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I had a manager that took over from a previous person when I was working remote. There were a few issues, but the one that stands out is they flew me down to L

I had a manager that took over from a previous person when I was working remote. There were a few issues, but the one that stands out is they flew me down to London for a week, set me up in a hotel, and had me take taxis back and fourth to the office and expense food etc. After returning home, he rejected my expenses because of variance of costs of the taxis, despite me pointing out that I was using the stipulated vendor and the difference in cost was between me leaving the office at rush hour and me leaving the office around 9-10pm. Not only did he reject the taxi expenses, but the hotel, the flights, the food, etc. The guy was obviously a class act in his 50s, rejecting the expenses of a fairly underpaid 25 year old employee living in Scotland. Super illegal but ultimatly I quit, because life is too short to work for horrible people.

nojvek 8y ago
Well amazon hires a ton of H1Bs. When they let go, they have to go to back to their country unless they can find another company to sponsor their H1B. So people go to extreme lengths and managers can get away with anything. I’m super grateful for Microsoft to help me with my green card. However my life there was miserable and my manager frequently asked us to work weekends. Pagerduty was hell and I once came home at 5am from work. F that. I’m glad I wasn’t born in India. My Indian x-colleagues didn’t have that freedom simply due to where they were born. I imagine Amazon is a worse slaveshop.
- dominotw 8y ago
  Yea you can feel this when you work on a team mostly of H1B. Most of them don't speak up and just say yes to whatever project management gives them. Ofcourse upper management loves this, they take all the credit and become the face of the project and if it fails they simply blame it on h1b/contractors ect. I've seen this many many times in all company sizes over last 15 yrs. I would steer clear of teams where most ppl are h1b indians.
- throwawaymjabba 8y ago
  Ex Indian h1b here. Here are some of the things I experienced that finally ended up with me throwing away everything and come back to India. 1. Was working on a project without issues. Ex manager forced me to go back to India 3 times over a 9 month period. Every time my ex manager tells me to go back, I get ready packing and then he tells me stay for 3 more months. On the 3rd time, I said I am resigning. Now my manager doesn't want me to go to India. I got another job and went to resign. Manager indirectly threatens me that I won't get service letter (which is required for green card). I was afraid and ended up staying. It turns out my manager was lying to the customer also. Everytime, he will tell me to get ready to go back and then tell the customer that I have to go back due to visa issues. Customer had still some work for me, so they ask for 3 more months and this repeated 2 times. Each time, I would be under incredible stress. It was like telling someone waiting in jail for their death sentence that they will be hung 2 weeks from now, then a few days later tell them it was extended. 2. Came to India for my marriage. Forced me to cancel my honeymoon and work from India for 1 month for another customer while lying to the original customer that I extended my vacation. I spend one whole day in my room sad and angry. I still want to beat up the manager who made me do this even though this happened over 2 years ago. 3. Asked me to work for a temporary customer in another state. I didn't want to, but agreed since I was afraid and worked for around 5-7 weeks while staying in hotel. This was before marriage. After marriage, again asked me to work for this customer for 1 month. My wife is completely dependent on me because she cannot drive in US. I said I cannot go because my wife is alone. Lead told me to ask my wife to stay in hotel for 1 month with me. I didn't want to because she already spend 3 weeks in a hotel with me instead of honeymoon. Thankfully manager agreed and sent someone else. 4. Forced me to relocate to another state. I didn't want to. After a lot of pressure, I sort of agreed and asked to at least adjust my salary for the rent increase. The customer was paying $20+ per hour more if I was working from the new state, so I expected at least a little bit of raise. Manager lied to me saying he will take care of it. I didn't trust him because there were many stories from my ex colleagues of being treated like a donkey with a carrot tied to their front. Sent him an email asking him to reply. He didn't. At one point, he said "I will snip you". He had said a similar line once before - "I will cut you". At that time, I didn't even understand he was threatening me, I was wondering why is he talking about circumcising me. This time I understood it was a threat. Got everything ready for move and told him I am ready for the move, and as expected he said HR didn't approve the raise which is a lie. 5. Moving expenses was about $3500. Getting that refunded was another big battle. Thankfully, my manager helped me in this and got the money after about 1.5 months. 