In recent news I've decided to leave my current job after realising I did 7 different jobs which are:
- Developing applications
- Training new staff
- Writing documentation
- QA
- IT
- R&D
- Organizing 4 different departments for a shared goal
Now, besides that I was also shouted at daily, one time I was being shouted at for two and a half hours straight. That was because The guy before me wrote the worst code imaginable that breaks constantly and I am at fault for his code..... and when I bring this point up I was told that I should have memorised three different applications that I didn't write in a 3 month time span.
To understand how terrible the code is I have seen a 170 lines ToJson method that calls other long ToJson methods that construct the string of the JSON object by code. This can be done with one line of code. If I could change two things in the entire code base the code would become more maintainable, more efficient, and the LOC would drop by around 4.000.
Due to that I demanded an increase in pay since I was paid minimum wage plus 130 euros specifically for food although I suspect it was to help my boss with taxes. My boss responded by saying that he will give me an 80 euro increase (after tax) now and another one after I sign a legal document that, amongst other things, says that I need to inform the company 6 months before I leave.
The funny thing is that everyone at the company said I did the most amount of work and the most critical amount of work, and my boss knew this, but he still decided to treat me like shit. I know why he did this and the reason is just plain evil, he knows that I have a terrible self esteem and because of that I couldn't properly measure my value.
After I realised that I informed my boss that I wanted to leave the company with a notice of one month, which in return, for a lack of a better word, threatened me with my future prospects. He specifically said stuff like:
- If you leave I cannot give you a good reference, and the world of tech is very well connected.
- If you leave now I have to get the guy on a soon to be vacation back in the office and I will get a fine for that, you don't want that do you?
- I've always treated you as someone with a lot of skill, I don't get why I get repaid like this.
Quite frankly I couldn't care anymore, I was really close at quitting effective immediately, but I didn't because I want that money and he decided against recalling my colleague.
Right after I quit my boss called all of the programmers into his office and called another one on his mobile phone to find a replacement for me. All of this because he couldn't treat me well, couldn't pay me well, couldn't give me some remote work after I walk for an hour every day under the 40+ celsius degree sun for work, saying that this will help me develop. Yes, he did say that.
But it gets even better, I get a hold (without my boss knowing) of the CV of the guy that will replace me. That guy, which I won't call him by name due to respect for his privacy, is an absolute moron. I say this for quite a few reasons, those being:
- His professional experience is just his personal projects which he also dares to call himself lead developer.
- His CV is 3 pages long with a bad format.
- His code is so terrible that one of his applications takes 30 seconds to load an mp4 file.
- Chat-GPT wrote his CV, no Greek writes like that.
Again, he downgraded because he couldn't treat me better. I will soon be working for another company that at least allows hybrid work and a liveable wage amongst other things.
At least I can close this with a positive note. That job made me value myself and made me understand my value while making me understand that company loyalty is the stupidest thing out there. And this is thanks to my boss, which even though I believe he is a terrible boss at times he is the exact opposite as a person, and that made me realise that work life is not the same as your personal life.