Arrogant Boss Tries To Force Employee Back Into The Office. He Quits, Gets A Raise And Never Has To Work With That Guy Again.

The guy you’re to meet in this story from Reddit is THE MAN.

His name is Tim and he’s about to show all of you how to get things done!

Check out his story below and take some pointers, okay?

It’ll be worth your time!

To give you some background on my friend Tim (made up name) he has been programming since he was like 7 years old.

Tim said by the time he got to college he breezed through most of his Comp Sci classes because a lot of the content they where covering he had already mastered years prior.

Tim is an excellent programmer.

This guy had his act together.

Tims career has been quite successful, he’s worked for Google, Facebook, Amazon, and finally a hedge fund. The story starts at the hedge fund.

Tim works a lot with AI technology, and at this hedge fund he was the lead programmer manager who spearheaded a effort to optimize their AI that helped them complete literally millions of trades a day. To say his work had a massive impact…was an understatement.

All of this is going on with COVID19 in the background. Due to COVID19 they went to a work from home model. Where my friend Tim kept working. During the work from home, Tim was looking around his fancy $4,500 NYC apartment and wished for things like a yard, a heated pool, a nice three car garage, and not living in a high rise. It dawned on Tim that he could leave NYC.

He made a move.

Tim moves to Michigan.

So Tim moved back to his hometown in Michigan, where he bought himself a really nice home with a heated pool, a three car garage, a nice yard, and guess what the yard had in it?

A mother in love suite which was essentially a 2 bedroom, 1 bath second home on the property of his main home which he turned into his man cave. Its actually pretty sick.

O yea and his mortgage payment WAS FAR LESS then his 4.5k a month rent. Like half…

Tim spent the rest of his COVID19 work from home pounding out projects, etc…he never actually informed his employer on a official basis he moved…he just kept working. Then COVID19 “ended”.

COVID19 IS FINALLY OVER…Back to the office…or???

Time to spill his guts.

Tim’s boss, Larry calls him up and goes, “Alright Tim on Monday we are starting work back at the office,” and Tim goes, “Yea…about that I moved to Michigan.”

Larry is shocked and goes, “You didn’t even ask if you could do that?” and Tim basically said “I didn’t know I needed your permission to move” in a sarcastic as hell way.

Larry insists that Tim needs to move back to NYC, or he won’t have a place on the team.

Tim says he’s been doing the exact same work from home at a high level for the past year…he’s willing to travel to NYC for a few meetings a year on his own dime, but he feels his quality of life is so much higher outside of NYC he has no desire to live in NYC.

To which Larry said if Tim doesn’t have any desire to live in NYC then he has no desire to keep Tim employed.

What do you think a talented senior programmer with over a decade of experience, who specializes in AI technology is going say to a response like that?

He made his decision.

If your thinking he quit, you’d be absolutely right, he quit. Maintaining complex code can be hard.

Now anyone that has done any programming knows that sometimes the best person to maintain the code is the person who wrote the code. There’s logic, there’s thought processes, there’s so much that goes into programming that can be so individualistic it can be hard for someone to take over a code base they didn’t write.

John (CEO) enters the the picture.

6 weeks goes by, when John calls Tim. John is the CEO of the hedge fund. John gets Tim to agree to consider coming back, so that’s when John suggests they fly Tim to NYC and he sits down with John.

Let’s switch things up.

Tim however flipped the switch and said “No, how about you fly out to Michigan and we discuss this?”

Tim said he said that because he wanted to establish if he was going come back, it was going be him…working from Michigan, and if he was going talk his employment it was going be done in Michigan.

John agreed, and two days later flew out to meet with Tim.

Tim sits down and John says they really need him, because he provided a lot of value to the organization and the programing team is struggling.

John offers Tim the opportunity to come back with a 20% pay cut (since he won’t’ be living in NYC and John called that a cost of living adjustment).

To which Tim said “No, I want a 15% raise above what I was earning.”

Tim was about to show the boss who was REALLY the boss.

John sits back and responds “The reason we pay what we pay is because we ask you to live in NYC and we understand thats an expensive city to live in” to which Tim says “You pay what you pay, and you pay it because I am worth it. If I wasn’t worth what you pay, you wouldn’t be paying me, now my first condition is if you want me back it’ll be a 15% raise.”

John goes “And second?”

“The second condition is I’ll come back so long as Larry isn’t there”

John sighs “Your asking for too much” to which Tim goes “You don’t need to bring me back if you don’t want too, I’ll be fine elsewhere” John goes “I’ll talk to the partners” Tim says “My offer is good till Friday” John goes “What do you mean?” Tim says “Next Monday is when I’m going start looking for work, this offer is good until Friday” (It was Tuesday) John leaves.

That Thursday the phone rings.

It’ John.

Wouldn’t you know it…?

In Conclusion

“Tim, we are transferring Larry to a different fund, he won’t be working with you anymore and we are fine with giving you a 15% raise, can we send you an offer letter for you to sign?”

Tim said “Of course, and Larry is really gone?”

John goes “Yes, you will never need to interact with Larry ever again.”

That was at the start of this year, Tim hasn’t been in NYC, hasn’t heard from Larry, hasn’t seen Larry on any communications, etc.”

This is what people had to say.

One person said something similar happened to a friend.

Another individual said they knew how this was going to play out.

One Reddit user didn’t think this qualified as revenge.

This individual talked about EGO.

And this Reddit user said Tim better watch his back…

So long, Larry!

I wonder what ever happened to him…

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.