6. Got RFE for visa extension. Employer waited till the last moment to submit the response to USCIS. I couldn't drive because license duration is tied to visa. Asked my manager and immigration team multiple times to speed up. No. They submitted the response only 5 days before the last day. So couldn't drive for 3 months. Since I was in a new state, I had no friends to help me either. Employer did pay for my Uber for these 3 months, but still I hated every moment of it, especially because of a few bad experiences with Uber drivers. Thankfully, I had sent my wife back to India before all this happened, otherwise I don't know how I would have managed. Even though my visa got extended for another 3 years, I threw away everything and came back to India.
- outside1234 8y ago
  Really? Name and shame that manager - that shouldn’t be happening at Microsoft
bitL 8y ago
So mission accomplished from his point of view: "This person is weak, let's just add some adversities to their life, they would quit; my cousin can't wait to join us."
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  So much this.
- borkt 8y ago
  Same thing happened to my wife. A newly promoted VP transferred her out of a great position she loved to work on a special project he invented to make department look innovative, under promise of a promotion once complete. Instead as soon as the project was done he hired a new manager into another newly created position above my wife, only supervising her. He proceeded to have the manager take all her responsibilities and make her life hell until she quit. Manager was told she would get a director position for doing it, instead they did the same to her a few months later until she quit too. VP promoted to SVP.
  - bitL 8y ago
    Yeah, it's fun :( Sociopathy seems to be the norm these days. Anyway, nothing beats that one German bank that told all employees of a branch on Friday that on Monday they are working at a location 80 miles away and are required to be there as usually.
    - outside1234 8y ago
      And what happened? My understanding of German labor laws is that, for any reasonably sized German company, there would be a workers council that would have to approve work level changes like this. Did that happen?
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      Even in the US something like that would trigger labor law protections (generally it would be treated as a constructive layoff, triggering unemployment benefits and any contractually or legally obligated severance benefits), so this story seems more like a fable than something that actually happened. Do you have any more details about this? EDIT: Europe generally has stronger labor laws than the US, so if something wouldn't pass muster in the US, it almost certainly wouldn't pass muster in the EU.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
I was recently offered a job by a software company, work from home, paid monthly. I presently work in metal fabrication. Not only was their offer $30,000 below my current income, their deal was I front cash for expenses and submit claims monthly. Is this standard in the software world? Because from my perspective there’s only one possible answer to paying expenses out of pocket and having to claim them back: No.
- all_blue_chucks 8y ago
  Software engineer pay at tech companies in the US tends to be $150k for junior engineers to $300k+ for senior engineers.
  - not_kurt_godel 8y ago
    Both of those numbers are possible, but much higher than average by my estimation. Glassdoor says average ~$111k for software engineering as a whole[0]. A more realistic expectation for a 'good' compensation package would be ~$80-95k for junior engineer and ~$180-250k for senior. Obviously there are many factors to account for, and both those numbers can vary widely, but the ones you gave are not what one should be expecting outside of a very select few 'elite' companies, and even then they are on the high end. [0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-engineer-salary-SRCH_KO0,17.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-engineer-salary-...
