r/Maliciouscompliance How I Destroyed My Boss's Terrible Business

welcome to our slash malicious compliance where opi helps destroy his boss's company our next reddit post is from technical viking this story has a few characters chad the hiring chief technology officer richard the ceo and the brother of chad big bro who is an engineer worker and eddie an it and desktop support guy this takes place near the very beginning of my software engineering career back in 0.506 i just been let go from my previous place of employment due to being compliant with directives i've just been given and thus working myself out of a job i was a young college dropout from a technical college that hadn't been federally accredited yet and thus all my student loans were from bank and loan companies instead of from uncle sam and debts were due i was also making payments on my very first car even though it was a beer that the prior owners had already nearly driven into the ground it was four years old with nearly 200 000 miles on it when i bought it and on top of all that renting utilities the job i'd been let go from already had me working paycheck to paycheck as they paid far under average rates but i was still a new professional so i couldn't be very choosy i was also living in la so the cost of living was so bad i was having to choose which bills were going to be laid on a monthly basis specifically i was living in a town called san pedro a small town tucked fairly out of the way after blasting my resume to all the job boards i got a call from a startup who seemed interested in my resume and wanted me to come in for a face-to-face interview skipping the call screen entirely in my desperation i agree i'm given an address which is all the way up in woodland hills i check online and it's a 55 minute drive if there's no traffic with traffic it looks like the commute will be closer to an hour and 45 minutes each way i'm desperate though and literally nobody else has reached out to me about my resume or responded to my application so i go to the interview i arrived to a mostly empty office complex maybe six or seven other cars in a parking lot capable of holding at least 50. i go into the building mentioned in the address and call the phone number i was given to let them know i'd arrived enter chad chad comes to meet me and he seems excited that i'm there he escorts me through the building to an office mind you as far as i can see we're the only two humans in the building he gives me the pitch for the company and tells me that he built the software being sold but it's not scalable and he needs someone who can rewrite it after we go through the whole interview song and dance he offers me the job on the spot the pay is marginally higher than the last gig so i figured gas would be covered for the commute i agree and we shake hands as i'm going to be starting the next monday red flags start appearing from the very first minute that i arrive on monday first i'm given a tour which consists of the 14 by 14 office i'm going to be sharing with chad as well as another engineer who's going to be starting the following monday i'm not a fan of having someone able to look over my shoulder it makes me nervous i ask why each engineer's desk has two computers and chad replies because the one you'll be writing code on doesn't have internet access for security purposes note this was pure paranoia there was nothing about this software that required such tight security we weren't doing any government contracts or anything of the sort then i'm escorted clear across the building to meet with the ceo richard the it guy eddie and the sales support team i'm told that half of the team is supporting the existing version of the application two people are selling the existing version to new clients or trying to and one person is explicitly tasked with selling the new version the one that i haven't even started on yet i'm still young and dumb at this point but even i know this means a sales person is probably giving out a date when the customer should expect their purchase to be filled chad said it's a good thing you started when you did we've been telling customers it'll be ready in june did i mention that all this happened in february apparently i've agreed to rewrite test and package an entire application that i've never seen before in approximately four months so the tour being done i sit down and get to work after jumping through a bunch of hoops of getting the software i prefer downloaded onto the actual work machine as well as the code i set about reviewing code so horrific i've not seen it's like since and there wasn't a single comment in the entire thing before i can ask chad a single question he tells me he's headed to downtown l.a to scalp some tickets for a lakers game and it'll see me tomorrow so now i'm left alone in the office with this abomination a machine that's been completely hamstrung and the only thing i've got to control myself is the fact that at least i'm employed again fast forward a week and i've documented the bulk of the code because there wasn't any documentation and the boss and i do not get along he's mad because i haven't written any substantial code and i'm frustrated because i'm just trying to understand a lot of what this code is trying to do and he's routinely leaving around noon to go sell his tickets for lakers games or he's just not in the office because he's chatting with someone else when he's in the office i show him my documentation and i try to get him to verify or describe the purpose of the code where all i can say is what by the end of the week i covered