Quitting your job? Here's how not to do it You can't take it with you... There is a tradition of “off-site backups” for handy bits of code and data that you’ve worked with at your current employer. At most firms you could fit every line of source code together with a complete customer list on the free USB stick you got at a conference. This is a really dumb thing to do …
Actually his advice on 'Buy Backs' or what we Yanks call counter offers, among other things... is wrong.
Here's the problem... You and your employer have to ask why you were leaving in the first place? Was it a great dream job offer? Was it just for more money? Was it for more responsibility?
What happens in 3-6 months you get another call? Are you going to jump ship?
You're now officially damaged goods and you can't be trusted.
Sure they may hire you back so that you can train your replacement, especially if they suspect you will leave anyways.
At the same time, it could look like you were holding them hostage over salary.
It would be better to follow the other advice, leave on good terms and if things don't work out, see if you can go back to them. If you're good enough, the answer is usually yes.
Well, he did say that it's a "risky bet", that most "bought back" people end up leaving anyway, and that it's often due to the reasons for wanting to go in the first place not changing. He didn't mention the trust issue, but I'd like to believe most working adults would have that figured by now.
I happen to agree with you, i.e., don't accept a counter-offer and stay. I only did this once in my IT career (which is approaching 38 years now), and I ended up leaving anyway some six months later, on much less pleasant terms (and, by the way, quite burned out; I didn't program again for money for nearly four years).
If you're thinking of leaving, do your best to raise all the issues and see if you can get them resolved. If you can't, then find a new job (if you can) and leave -- but leave on the best terms possible.
Other than that, I agree with all the other advice in the article. ..bruce..
His advice on buybacks (incidentally when I was a lad they used to be called 'counter-offers'; maybe 'buyback' is a more honest term as it emphasises what a commodity the whole thing has become) is pretty sound, except I'd have put it a lot more tersely, i.e. "NEVER accept a buyback, EVER".
There were a few of us who left one company within a short space of time. No one was offered a buyback by the management, just insults. Even if they did offer money, I wouldn't have stayed.
Though I don't see the point of a buyback anyway. If its about money, shouldn't the employer have paid more in the first place? Sometimes the only way to get a decent rise is to company hop.
Especially in a small town, the IT industry social network tends to be *very* well connected.
You next boss will scan your CV for companies they know other management at. They will then catch them up for a chat and drop your name for an informal reference.
If you managed to P.O. your boss when leaving, this could be very suboptimal indeed!
Keep on their good side, even when working your notice period!
which combined with a decent amount of information makes them a worthwhile read. Nice to know that recruiters can learn, too ;-)
"if firms managed their staff rationally I would have to get a proper job."
I don't believe there's any danger of that happening any time soon. I believe it is scheduled shortly after the average IT user learns about the basic priciples of security.
Mwah, it was just the less-palatable home truths that had to be said once and be done with...
No, actually, it is a perspective thing: the first ones were written from the recruiters' point of view and that cheesed off the majority. The writer showed recruiters' "thinking" in as blunt a way as possible. Someway somehow code monkeys lacked the empathy to follow that kind of logic (surprise!). They got hung up on the fact that the speaker clearly belongs to the lower steps on the evolutionary ladder (somewhere below the slime moulds, probably near the amino acids). They had a problem taking advice from an entity like that, or to check their planned steps from that viewpoint.
This article though is written from the employee's viewpoint, and people easily relate to that (surprise!).
Marvin is right that I was pushing the perspective that many ITPros don't see and one that some don't *want* to see.
As for my position on the evolutionary ladder, I wonder if you had considered the water / ammonia / CO2 mix that is assumed to have been the atmosphere from which amino acids formed ?
I noticed another Hitchhiker reference:
"Notice Periods
Just because they are usually enforceable, doesn’t mean you have to work them. If your manager is smart he will know that a motivated employee for six weeks is vastly more useful than a strag who grudgingly puts in face time for three months and given that discontent is contagious he doesn’t want others following you."
strag = non-hitchiker , or in this case, soon-to-be-non-employee.
Colin
References are pointless these days. In my company they come from HR and consist literally of:
"X worked for Y from A till B."
