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I had this happen to me. Walked out after 2 months before completing 3 month trial period. I had a boss who said he is best developer in the world and he meant

I had this happen to me. Walked out after 2 months before completing 3 month trial period. I had a boss who said he is best developer in the world and he meant it. He caused major outage when the code he developed and brought to the company as an asset failed. The code was to exchange SMS messages with an SMS gateway for Ukrainian operator. The messages were sent using mails. That was 15 years ago and not his fault, but his fault was that he received the XML messages and instead of using XML parser, he just parsed text by locating substring in a given line number from a given offset to a specified character. So what happened is that they stopped pretty-printing XML messages in the responses. When I pointed (with couple people around) that this is absolutely our fault (I did not say his, but everybody knew this), he started screaming at me that I am incompetent and that he was programming when I was shitting myself in a crib. I left the same day. I left companies suddenly on two more occasions: - when working for a Swedish company, when they extended my contract and said they are very happy to have me but they can't pay me the same rate as my Swedish colleagues (I am Polish). - when my boss charged at me to hit me after I refused to lie to management. He stopped himself with his fist 10cm from my face but that, for me, was game over.

piva00 5y ago
> - when working for a Swedish company, when they extended my contract and said they are very happy to have me but they can't pay me the same rate as my Swedish colleagues (I am Polish). As an immigrant in Sweden, this is one of the instances where I'd love a name-and-shame (but it's just wishful thinking, I don't expect or really want you public shaming companies). Simply because I've heard this happening to other colleagues, in different companies, and for some Swedes this sounds almost fabricated. I didn't get that clear message about not raising salaries up to Swedish colleagues but I noticed at some point that I was severely underpaid given my experience and skills, even more after a couple of years and I started to hear from much more junior employees how much they were making.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  I worked there on site for a 6 month (minus one day) contract as a developer with already couple of years of experience. But just before the end of my contract I have learned from couple of guys from support line that I am basically earning less than they earn manning the phone with no education, experience or technical knowledge. So when the end of the contract came I met with my boss who also had ability to make sole decision and sign the contract. He explained that they would like to keep me and they will even give me raise. But when I said the raise basically puts me on level with the phone desk and I suspect engineers earn a lot more he said that this is as much as I am going to get and I should be happy because as a Pole I am not going to get anything more than that. Those were his words. I have not met any other form of discrimination from anybody in the company, peer or manager. It was fun working there and I befriended a lot of people, spent a lot of time being invited to parties, etc. But this one statement sealed it for me and I knew that I would never be happy there. Now, I don't have time to make a shit storm out of this and I am too busy to have any publicity around me at the moment. So I am not going to name the company. I am lucky to be a developer and basically be able to choose where and for whom I work, so this did not cost me a lot. But I understand most people are not so lucky and this amounts to exploitation.
- pengstrom 5y ago
  Treatment of minorities in Sweden is no joke.
- bjourne 5y ago
  It's incredibly common. I knew a great Indian developer with years of experience and a degree from a brand name American university. He was making bus driver money. :) Swedish companies are incredible cheapskates. Swedish engineers doesn't make that much money as it is, but it's still too much for them so they have to import engineers from the third world which they know they can pay peanuts. Wage discrimination is illegal and the unions take it very seriously, but for obvious reasons, not a lot of people want to litigate against their former employees.
- hinkley 5y ago
  One of my regrets was accidentally seeing the salary of my female Vietnamese coworker and not making a stink about it. Her ESL was not that great but she would just go around fixing bugs. So. Many. Bugs. And in a place full of architectural astronauts, when I say I generally had no issues with the quality of the code in her fixes, that is saying something. Turned out she was making about the same as our senior QA folks. We really should just talk about salaries. But that is partly a zero sum game, which requires the people currently winning to take a hard look at rather they “need” that extra 10% or if it’s just going to make retirement easier or sooner.
Bayart 5y ago
>- when working for a Swedish company, when they extended my contract and said they are very happy to have me but they can't pay me the same rate as my Swedish colleagues (I am Polish). Were you living in Poland or Sweden ? I kinda get that they'd want to pay less if you were living in Poland, considering the cost of living, but in Sweden that'd be scummy as shit.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  I moved to Stockholm for the duration of the contract.
- phicoh 5y ago
  Why would the cost of living factor in? If I move to a place that has a very high cost of living, then I don't get paid more. Why would the reverse be true?
  - lars512 5y ago
    Pay is loosely related to the value you provide, but also to the balance of supply and demand for a role and a place. You simply can't attract a person from a high cost-of-living place without paying them a higher salary. Companies explicitly factor this into their salary mix, e.g. check Buffer's formula https://buffer.com/salaries https://buffer.com/salaries It's not necessarily how I'd wish things, but it seems to be the reality of the job market.
  - brabel 5y ago
    Do you work in Sillicon Valley? Do you think developers working there are just much better than anyone else and deserve earning 300K+ while the rest of us are on 100K if lucky?
  - Viliam1234 5y ago
    How difficult would it be to do the following? - rent the cheapest place (smallest, worst, etc.) somewhere on the edge of an expensive area = this will be your official address; - buy or rent a nice large place in a cheap area = you will actually live here; - work from home. Bonus points if you share the cheap place in the expensive area with your friends (no problem, since no one is actually going to live there).
benhurmarcel 5y ago
> they can't pay me the same rate as my Swedish colleagues That's also very common in Switzerland. They know that for recent immigrants, the alternative is going back to their country with much smaller wages, so they can afford to propose less.
Taylor_OD 5y ago
> I had a boss who said he is best developer in the world and he meant it. He was the best developer in his world.