about 30 of the project in a wiki-like document and i've taken to leaving after sunset so i can a get more done b have a shorter commute and c drive when my car isn't an oven my ac didn't work i've barely managed to convince the cto that what i'm doing is necessary so the engineer starting the next monday doesn't have to do all the stuff that i did which would make us a much more efficient team monday arrives and in comes big bro i call him this because he was a much more experienced engineer than i was we spent the first day with him getting set up then us reviewing what i've documented he manages to answer some questions at the cto never did just because he's that much better and i start to feel more confident over the next few weeks big bro took me under his wing as an engineer teaching me best practices standards and where my plans were good and where they could be better if it hadn't been for him i'd have gone insane i ended up joining him outside for smoke breaks even though i don't smoke just so i can get a breath of non-office air he and i discuss the project and we also make friends with eddie who makes us laugh by telling us horror stories about the cto and ceo apparently he was a school friend of theirs and basically worked with him because they paid him to do something that he felt was super easy april rolls around i've got a special occasion that i need the day off for which happens to be a wednesday that year i'd advise the cto when i first started and he'd been cool with it i remind him on april 2nd and he loses it he goes off on a rant and straight up informs me that he regrets hiring me claiming that i didn't have the skills that i told him i did and i wasn't worth what i was being paid how we're definitely not halfway done more like one-third and it's already been decided that june is a lost cause and that we're shooting for august now by the way that habit that i started before of leaving after the sun went down yeah that never stopped i was arriving at 9am every day and leaving around 10 pm every night trying my best big bro was the same and eddie would stay late with us just because we liked hanging out together so it would be understandable that i was very close to losing it right there in a strained yet diplomatic voice i told him that if he put in the same amount of work to help us as we put in to rewrite his code we'd probably be a lot closer to done than we were especially given the 12 hour days he was not a fan of that and switched to straight up yelling blaming us for the lost sales and refunds due to delays and that the only way he'd get us off our backs was to get the project done this entire time big bro was just sitting there and said nothing to back me up chad then left the office for a bit and i just declared that i was taking my lunch and would be back in an hour i felt frustrated by chad and betrayed by big bro who i felt rightly or not should have had my back since we were in the same boat when we were both back in the office chad apologized for yelling and told me that since he agreed when i was hired i could have my day off i apologize too although not for anything specific i just didn't want to talk to him anymore and figure that was the fastest way to end the conversation fast forward to june and the opportunity for malicious compliance over the last two months chad has been getting worse and worse he's yelling nearly every day and still leaving early too big bro and eddie are also feeling the pain nobody is safe from his ego the smoke breaks in the afternoon and evening portion of our day are when we're the most productive because nobody can focus until chad leaves the first monday in june rolls around and chad invites me to go on a walk outside for a one-on-one meeting i figured i'm being fired at this point we've had to refactor the rewrite almost entirely due to a missing critical chunk of functionality and we're still only 60 done august release is looking less and less sure chad informed me that he hired a third engineer but in order to stay in the budget and pay him he's cutting my salary in half i stop on the spot and just give him a blank look are you serious i ask i'm barely able to pay for my bills and the gas required to commute here as it is if you cut my salary at all i won't be able to afford to live at this point the fact that i would have to be less productive to help onboard the new engineer so he can help us meet the deadline doesn't even occur to me although in hindsight that would have also been a pretty major issue chad brushes me off that's not my problem the fact that you missed one deadline and look like you're gonna miss another is if you've got a problem with that you're more than welcome to go find another job the new guy starts in two weeks and with that he walks inside i had just been told that i had two weeks left of job at my current salary so that day i do something that i hadn't done since i first started i left while the sun was still up specifically 5 p.m i drove my oven car through traffic and updated my resume before reactivating my accounts on all the job sites i'm contacted the next day by a potential new employer and i get an interview scheduled i decided to tell big bro about the new opportunity and he hits me with news that lets me know just how small of a world we live in hey big bro just fyi i've started looking for a new job i've already got an interview lined up really where over at such and such company wow that's where i worked before i came here that place is pretty awesome and i left there on pretty good terms i know the cto there go ahead and use me as