I was consistently working 50+ hour weeks to just get done what needed doing. I was in hindsight not ready to be a manager, dealing with employees emotional arguments, dealing with underperforming employees, being pressured to do things I didn’t feel right about, I have never been so stressed in my life.
I went to the hospital thinking I was having a stroke because my head felt like it was being electrocuted. Turns out after a CT scan to be stress activated trigeminal neuralgia. Doctors advice was to try and decrease my stress levels. lol thanks.
Days later my yearly review rolled around. I had my first negative review in my 5 years, telling me that I wasn’t getting enough done. Icing on the cake.
My friend had been trying to recruit me to various gigs for years. I gave him a call that night. I had a new job later that same week. He and I are still there almost 10 years later, through several buyouts, and have had a great work life balance.
On top of everything, I set a start date 3 weeks out thinking after my two weeks notice was up, a week off would be good for my mental health. However, when I put in my two weeks notice, the owner of the company pulled up my contract and pointed out I’d agreed to a 3 week notice. I honored it and got no vacation.
My year as lead developer was one of the most miserable experiences of my life.
I loved being a senior developer there, a very high percentage of my time was spent actually coding, always new and interesting projects.
I don't begrudge them. I just an not meant to manage people.
I've seen great engineers be terrible people managers and vice versa.
Also, you should also have the option to become an IC again.
I think your company failed you
So many legal questions come to mind when reading that. Where were you working (what location)? Was it a right-to-work state? Did the contract specify a consequence for breaking that clause? Would they have had any case at all if they chose to file a suit to enforce it, or seek damages? And would they have wanted to bother?
I ask because one area where smart successful people still let themselves get bullied is when it comes to contracts. Contracts are legal documents, but they are not law - they are documentation of an agreement that might get the courts to back them. I'm not recommending just breaking contracts all the time, but there is definitely nuance to consider whenever a contract is at odds with your needs.
I had no interest in fighting it though, I wasn't even angry about it, it was just unexpected.
I had agreed to it. I had read my contract, I had understood it when I read it, I had signed it. Even if I could weasel my way out of it, that would feel immoral to me. You're not being bullied for being asked to do something you already agreed to.
Beyond that, I didn't have any interest in burning bridges on my way out. I'm still friends with many of these people to this day.
Get on the phone with the carrier, and the engineer says “oh”, and transfers me. Turns out we didn’t pay our telco bills.
Made sure my paycheck cleared and gtf out. Which turned out to be an overreaction that cost me some $, but I ended up at a better gig.
Army: "We're gonna send you to college for 2 years and train you up to be a radiographer" - are you kidding me? I hate hospitals and you want me to spend the next 2 decades working in one? Bye!
Civil Service: "Your next posting will need to be a promotion to a Team Leader role. Or there's this nice, juicy redundancy package ..." Thank you for all this lovely money! Bye!!
Web developer: "Because you work so well with the offshore team, we want you to move over to full-time project management of our legacy/support projects ..." Burn me! Burn me now!! Bye!!!
Working at a company after just a few months, just a few years into my career: "Do you want to manage the team (of very senior developers)?"
It caught me up in the world, and it certainly helped me, but at some cost - I was working for a tyrant boss who would belittle me. Not only would we have daily meetings, but he'd make me go back to my desk, write an email to him about what we spoke about, then email me back critiquing what he actually meant. Then he'd actually come over to my desk, stand behind me, watch me while I was programming. It was annoying. Then if he didn't like the way I was doing it, I'd have to hear a lecture about how he was a programmer in his 20s and how his logic worked.
To explain the type of man this was: Big fat Greek guy that started his own company by hiring programmers and annoying them until they got it right. He would walk behind his women employees and put his hands on their shoulders and smell their hair, take them out to lunch, and other things. When he went away to advertise his software, he'd usually have a female employee accompany him, and one time, he only got one room for him and the employee. Luckily, that employee's Uncle lived in the state, so she asked if he would come visit her and stay with her -- so she got her own motel room and stayed with him.
For a year, I learned everything I could and became good at it. I'd go home and teach myself even more than what I knew at work. Work was programming, but then I'd go home and work on learning website design and things like that.
The "fuck this shit I'm out" moment came by accident. I had been working at the company for a year and a half and was applying to other jobs for the past 6 months. The "new job" was only supposed to be used as a bargaining chip so I could throw it in his face and force him to give me a salary increase.
Welp.. he offered me double my salary of what the new company was offering, but the moment came when I realized: accepting double the salary would have come with too many strings attached. To deal with his bullshit was not worth it. But what I did.. I took the offer by keeping the job and working the new one. I only did this for about a month or so, before I couldn't deal with it.
So I'd go work my day job, then at night, come to the empty business to continue my work there. But unfortunately, the second "fuck this moment" came when I walked in one day, and him and the senior developer called me into the office and they had printed out my Chrome history from my computer. They asked me what it was. It was a whole bunch of songs I was playing -- I had a YouTube playlist going to keep me focused and entertained and apparently, the web browser records it because it's going to a new web page each time.
And that's when I knew... not that I was pissed off about the invasion of privacy, but the fact they questioned me about what I was doing, only to realize I was just listening to music. They thought I came in and I wasn't doing my job. And so, that is how I came to quit my FIRST JOB OUT OF COLLEGE - TWICE.
I do not regret this job at all -- if there's anything I got out of it: he taught me how to develop software and stay focused to completion. I also met my wife at that job. We both left there, got another job together, been working together ever since.
Eventually, I worked my way up and got better jobs and eventually surpassed his offer with way better benefits and I love what I do today. However, I have neared the "fuck this moment" at my dream job several times, though I stay. But I have to deal with a supervisor, who I trained over 6 years ago, and he's been trying to fire ever since.
Fortunately, in the corporate world, his boss hired me long before he even knew me, and I knew her for a few years before I knew him, so despite his threats, I put on the show to act like I'm scared he's going to fire me, but secretly, I know the word has to come from the top boss, his boss -- who has no beef with me at all -- and in fact, although there's not much I can do about it, she's stolen a few of my ideas, and I let her run with them, and those ideas have brought in our company a lot of money, so I don't think she's going to be acting anytime soon to get rid of me. From my seniority of 8 years at the company and an unsigned agreement to work a more odd shift, outside of normal hours, I'd think she'd prefer to keep me on board.
So I have to deal with him on a daily. Remove him and I have my perfect dream job. He's just the thorn in my side that I have to deal with during the workday.