Also verbal references aren't allowed. All to stop being sued. The people we look to hire have the same restrictions, so HR have very little investigation to do to make _their_ jobs worthwhile. So instead they grill you on any gaps between employment. Yes, even the week I had between my roles (spent relocating between countries) had the full Spanish Inquisition. Anything over say 4 weeks and they think you must be unemployable. Don't even try the 'I took off 6 months to look after my dying mother' excuse - it won't fly - if you could prove it was true they'd be doubly suspicious. Bored bastards.
"I would view "X worked for Y from A till B." as the worst possible reference possible."
Yeah, but that is exactly what the shitheadsHR department at my last company do.
However, I found that you could get either managers who had since left the company, or managers who were still there to give you a "purely personal" reference as a character reference. A manager who was still in the company was told by HR that he wasn't allowed to do that, and he just told them that they lost the right to have a say in the matter when they started treating people the way they did.
" I would view "X worked for Y from A till B." as the worst possible reference possible."
Some companies are so paranoid they won't say anything bad or good about the ex-employee, in case giving praise could result in legal problems at a later date. The result is the sort of pointless XYAB statement described above. The reason for this is companies do not have souls and couldn't give a monkey's about ex-workers.
All of my ex-employers have either gone bust or rendered themselves untraceable from my CV
through rebranding, takeovers, or simple relocation, so a prospective employer would have a difficult job finding anyone able to supply a reference anyway.
As saying "bad" things is now a legal mine field, you have to count the good points in a reference. A statement of fact like that is about as appealing as "X murdered Y but we were unable to prove it."
I'm afraid that sort of reference is all any financial house I've ever worked at will give. They will not say anything that is not an irrefutable fact. You're lucky if they even mention much about the nature of the position held. That's why interviews are there. I also agree with others in that verbal references are not allowed. Several of my previous employers expressly forbid such actions mainly, I would guess, in case they are misread as having the backing of the employer.
I once rented a house, kept it tidy, no mad parties, paid rent on time.
Asked the landlord for a reference for my new place. Got:
"X lived at Y from A until B, and to the best of my knowledge paid his rent on time."
And while verbal references may not be allowed, with professional networking as it is, there is a strong possibility of an unofficial off-the-record verbal reference.
Indeed, in most mega-corps finding anyone that actually knew you a few weeks after you left in nigh on impossible.
In the last year I worked for a corporation I had 5 Managers/Directors. None of them knew my name. In fact when I turned up to hand in my laptop/Blackberry and ID card, no one knew I was even leaving, even though I'd been away on two months garden leave! Just goes to show if you think you are important, chances are you aren't (not that I thought I was, I may add).
They didn't even bother with doing the twice yearly appraisals for the last 3 years I was there. One of them asked me to write my own. I politely wrote back advising that "It's the only managerial responsibility you have towards me just twice a year so really it's the least you could do!"
I even asked a couple of years before I left if my then manager had my personnel file. I was advised "oh most of them got lost years ago!"
So getting a reference.....hahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Someone who still works at the place I was at last year tells me that there are still people there who don't know I've been terminated, and think I'm working from home or on holiday. Likely because most of the other people I worked with have *also* left or been terminated ;)
I left a job in a previous life and met a client face to face several months later. He was worried about my health since I was sick so very often. He thought I was still working there as he was receiving faxes and email messages from me regularly. Just no phone calls. Turns out they were still using my email address and forging my signature on faxed offers and contracts.
Oh, and I left because they decided not to pay me my bonus. Well, that’s not technically true, they just decided that it should have been a promille instead of a percentage. Slight oversight.
True. I was allowed to "work from home" rather than leave when I wanted to move to the other side of the world.
My entire team left before they got around to noticing that they were paying some guy who was never in the office.
Always be polite, always be helpful.
Money isn't the only revenge, I reckon "Teaching C++ to bankers" is a real Emily Thorne move.
I remember a comment made (many years ago) by a manager that he "was going to the top and didn't care who he stepped on to get there". He was dumped about a year later and couldn't get a job anywhere; in those days people were less circumspect about what they put in a reference. I believe that he was still out of work about 2 years after that.
As for me, I still believe in the concept of not burning bridges; just in case. It's far better to go out as a person of integrity even if the people on the other side are less concerned about their own professionalism.