a reference really okay turns out big bro was true to his word and the cto and i even talked about big bro during the interview apparently they'd already talked about me and big bro had been the ultimate hype man confirming everything i said about why i was looking for a new job and everything everything went well and i signed an offer letter that friday afternoon chad had already left for the day so there was no one to look over my shoulder so i could use the computer that did have internet to get this done at this new job my commute was cut by more than half and it came with a pretty significant raise i tell big bro and eddie on the last smoke break that i'm done that i found something new oddly enough they both smile and wish me luck no hard feelings hope we stay in touch odd but i'd stopped really caring about anything related to that job so i paid it no mind i went back inside packed up my stuff into my backpack and walked into the ceo's office hey richard got a minute hey op what's up just wanted to let you know that i found a new job so i'm moving on really why we need you you guys decided that it was cool to cut my salary to a point where i couldn't afford to live chad said if i didn't like it i should look for something new so i did richard looking defeated said well when's your last day today richard now pissed says we need you here to train the new guy who starts soon hey i had to trade myself and to an extent big bro when he first started the new guy should be able to as well and with that i left for greener pastures four months later big bro text me to ask me how things are going i tell them things are great and we schedule a lunchtime call because apparently things have gone sideways in a huge way apparently chad came in on monday almost violently angry and demanded that eddie re-image my work machine first thing in the morning which erases everything that i left on there big bro comes in an hour later and he and chad discuss the new timeline for the project somewhere in there apparently big bro asked chad to log into the admin account on my old work machine so we could pull the documents i'd accumulated about the planned architecture the existing code meeting notes etc chad responded by punching a hole in the wall and leaving for the day probably to go to the hospital to deal with his hands big bro then spent the rest of that week ostensibly working on recreating that documentation from scratch when i asked how the new guy handled the new documentation big bro laughed and told me that there was never any documentation apparently he and eddie had become really good friends in the months that we worked there to the point where they'd become roommates about a month before i left more than that though they decided to start a freelance consulting business together and only had to decide on when to make that their full-time jobs neither of them like chad much and they wanted to make their departure hurt as much as possible so they decide to make big bros last day the day before the new guy starts and eddie would quit shortly afterwards sticking around just long enough to watch the bomb go off did i mention that big bro never told chad that he was quitting yeah he just didn't show up on that monday he had however emailed that documentation that he'd spent a week writing to chad turns out he wasn't writing documentation code at all he'd spent a week writing a letter explaining in excruciating detail why chad was such a bad boss and he'd emailed it to everyone in the company i asked if he still had it so i could read it and he sent it to me after the call thankfully like the big helper that he was eddie had ensured that the new guy's email was set up and in the proper groups before the email was sent so the new guy's first email in the company was a novel about the kind of person he'd agreed to work for apparently chad thought it was appropriate to take his frustration out on the new guy who'd apparently read a significant portion of the email before chad shoved him away from his desk and deleted it apparently the new guy promptly decided and rightfully so that agreeing to work for chad had been a mistake packed up his things and quit on the spot with the new guy quitting the august deadline was now little more than a dream within a dream which according to eddie didn't stop chad and richard from trying to find that miracle rockstar engineer who could save them from their own situation which given what they were offering to pay didn't exist so time advances in its own unstoppable way and august arrived customers found out they paid for something that hadn't been delivered yet and pretty much unanimously demanded refunds with a few customers bringing legal action against them with the amount they had to refund and the money they needed for legal fees they could no longer afford to pay anyone and were forced to start at the business also the way they were incorporated they were personally liable that was our slash malicious compliance and if you like this content check out my patreon where i publish extra episodes also hit that subscribe button because i put out new reddit videos every single day

Channel: rSlash

Views: 286,807

Rating: 4.9510932 out of 5

Keywords: reddit, r/, rslash, r\, sub, subreddit, best of reddit, reddit top posts, top posts, top posts of all times, funniest posts, funny, comedy, funniest reddit posts, funny reddit posts, funny reddit, fails, cringe, maliciouscompliance, malicious, compliance, r/maliciouscompliance

Id: 0DdsjdUKLhc

Length: 15min 31sec (931 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 24 2021