piva00 5y ago

> - when working for a Swedish company, when they extended my contract and said they are very happy to have me but they can't pay me the same rate as my Swedish colleagues (I am Polish). As an immigrant in Sweden, this is one of the instances where I'd love a name-and-shame (but it's just wishful thinking, I don't expect or really want you public shaming companies). Simply because I've heard this happening to other colleagues, in different companies, and for some Swedes this sounds almost fabricated. I didn't get that clear message about not raising salaries up to Swedish colleagues but I noticed at some point that I was severely underpaid given my experience and skills, even more after a couple of years and I started to hear from much more junior employees how much they were making.

lmilcin 5y ago
I worked there on site for a 6 month (minus one day) contract as a developer with already couple of years of experience. But just before the end of my contract I have learned from couple of guys from support line that I am basically earning less than they earn manning the phone with no education, experience or technical knowledge. So when the end of the contract came I met with my boss who also had ability to make sole decision and sign the contract. He explained that they would like to keep me and they will even give me raise. But when I said the raise basically puts me on level with the phone desk and I suspect engineers earn a lot more he said that this is as much as I am going to get and I should be happy because as a Pole I am not going to get anything more than that. Those were his words. I have not met any other form of discrimination from anybody in the company, peer or manager. It was fun working there and I befriended a lot of people, spent a lot of time being invited to parties, etc. But this one statement sealed it for me and I knew that I would never be happy there. Now, I don't have time to make a shit storm out of this and I am too busy to have any publicity around me at the moment. So I am not going to name the company. I am lucky to be a developer and basically be able to choose where and for whom I work, so this did not cost me a lot. But I understand most people are not so lucky and this amounts to exploitation.
pengstrom 5y ago
Treatment of minorities in Sweden is no joke.
bjourne 5y ago
It's incredibly common. I knew a great Indian developer with years of experience and a degree from a brand name American university. He was making bus driver money. :) Swedish companies are incredible cheapskates. Swedish engineers doesn't make that much money as it is, but it's still too much for them so they have to import engineers from the third world which they know they can pay peanuts. Wage discrimination is illegal and the unions take it very seriously, but for obvious reasons, not a lot of people want to litigate against their former employees.
hinkley 5y ago
One of my regrets was accidentally seeing the salary of my female Vietnamese coworker and not making a stink about it. Her ESL was not that great but she would just go around fixing bugs. So. Many. Bugs. And in a place full of architectural astronauts, when I say I generally had no issues with the quality of the code in her fixes, that is saying something. Turned out she was making about the same as our senior QA folks. We really should just talk about salaries. But that is partly a zero sum game, which requires the people currently winning to take a hard look at rather they “need” that extra 10% or if it’s just going to make retirement easier or sooner.

Bayart 5y ago

>- when working for a Swedish company, when they extended my contract and said they are very happy to have me but they can't pay me the same rate as my Swedish colleagues (I am Polish). Were you living in Poland or Sweden ? I kinda get that they'd want to pay less if you were living in Poland, considering the cost of living, but in Sweden that'd be scummy as shit.

lmilcin 5y ago
I moved to Stockholm for the duration of the contract.
phicoh 5y ago
Why would the cost of living factor in? If I move to a place that has a very high cost of living, then I don't get paid more. Why would the reverse be true?
- lars512 5y ago
  Pay is loosely related to the value you provide, but also to the balance of supply and demand for a role and a place. You simply can't attract a person from a high cost-of-living place without paying them a higher salary. Companies explicitly factor this into their salary mix, e.g. check Buffer's formula https://buffer.com/salaries https://buffer.com/salaries It's not necessarily how I'd wish things, but it seems to be the reality of the job market.
- brabel 5y ago
  Do you work in Sillicon Valley? Do you think developers working there are just much better than anyone else and deserve earning 300K+ while the rest of us are on 100K if lucky?
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  How difficult would it be to do the following? - rent the cheapest place (smallest, worst, etc.) somewhere on the edge of an expensive area = this will be your official address; - buy or rent a nice large place in a cheap area = you will actually live here; - work from home. Bonus points if you share the cheap place in the expensive area with your friends (no problem, since no one is actually going to live there).

benhurmarcel 5y ago

> they can't pay me the same rate as my Swedish colleagues That's also very common in Switzerland. They know that for recent immigrants, the alternative is going back to their country with much smaller wages, so they can afford to propose less.

Taylor_OD 5y ago

> I had a boss who said he is best developer in the world and he meant it. He was the best developer in his world.