Bridge burning - that's a tough one. Sometimes a company gives so little of a shit about its staff of the manager you worked for is that much of an arsehole that it's really hard to resist. I've burned the odd bridge with regards a previous manager but, importantly, I had the absolute backing of the important end-users such that any opinion from the self-important dickweasal was easily outweighed by the opinion of the global head-of big dog. There are also some places I'd never go back to. You just have to choose wisely.
I recall one completely talentless, useless, full of piss-and-self-importance, clueless twat on the fast track, universally known as "Shit for brains" trampling on people to get to where filling in spreadsheets counts as work..
I'd better stop this here, as anyone who knows me (I don't hide behind ac or a silly alias) knows who I'm referring to, K? :-)
Beer, coz that's what I'm sampling now
Bridge-burning is silly. You don't need to do it. Sometimes it happens and it's not your fault. And though swearing at your boss and telling them what you think feels good, it's very rarely productive. If they cared what you thought, you wouldn't be leaving. I'm by no means a suck-up (really, about as far from it as you can get) but I can bite my lip and say "No, sorry, I'm really leaving. Bye!" without having to personalise the attack or vent my feelings. That's what your partner is for when you get home!
"Comeback consultancy" isn't a bad idea, though. The best bit being: The ball is in YOUR court and they need to be nice to you to get you to come back in for that day/week/month when you'll tell them what your replacements couldn't figure out with their extensive skills/experience. And I've been on all sides for that - telling them "no way, sorry", coming back to help for free, and coming back to help for money. It all depends on how nicely you treated me and whether I left because of something beyond their control or not.
Your new employers, if they are that great, will quite understand this and allow it quite happily. I spent one day a week at my old employers for the first two months of employment, in order to make sure the rest of the handoff went well. It worked really well.
I've also refused to go back to help after completing one of the most thorough hand-offs I've ever done and then getting calls about "I just need the administrator password to install this totally-incompatible MP3 player that you wouldn't install" (yes, literally!). When I pointed them in the direction of the hand-off pack I'd made and with which I'd furnished both their boss (a headteacher) and a school governor who worked in IT with (and who both signed off on it), they didn't know anything about it but still demanded I come back and "fix" things. I didn't, and I told them exactly why - if they were SUPPOSED to be able to do that, they'd have been GIVEN the information necessary by the people I handed off to.
In one case, I even left a job, to work at another, negotiated a "one-day-per-week at my old place" policy with them for a short period and found that, when the time came that my new employer lost their sheen and backtracked on their promises, I went back to work for the old place on better money and higher responsibility. Not losing contact with them, and keeping GENUINELY friendly and helpful with them paid off with the result of an immediate, guaranteed job, from a person I trusted, at a place I loved, with better pay, in the middle of the recession when everyone else was struggling.
References - I find it odd that people think references are really that terse. I've never seen one like that. They are either glowing, or basic, and you read-between-the-lines quite well on the basic ones because they are *crafted* so that you can. Maybe it's just my industry but I'd be very suspicious of a terse one-line reference. And I've worked mostly on the basis of my references for my whole working career.
And, yes, if you stomp on me when things are going down the pan in order to hasten your exit, don't expect me to leap to your aid when times are tough. In a previous job at a large secondary school and sixth-form college, I witnessed an IT department of precisely one left with the whole summer work to do by themselves for 400+ machines. So much so that I delayed my own exit by several months in order to help them out. I consider it a HUGE favour because my one rule is "I do not work somewhere I don't enjoy working, and do not work for people I do not like working for", but there are times when sticking your finger up feels good only for a second. I'd have been awake at nights worrying about that poor left-behind. And if myself and the others were to go back there, or find ourselves potentially working alongside or even UNDER that person again, just who do you think they'd let work with them? At that point, it has nothing to do with employment and everything to do with common human decency.
I wouldn't hire someone I couldn't get on with. And people chop and change jobs all the time. Eventually, that burned bridge will catch up with you and you'll find yourself in the interview of your life, when "that" person walks in that you stung, or dumped on, or left in the lurch, or shouted at even when it was the company you were mad with.
