officers (CTO, COO, etc.). It's him, myself, two sales people, and an intern as actual employees. There's also a few contractors: a frontend dev, an accountant, and lawyer on retainer. Very small company. Nobody for him to blame over the potential failure of the company except himself (though he'll redirect that to me and API Guy, I'm sure).
  • 7
    @Root I'm all for warning other devs through comments. Or git commit messages!
  • 5
    @Wack

    I might describe how terrible the codebases are, though not in commit messages because those are broadcast to Slack.

    However, new hires would likely not see these for quite some time, so they seem rather pointless. Describing the boss and his behavior, though, seems like it would be taken as libel (regardless of the fact that it's true). Ex: "Beware the boss: he promises but never delivers. When in a foul mood, he may flip out over trivialities and never trust nor respect you again."

    Though little dev-sounding hints like "Beware: Promises will resolve within, but not without" might work pretty well.

    Regardless, though, there is zero chance he will give me a favorable review to anyone who asks.
  • 7
    I'd hide it in the more complex features, so they won't just call you out to get brownie points with your (soon to be ex.) Boss. As far as I know, you don't use java, but still a link to the `volatile` keyword in java would be apropriate here and there... From what I remember there's a paragraph in the docs going something like: "think about it as if it was your PM, never rely on what value it has had a second ago, it could have changed it's mind (value) in this very second"
  • 4
    @C0D4 Oh, if only I could.

    We sorely need the income, and there have been a lot of large purchases recently (medical, water heater replacement, tree removal, ...) and there will be several more over the next two months.

    We're not in debt, but we presently don't have enough capital to cover six weeks.

    So a renewed job search it is. :/
  • 6
    @Root that’s fair, livelihood comes first.

    Good luck on your new ventures, with a bit of luck it’ll be right around the corner.

    In the mean time, don’t loose your cool, or sabotage the code base... in any identifying way πŸ™ˆ, as that will just go against you.
  • 1
    Well on the bright side you learned a lot and now know to quit while on the top.
  • 3
    CrossCode looks pretty neat. Retro is my shit.
  • 3
    @JKyll I learned more in the first month than the remaining 12+ lol
  • 5
    These kind of things will kill you from inside, if you stay there any longer. Please change the job as soon as possible. Believe me he may not say that, but he'll realise once you're gone that where his company stands without you. He may find another person, but it won't be the same.

    If you want to alert the new developer, then put a review about your company in Glassdoor, similar websites popular in your country.

    Please don't do anything silly, while you are there. Wish you all the best for your job search.

    PS: Your company sounds like more like the company I'm in. I recently put my resignation.
  • 2
    Shy do people keep thinking I'm going to sabotage things?
  • 2
    @AnonymousDev Good idea about Glassdoor. I just might do that.
  • 1
    @Root generally people do silly things in these kind of stressed situations.

    Yeah, what you said is also true. As we really don't know you, it is not right to say something on assumption.
  • 1
    You need to write this in an email to the boss so that they have an opportunity to improve their management of the developers they hire in the future. Make sure to use a respectful, but firm tone so that it doesn’t reflect poorly on you.
  • 3
    @bratsbratsbrats it really does not matter. The boss, who didn't realise the work his employees are doing, is hardly going to take that email as constructive feedback.
  • 2
    @AnonymousDev @bratsbratsbrats His reading comprehension is also quite poor, so that email would fall upon blind eyes. Sigh.
  • 1
    Damn I'm sorry you had to deal with that. They're garbage
  • 6
    Hey, I'm sorry to hear about all of this and that ass King broke your dev spirit.. Its good to get it all out and have everyone here at devrant help you through it (from personal experience, which you will not find on my profile for reasons we should not ask), they give sober advice and are very supportive, they also help you deal and think correctly about things. I hope you find something really really soon, I understand that perhaps you don't feel like leaving without that security, I sure didn't. But grab the first thing you get (even if you just use them as a stepping stone until you find the actual place you would prefer to go to) and remember to take a little "me time" when switching between the two jobs. Just to get your mind back on track, it is highly needed when leaving such a toxic dump. Stay strong fellow dev, you will get through this. And you have everyone here rooting for you.
  • 1
    @GhostDev πŸ€—!

    Why can't we favorite comments yet, @dfox? I want to favorite that one ☹
  • 1
    @Root Be sure to leave a review on Glassdoor
  • 3
    Some people are just pure toxic , your boss for instance is definitely part of that group. He probably had problems at home / he hates the way you look , maybe reminds him of someone / or something more probable is that he hates you cause you like what you do and he doesn't . Unlike in your case , all that I could express would be pity. Such a lowlife who couldn't strive to set his life the way he likes/threw himself forcefully into money's way isn't worthy of a fuck. At least this was the situation in my case with a bossy friend/partner.

    (Another toxic characteristic my friend had apart from possessiveness and self guilt was that he compared himself to me all the time and shit on me while he could've taken me as inspiration and become a worthy rival
    (Often I had to change his code for being crap , some people can't accept that but unless they do they ain't gonna move a single step forward ))
  • 3
    @Root and now for a terrible but funny idea, if all else fails, we shall go and throw burnt marshmallows at ass kings car... Just imagine the sticky! And we shall hide a few in places where not even the valet will find them muhahaha!
  • 2
    Damn, I hope you're able to find a decent job really soon because the one you have in combination with your boss (what a giant asshole!) just seem to scream GTFO. A decent dev like you shouldn't have to put up with this shit.

    I wish you the best of luck job-hunting-wise. If Root can't do this who else can. ;)
  • 2
    I love you all πŸ€—β€
  • 0
    As a student with 0 work experience, it's safe to say I cannot exactly relate to your experience even though similar moments at school exist, but I can definitely understand how you feel. Stay strong bud! :)
  • 1
    I wish you all the luck possible. Get out of there and watch him grovel.
  • 5
    The boss actually asked me to work the weekend on this "urgent small win" project πŸ˜‚ after yelling at me for 40 minutes straight this week πŸ˜‚

    Yeah, that's soo happening.

    I'd consider it if my weekend wasn't already totally booked with replacing him! πŸ˜‰
  • 1
    2 sales people and 1 dev. Classic. Get out of there now. It's not worth it.
  • 1
    @palecio Three sales people, a sales/support intern, and one dev. πŸ˜…
  • 2
    The king asshole broke his leg!

    Schadenfreude or not, I've been smiling for days. 😊
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