    - kevinventullo 8y ago
      At least for big tech companies, Glassdoor has notoriously low numbers. Last I checked, levels.fyi was closer to the truth.
      - not_kurt_godel 8y ago
        May I ask (in good faith) how you know what the real "truth" is? I would totally believe Glassdoor is a bit low. Levels.fyi, which I didn't know about but just checked, seems really high. I believe both are based on real data points, but is there any reason to believe either is a better reflection of the actual numbers? (My relatively poorly-informed speculation is that Glassdoor is using old/irrelevant statistical data while levels.fyi is suffering from some pretty extreme selection bias being a comparatively obscure site relying on self-reporting.)
setquk 8y ago
I worked for a similarly horrible person many years ago. I was doing on call support for a bunch of Linux machines. Literally it was him and me left because the moment I started the other two engineers bailed. One went to work packing salad because it was a better job (big warning!) and the other one had a breakdown. So didn't get paid properly, argued mileage down to the mile, the clients and him constantly gave me verbal abuse over and over and I ended up working until 10pm some nights with my 9 month pregant wife at home on her own and virtually immobile due to a back problem. So I get home one night after a tirade of abuse for the day and sent him an email saying "Fuck you I quit". Get a call about an hour later and he's drunk shouting abuse down the phone. This suddenly turns into undying love and care for me after the abuse wasn't working and he realised I couldn't be brow beat into coming back again. Then there's a thud which I assume was him falling off his chair. Never spoke to him again but the company folded about a year later. So I sit down and I'm about £2000 down then on salary and expenses that were missing. I had £250 in the bank, £400 rent due a week later, wife about to have a baby and an empty fridge. So fuck it. I sold all the stock I still had of the company on ebay (back when you had to take photos and get them developed and scanned and futz with cheques which was hard work), broke even and scraped a first pay cheque at a job just before my credit card melted into a puddle. It took 10 years to get out of the hole and back to normality. NEVER put up with this for a second. If anyone treats you like this RUIN THEM before they ruin you, your life, your relationships and everyone else they go near. I don't usually advocate this attitude but the damage and destruction that type of person leaves is immense.
- ethbro 8y ago
  Stories like this are important. Because sometimes the situation is bad for your boss too, the company is in financial straits, miscommunication, {insert other extenuating circumstances}. ... but sometimes your boss really is just an asshole, liar, alcoholic, and/or a sociopath. Never assume the later off the bat, but never completely discount the possibility either. Because it'll probably happen at least once in an average career.
  - HarryHirsch 8y ago
    Who cares if the boss has substance abuse issues or Cluster B personality disorders? These considerations don't put bread on the table!
gamblor956 8y ago
Too late now, but the way to deal with it would have been first to go to HR, and then to your state's Dept of Labor if HR did not remedy it.
- skunkdesign 8y ago
  Gonna disagree. Do not go to HR. HR is there for the company, not for you. They will seek whatever is the fastest, easiest way to resolve things for the company — which probably is not firing a manager. In case it's not clear, I have not had helpful experiences with HR.
gwright 8y ago
What does his or your age have to do with anything? Just sounds like a penny wise pound foolish story to me.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  What 25 year old has the resources to take on even a 100-person corporation, much less a megacorp?
  - jdavis703 8y ago
    At 27 I took on a multi-million dollar, VC-backed property management startup that was trying to defraud me on my rent and rental deposit. It’s amazing what some legal research and a few hours of spare time can do.
    - dd36 8y ago
      This. At a similar age, I sued Citibank and won. You can used forced arbitration to your advantage.
  - gwright 8y ago
    The salient part of that story was the unfair reimbursement policy. My point was that it would have been unfair regardless of the age of the manager or age of the employee. Where did I suggest that anyone "take on" the company?
ummonk 8y ago
Wait you didn't contact authorities and/or sue them?
mixmastamyk 8y ago
"You'll pay it or see me in (small claims) court."