... Completely agree with your philosophy, I can't stand my current manager, they are unbelievable incompetent and it has a knock on effect to my work, but if I were to leave I could at least get some satisfaction from taking the morale high ground and being polite when I go. Of course currently if I win huge life changing amounts on the lottery it would be a different story.
I have been re-employed by almost every firm I worked for for last 20 years... This is very important as a contractor. I maintain good relations even with those who laid me off, who subsequently found me work and tipped me off about other opportunities 6 years later - my cuttent job. So never burn bridges and similarly - cultivate the relationships you have.
"I find it odd that people think references are really that terse. I've never seen one like that. They are either glowing, or basic, and you read-between-the-lines quite well on the basic ones because they are *crafted* so that you can. Maybe it's just my industry but I'd be very suspicious of a terse one-line reference. And I've worked mostly on the basis of my references for my whole working career."
At the last large company I worked for, it was in fact policy - written in the employee handbook - that you were not to give out work references. All requests for references were to be referred to HR, and HR would only confirm that yes, the person asking for references had been employed there from date X to date Y. They might have added positions within the company, and dates for those, but I'm not sure about that.
Beer because, well, I think I'll go get a pint. I usually needed one when I had to deal with the (outsourced) HR at that company...
I've worked at a number of places where references were officially terse things that HR had to issue. Every time someone good has come to me personally and asked for a reference I've written one on non-company paper, signed it personally and given it them. A good employee is never going to get screwed by me as a policy. It helps that most times this has happened I've already left the firm in question as well, but I would even do this whilst I'm still at the firm.
> "I pity the poor b****d who has to get this working".
I wrote some perl during my last contract. In it, I left the comment:
# This next bit is evil. Look away now.
And it was. And it was the only way to do it (the library I'd used didn't quite do what it promised).
Vic.
I think it is actually one of the worst ideas. Certainly there are some laws which put stiff penalities onto such action, if it can be proven. Destroying source code could be called "sabotage", "destruction of property" or even "terrorism".
What would you call it if a worker would destroy some cars before quitting a job at a car factory ??
That kind of action is more than childish - it is clearly criminal.
Or, never delete the source code when the use of source control isn't thoroughly checked. Some places will shoo you out of the door so quickly that you don't even have the chance to check all code is safely in the repository.
A slightly different issue is this: would you want to be working out a notice period placing code in production environments when any bug that got missed could be construed as deliberate depending on how much of a tool your boss is?
Then you've not done your job properly. Sure it gives you a nice warm feeling when you get shitcanned and no-one else can do what you've done. But suppose the company were treating you well, and your trajectory intersected a bus one morning. For no fault of their own, the company would be in a whole world of hurt.
Everything gets logged. Everything you wrote goes in version control. Now making sense of it all, *that* takes experience. But if you're worth hiring, you don't leave all your knowledge in your head. If you do, by definition you're not worth hiring, and if they shitcan you then you're getting what you deserve.
I was made redundant over a decade ago from a firm I'd been with for over a decade. As I'd been there so long, I was on 14 weeks notice, and while many colleagues were granted gardening leave I was required to work my notice. It worked out well: the (company provided) outplacement guy helped steer me into a beneficial change of direction in my career, and I was able to do a load of handover stuff, as well as finishing off project work.
About 6 weeks into my notice, I was doing some snagging on a project I'd worked on. It happened that the project was at a major UK airport and, as my company's sole person on site, I was making changes to a control system for guiding aircraft around the aerodrome and then visiting the control tower with a pair of binoculars to verify the change worked correctly. To this day I can't work out whether my employer was recklessly irresponsible, or paid a huge compliment to my professional integrity. I left the company with the dial-in modem number for the system and the root password---I never tried it, but I bet the password remained unchanged for years.
> I left the company with the dial-in modem number for the system and the root password
It never ceases to amaze me how many times a company calls me back in, long after I've left, to do something to a machine. When I ask for sudoer access, they reply "haven't you got the root password?"
And I have. Because no-one ever changes it.
Vic.
I always take a copy of my source with me - compress it - encrypt it - and probably never look at it again.
Why? Because in my career there's been one time where I was asked to help on something I worked on before and the original code had been lost.
Plus - if there's ever a dispute in the future - I want to know exactly what I did. Which means version history.
The truth is I rarely, if ever, look at code I've work on in the past. But it is there. No one else should ever be able to access it - however. It is locked up tight - along with all my other data.
I'd *hate* to work in any of the places Dominic has worked at, they sound terrible.
In my experience, as a web dev, leaving is pretty damn easy to do and is often the only way to significantly ramp up your salary - but you have to ensure you don't jump ship too often.
2 to 3 years is a good stint.
The buy-back thing, I'd go along with the advice and generally say, just don't play it that way - if you want to leave, *leave*, don't let your soon-to-be-ex-boss try to negotiate you back into staying. Politely say "thanks, but it's time for me to move on"
If you negotiate, I'd view that as unprofessional, as it's clear you haven't been through the right channels first - bringing your grievances and requests to your boss and asking for them to be resolved.
I'd also go along with the "small world" - it certainly is.
Most job changes you make, unless your a migrant IT worker, are going to be within a specific geographic region.
And yep, it goes without saying, never ever diss your ex-company.
All round good advise.
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> And yep, it goes without saying, never ever diss your ex-company.
I had an interesting take on that - the other way round.
I'd applied for a job in the same industry as my previous company. Because my prospective employer knew my old employer[1], they ended up talking about me - not formally, just in passing.
I eventually found out that the reason they paid me as highly as they did was that my former boss had made a point of telling them exactly how much of a shitbag I was.
The new guys figured that if I'd annoyed him that much, I must be OK :-)
Vic.
[1] At the previous company, the entire team bar one[2] had quit en masse. The guys I was going to work for had come in to bail out the project we'd all left.
[2] One guy was talked into staying on for a while, for quite a bit more money. He left within the year...
If you previously persuaded management to let you release it as open source. Obviously this doesn't work if the software development is core to the company's business, but for a lot of us it is an option. I've found there are plenty of reasonable managers who are happy with the "what comes around should go around" principle.
Better IMHO to use a truly open license like NCSA rather than get into the potentially restricting politically motivated complications of GPL though.
You do know that as the author, you can decide whether a company has to follow all the terms of the GPL? I believe some go for a dual license... basically "GPL or pay me money".
Putting "ExWorkplaceCo Ltd can use my shit for what they like" in writing would probably work, even if it does give some literal-minded folk a giggle.
No, you can't.
Some (not many) software guys seem to have this misguided opinion that they hold the rights to stuff they produce under contract. This is incorrect unless you have some incredibly permissive contract.. Stuff produced on company time, with company equipment, is theirs once produced, not yours.
True, however, what are they going to do blow your brains out, at the end of the day if they make you unemployed thru no fault of yours then sorry they have thrown away any right to integrity.
Now if I leave thru my decision then I would help them in hours of need after I left, I have done that, several times.
If I that dispensible then what I know stays with me, they are employing me, NOT buying my brain.
my last manager at my previous employer had "issues" with me (I insisted on all instructions being emailled after he stabbed me in the back several times), so I made sure the prior manager was on-side (he had left to work for the competition) and the senior technician still there was given a thorough handover and was prepared to give a verbal reference based on that handover.
I now know what questions to ask in an interview, such as "why has the position become vacant" and "what is the average length of service of the team members". If the HR person shifts uncomfortably or looks sideways at the lead interviewer, then run like hell.
(Heartening to know the PHB I had was "right-sized" a few years after I left, and his old junior now occupies the position in the org chart.)
BTW, the difference between an unemployed IT professional and a former IT professional is 1 year max (under the age of 40) and 6 months max if you are older than 40. Everyone I have met who was hired after being unemployed for more than 2 years, soon showed WHY! they had been unemployed that long.
If a 'buyback' is likely, then you didn't do your job right. If you're not being paid enough, then ask for more - they'll either give it to you, or not - anyone with half a brain could tell you're likely to leave if you don't get it (if you don't chicken out and stay after all - which a smart boss should be able to tell).
If you're leaving because your boss is crap, or because the sales people oversell you, or the training budget is £3.27, then these are all things you should have at least tried to fix. If they can't be fixed, then what's the point of the buyback?