nojvek 8y ago

Well amazon hires a ton of H1Bs. When they let go, they have to go to back to their country unless they can find another company to sponsor their H1B. So people go to extreme lengths and managers can get away with anything. I’m super grateful for Microsoft to help me with my green card. However my life there was miserable and my manager frequently asked us to work weekends. Pagerduty was hell and I once came home at 5am from work. F that. I’m glad I wasn’t born in India. My Indian x-colleagues didn’t have that freedom simply due to where they were born. I imagine Amazon is a worse slaveshop.

dominotw 8y ago
Yea you can feel this when you work on a team mostly of H1B. Most of them don't speak up and just say yes to whatever project management gives them. Ofcourse upper management loves this, they take all the credit and become the face of the project and if it fails they simply blame it on h1b/contractors ect. I've seen this many many times in all company sizes over last 15 yrs. I would steer clear of teams where most ppl are h1b indians.
throwawaymjabba 8y ago
Ex Indian h1b here. Here are some of the things I experienced that finally ended up with me throwing away everything and come back to India. 1. Was working on a project without issues. Ex manager forced me to go back to India 3 times over a 9 month period. Every time my ex manager tells me to go back, I get ready packing and then he tells me stay for 3 more months. On the 3rd time, I said I am resigning. Now my manager doesn't want me to go to India. I got another job and went to resign. Manager indirectly threatens me that I won't get service letter (which is required for green card). I was afraid and ended up staying. It turns out my manager was lying to the customer also. Everytime, he will tell me to get ready to go back and then tell the customer that I have to go back due to visa issues. Customer had still some work for me, so they ask for 3 more months and this repeated 2 times. Each time, I would be under incredible stress. It was like telling someone waiting in jail for their death sentence that they will be hung 2 weeks from now, then a few days later tell them it was extended. 2. Came to India for my marriage. Forced me to cancel my honeymoon and work from India for 1 month for another customer while lying to the original customer that I extended my vacation. I spend one whole day in my room sad and angry. I still want to beat up the manager who made me do this even though this happened over 2 years ago. 3. Asked me to work for a temporary customer in another state. I didn't want to, but agreed since I was afraid and worked for around 5-7 weeks while staying in hotel. This was before marriage. After marriage, again asked me to work for this customer for 1 month. My wife is completely dependent on me because she cannot drive in US. I said I cannot go because my wife is alone. Lead told me to ask my wife to stay in hotel for 1 month with me. I didn't want to because she already spend 3 weeks in a hotel with me instead of honeymoon. Thankfully manager agreed and sent someone else. 4. Forced me to relocate to another state. I didn't want to. After a lot of pressure, I sort of agreed and asked to at least adjust my salary for the rent increase. The customer was paying $20+ per hour more if I was working from the new state, so I expected at least a little bit of raise. Manager lied to me saying he will take care of it. I didn't trust him because there were many stories from my ex colleagues of being treated like a donkey with a carrot tied to their front. Sent him an email asking him to reply. He didn't. At one point, he said "I will snip you". He had said a similar line once before - "I will cut you". At that time, I didn't even understand he was threatening me, I was wondering why is he talking about circumcising me. This time I understood it was a threat. Got everything ready for move and told him I am ready for the move, and as expected he said HR didn't approve the raise which is a lie. 5. Moving expenses was about $3500. Getting that refunded was another big battle. Thankfully, my manager helped me in this and got the money after about 1.5 months. 6. Got RFE for visa extension. Employer waited till the last moment to submit the response to USCIS. I couldn't drive because license duration is tied to visa. Asked my manager and immigration team multiple times to speed up. No. They submitted the response only 5 days before the last day. So couldn't drive for 3 months. Since I was in a new state, I had no friends to help me either. Employer did pay for my Uber for these 3 months, but still I hated every moment of it, especially because of a few bad experiences with Uber drivers. Thankfully, I had sent my wife back to India before all this happened, otherwise I don't know how I would have managed. Even though my visa got extended for another 3 years, I threw away everything and came back to India.
outside1234 8y ago
Really? Name and shame that manager - that shouldn’t be happening at Microsoft

bitL 8y ago

So mission accomplished from his point of view: "This person is weak, let's just add some adversities to their life, they would quit; my cousin can't wait to join us."

james_s_tayler 8y ago
So much this.
borkt 8y ago
Same thing happened to my wife. A newly promoted VP transferred her out of a great position she loved to work on a special project he invented to make department look innovative, under promise of a promotion once complete. Instead as soon as the project was done he hired a new manager into another newly created position above my wife, only supervising her. He proceeded to have the manager take all her responsibilities and make her life hell until she quit. Manager was told she would get a director position for doing it, instead they did the same to her a few months later until she quit too. VP promoted to SVP.
- bitL 8y ago
  Yeah, it's fun :( Sociopathy seems to be the norm these days. Anyway, nothing beats that one German bank that told all employees of a branch on Friday that on Monday they are working at a location 80 miles away and are required to be there as usually.
  - outside1234 8y ago
    And what happened? My understanding of German labor laws is that, for any reasonably sized German company, there would be a workers council that would have to approve work level changes like this. Did that happen?
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Even in the US something like that would trigger labor law protections (generally it would be treated as a constructive layoff, triggering unemployment benefits and any contractually or legally obligated severance benefits), so this story seems more like a fable than something that actually happened. Do you have any more details about this? EDIT: Europe generally has stronger labor laws than the US, so if something wouldn't pass muster in the US, it almost certainly wouldn't pass muster in the EU.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

I was recently offered a job by a software company, work from home, paid monthly. I presently work in metal fabrication. Not only was their offer $30,000 below my current income, their deal was I front cash for expenses and submit claims monthly. Is this standard in the software world? Because from my perspective there’s only one possible answer to paying expenses out of pocket and having to claim them back: No.