I know buybacks do happen, but I have never worked out why. They don't make sense if everyone had even been doing half of their job right - it certainly shouldn't make sense for the "great" people whom might get considered to get one. If you're being considered for a buyback, you shouldn't get one. Weird, huh!?
All that aside, this looks like good clear advice to me - nothing especially new to and old duffer like me, but good none the less.
Buybacks occur sometimes because some mid level boss has gotten away with paying a good person less than they should have gotten (keeping the balance to pad his bonus). Finally, the screwed person decides it is time to jump ship, and the boss is forced to do something, hence, the buyback.
My opinion is this, once you decide to leave an employer, walk, and NEVER look back. Do not let the `siren song` of "more money" cause you to `crash upon the rocks`. Because, you know damn well that the boss will screw you over again if the chance arises.
Karma is when you leave an employer because of a bad boss, and some time later, that same boss comes to work for your new employer in a subordinate role.
I know of one situation where none of this applied. Guy had fully paid up mortgage, a couple of investments due to mature and more than ready to retire from a job where they'd paid him progressively less in real terms while piling on more work. Faced with yet another pointy headed manager droid he finally snapped.
His leaving was remembered with smiles from those at the coalface for years.
Not always a sackable offense.
I used to work for Tuffnells Parcels Express as a porter/sorter/general dogsbody. It was the only place I've known where I could tell the depot manager to STFU and stop being so fat and bald, and still have my job. Then I got given the Jesus nickname by an Iraqi refugee who was probably one of the best workers in the place. So he instantly got called either "Mohammed" or "Aladdin" depending on what mood I was in. The night manager was similarly rotund and hairless so ended up being called "Buddha". So I'd walk in, he'd shout "JESUS!" - I'd shout back with "ALREET BUDDHA, WHERE'S MOHAMMED?" Three gods working in one depot, no wonder we managed to work miracles every night!
Of course this doesn't compare to the depot manager shouting at me while unloading "ARE YOU SWEATING YET?"
So I raise my arm, point right at the stained and sweaty T shirt, "LICK THIS AND TELL ME."
His response? "Get this wagon done in the next ten minutes and I'll lick your fucking balls, pal."
Yeah, so tl;dr: How you treat your boss depends entirely on the type of workplace you are in.
When I was made redundant by the .com vapour-ware company that bought us out, I made sure I had copies of everything I had been working on. When they came back to contract me to do some maintenance, surprise surprise they had no idea where their "master" copies of anything were, they had lost the lot.
Because we all know its the complete opposite of what they can actually do.
How many of us have a proper 'Manager' these days? You know the ones that actually manage a team, make sure its on track, helps smooth out problems, develops careers, organise training etc. etc.
I guess we all now have the modern Manager. The type who only looks after no.1, is always in unnecessary meetings with Directors, rather than talking to his/her team. Always pushing their opinion or direction on a project, making the decisions on stuff they know jack about, doesn't even know your name...
What's worse is when you have a 'Chain of Managers". Ever had that to contend with? When you have the Team Manager, Senior Manager and Head of Dept in the same office. All with different opinions so you end up having to guess the correct decision that Dave then Mike then Tim would approve of without pissing any of them off.
That works really well.
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Mistake number one on any list : work for money.
Working paycheck to paycheck expecting to " make a living" is the worst mistake anyone can do.
It just makes you dependent on your job for income. There is no way out , you work and get a paycheck.That's all you get. There is one way out , but it's calling for a lot of time spent making efforts and starting a business on your own. While you work down there in that small space of your's , someone in the office up there is making plans for you .They are voting themselves pay raises , they are deciding your future . The only way to break the circle is make your own company. What most people are nowadays is modern day slaves.
You don't count as a person to none of the execs.
All you are is a cash cow. Your work makes them money , and believe me , they do get their hands in the cookie jar . You're their meal ticket , fatten their accounts .
Quitting a job may be the best thing that ever happened to you. Your only way out is go to school , get a business course , start your own and write your own paycheck. I done so .. so can you .
If my employer is stupid enough to make me work my notice period after handover is complete, then sure I'm going to moan to all and sundry. They've already installed some muppet as my manager, so I'm not going to go to him for a reference ever, and they've already shown me the reference they're going to give me which is the legal bare minimum they're allowed to provide, so no motivation there either. I will however complete handover as I have a bare minimum of professionalism left, and I don't actually hate the company I'm handing over to, just the one that currently pays me.
have to admire the classiness of the woman who did it.