all_blue_chucks 8y ago
Software engineer pay at tech companies in the US tends to be $150k for junior engineers to $300k+ for senior engineers.
- not_kurt_godel 8y ago
  Both of those numbers are possible, but much higher than average by my estimation. Glassdoor says average ~$111k for software engineering as a whole[0]. A more realistic expectation for a 'good' compensation package would be ~$80-95k for junior engineer and ~$180-250k for senior. Obviously there are many factors to account for, and both those numbers can vary widely, but the ones you gave are not what one should be expecting outside of a very select few 'elite' companies, and even then they are on the high end. [0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-engineer-salary-SRCH_KO0,17.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-engineer-salary-...
  - kevinventullo 8y ago
    At least for big tech companies, Glassdoor has notoriously low numbers. Last I checked, levels.fyi was closer to the truth.
    - not_kurt_godel 8y ago
      May I ask (in good faith) how you know what the real "truth" is? I would totally believe Glassdoor is a bit low. Levels.fyi, which I didn't know about but just checked, seems really high. I believe both are based on real data points, but is there any reason to believe either is a better reflection of the actual numbers? (My relatively poorly-informed speculation is that Glassdoor is using old/irrelevant statistical data while levels.fyi is suffering from some pretty extreme selection bias being a comparatively obscure site relying on self-reporting.)

setquk 8y ago

I worked for a similarly horrible person many years ago. I was doing on call support for a bunch of Linux machines. Literally it was him and me left because the moment I started the other two engineers bailed. One went to work packing salad because it was a better job (big warning!) and the other one had a breakdown. So didn't get paid properly, argued mileage down to the mile, the clients and him constantly gave me verbal abuse over and over and I ended up working until 10pm some nights with my 9 month pregant wife at home on her own and virtually immobile due to a back problem. So I get home one night after a tirade of abuse for the day and sent him an email saying "Fuck you I quit". Get a call about an hour later and he's drunk shouting abuse down the phone. This suddenly turns into undying love and care for me after the abuse wasn't working and he realised I couldn't be brow beat into coming back again. Then there's a thud which I assume was him falling off his chair. Never spoke to him again but the company folded about a year later. So I sit down and I'm about £2000 down then on salary and expenses that were missing. I had £250 in the bank, £400 rent due a week later, wife about to have a baby and an empty fridge. So fuck it. I sold all the stock I still had of the company on ebay (back when you had to take photos and get them developed and scanned and futz with cheques which was hard work), broke even and scraped a first pay cheque at a job just before my credit card melted into a puddle. It took 10 years to get out of the hole and back to normality. NEVER put up with this for a second. If anyone treats you like this RUIN THEM before they ruin you, your life, your relationships and everyone else they go near. I don't usually advocate this attitude but the damage and destruction that type of person leaves is immense.

ethbro 8y ago
Stories like this are important. Because sometimes the situation is bad for your boss too, the company is in financial straits, miscommunication, {insert other extenuating circumstances}. ... but sometimes your boss really is just an asshole, liar, alcoholic, and/or a sociopath. Never assume the later off the bat, but never completely discount the possibility either. Because it'll probably happen at least once in an average career.
- HarryHirsch 8y ago
  Who cares if the boss has substance abuse issues or Cluster B personality disorders? These considerations don't put bread on the table!

gamblor956 8y ago

Too late now, but the way to deal with it would have been first to go to HR, and then to your state's Dept of Labor if HR did not remedy it.

skunkdesign 8y ago
Gonna disagree. Do not go to HR. HR is there for the company, not for you. They will seek whatever is the fastest, easiest way to resolve things for the company — which probably is not firing a manager. In case it's not clear, I have not had helpful experiences with HR.

gwright 8y ago

What does his or your age have to do with anything? Just sounds like a penny wise pound foolish story to me.

pmiller2 8y ago
What 25 year old has the resources to take on even a 100-person corporation, much less a megacorp?
- jdavis703 8y ago
  At 27 I took on a multi-million dollar, VC-backed property management startup that was trying to defraud me on my rent and rental deposit. It’s amazing what some legal research and a few hours of spare time can do.
  - dd36 8y ago
    This. At a similar age, I sued Citibank and won. You can used forced arbitration to your advantage.
- gwright 8y ago
  The salient part of that story was the unfair reimbursement policy. My point was that it would have been unfair regardless of the age of the manager or age of the employee. Where did I suggest that anyone "take on" the company?

ummonk 8y ago

Wait you didn't contact authorities and/or sue them?

mixmastamyk 8y ago

"You'll pay it or see me in (small claims) court."