She worked for a manager named "Nigel" (pseudonym) who was notorious for working people into the ground, and doubly so whenever they resigned. So she handed in a leave request for 4 weeks, got it approved then on the Friday afternoon beforehand, gave her notice and exited unscathed. Because it was the public service in the 80s, she could get away with it by having a decent union behind her. Nowadays, not a chance.
Actually, is there a need for an IT union?
...even if they're damaged by the company and dissolved your expectations of them. Of course I'm posting anon because I'd hope the company I have just left would have the decancy to change their attitude and work practises on whatever their next move is to replace me. Working on your own holding up the internal/hosting/projects doing 6 day weeks is not healthy at all.
They only required to hire one extra person to split/share the working load. However, I went on the best terms possible making sure the head of dev knew where all the stuff was for a hand-over to the new person. One of the directors saw how hard I worked to make sure they were in the best position to continue in my absense. This is regardless of the abuse/bullying I received from others within the company. It's life. Water under the bridge.
There's always the chance that said director will move on and maybe one day saw my contribution that wasn't ever recognised. Managers/directors love it when you react negatively if it all turned sour. It gives them the ammo to shoot you down further. My advice: don't!
I was offered a position at another company when my wife was 8 months pregnant, with a 16% raise, but a longer and more expensive commute.
I ended up taking my employer's offer of a 24% raise, with a £5k training budget. Working for the company still sucked for many reasons, but it meant I could spend more time with my family, and (crucially) meant that I financially wasn't in deficit each month my wife was on maternity leave (whereas I would have been - albeit only slightly - with the 16% raise and more expensive commute).
Eventually, 2 years later, after a further 8% raise, I decided enough was enough, and moved up the ladder to another company - but without the training and additional experience (no matter how damn frustrating it was working for them) I gained, I probably wouldn't be where I am now, earning 50% more than when I started working for them.
Maybe, but this is how to do it. I was a techy for a company and designed a very complex system to run machines. I programmed in a Christmas day code and some 8 months after I left Christmas came along. Everything stopped, never to be run automatically again. There was no body there, nor the manufacturers of the controller that knew exactly how I had designed the program, worse (for them) the whole time the machines were running we were running updates and fine tuning the system, we even had the manufacturers come down to see how I had used the machine, as they wanted to do the same for a car manufacturer.
It had taken me several years to get where the system had got, and to add to their woes, I swapped the "timer" control with the "counter" so every time they tried to access the system they cahnged timers to counters as they got to them.
Ha ha ha, they ended up moving, closing down and then there was none.
I was head hunted to work as an IT Manager for competitors in the City of London financial markets. My resignation was on the whole a good natured thing, but they required me to work my 3 months notice period as "gardening leave" with the twist that had to be on their premises, but not my own office. The rational was that they didn't want me to have access to confidential information during my notice period and didn't want me to do any work for my new employers during gardening leave. The process entailed turning up on the Director's floor each morning, finding a seat somewhere and reading a book all day. It was very boring but a good natured process.
The unintended consequence was the secretaries of the Directors used to ask me to visit their desks to help sort out spreadsheet and word processing problems on documents they were preparing for their bosses. I learned a lot more confidential information about the company and its plans in those three months than I'd ever seen in the previous five years of employment. The City of London is a small place though, so I never breached that unintended confidence.
Yes, this piece is less accusatory, don't take that as a trend, some topics merit venon, some don't.
I agree that accepting a buyback is often a bad idea, my advice was to make the best of a bad situation. As for "trust", I'd say that a failure of this is in the rop 5 reasons to quit, expressed as "being shafted", "bonus much lower than promised", "no training as promised", "backstabbing boss", "work isn't what I was hired to do", if you told me it was the #1 reason for quitting I wouldn't argue, actually this is the start of one of my more "in your face" pieces to come.
I'm sorry for emailing "anonymous coward", I can't say how I got his email address because umm err, he's anonymous, but finiding people is what I do for a living, sometimes they don't want to be found.
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