The COVID pandemic caused many serious problems, but for many people, it also made them realize that working from home was wonderful.

What would you do if your boss tried to make you return to the office after you actually moved to another state?

That is what the computer programmer in this story experienced, so he quit and only came back after some very strict concessions.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

“I’ll come back so long as Larry isn’t there”

Background

To give you some background on my friend Tim (made up name) he has been programming since he was like 7 years old.

Tim said by the time he got to college he breezed through most of his Comp Sci classes because a lot of the content they where covering he had already mastered years prior.

Tim is an excellent programmer.

Tim’s career has been quite successful, he’s worked for Google, Facebook, Amazon, and finally a hedge fund.

The story starts at the hedge fund.

Here’s the situation with the hedge fund…

Tim works a lot with AI technology, and at this hedge fund he was the lead programmer manager who spear headed a effort to optimize their AI that helped them complete literally millions of trades a day.

To say his work had a massive impact is an under statement.

All of this is going on with COVID19 in the background.

Working from home is a huge perk.

Due to COVID19 they went to a work from home model.

During the work from home, Tim was looking around his fancy $4,500 NYC apartment and wished for things like a yard, a heated pool, a nice three car garage, and not living in a high rise.

It dawned on Tim that he could leave NYC.

He moved to a really nice house.

Tim moves to Michigan

So Tim moved back to his hometown in Michigan, where he bought himself a really nice home with a heated pool, a three car garage, a nice yard, and guess what the yard had in it?

A mother in law suite which was essentially a 2 bedroom, 1 bath second home on the property of his main home which he turned into his man cave.

Its actually pretty sick.

He never told his employer that he moved.

O yea and his mortgage payment WAS FAR LESS then his 4.5k a month rent.

Like half…

Tim spent the rest of his COVID19 work from home pounding out projects, etc.

He never actually informed his employer on a official basis he moved,he just kept working.

Then COVID19 “ended”.

He finally had to tell his boss he moved.

COVID19 IS FINALLY OVER…Back to the office…or???

Tim boss, Larry calls him up and goes, “Alright Tim on Monday we are starting work back at the office” and Tim goes “Yea…about that I moved to Michigan.”

Larry is shocked and goes, “You didn’t even ask if you could do that?”

Tim basically said, “I didn’t know I needed your permission to move.” in a sarcastic way.

Larry insists that Tim needs to move back to NYC, or he won’t have a place on the team.

Tim says he’s been doing the exact same work from home at a high level for the past year and he’s willing to travel to NYC for a few meetings a year on his own dime, but he feels his quality of life is soo much higher outside of NYC he has no desire to live in NYC.

To which Larry said if Tim doesn’t have any desire to live in NYC then he has no desire to keep Tim employed.

Tim quit before his boss could fire him.

If your thinking he quit, you’d be absolutely right he quit.

Maintaining Complex Code Can Be Hard

Now anyone that has done any programming knows that sometimes the best person to maintain the code is the person who wrote the code.

There’s logic, there’s thought processes, there’s so much that goes into programming that can be so individualistic it can be hard for someone to take over a code base they didn’t write.

The CEO wants Tim to come back to work.

John (CEO) Enters The The Picture

6 weeks goes by, when John calls Tim. John is the CEO of the hedge fund.

John gets Tim to agree to consider coming back, so that’s when John suggests they fly Tim to NYC and he sits down with John.

Tim however flipped the switch and said, “No, how about you fly out to Michigan and we discuss this?”

Tim said he said that because he wanted to establish if he was going come back, it was going be him working from Michigan. If he was going talk his employment it was going be done in Michigan.

Tim asked for a raise.

John agreed, and two days later flew out to meet with Tim.

Tim sits down and John says they really need him, because he provided a lot of value to the organization and the programing team is struggling.

John offers Tim the opportunity to come back with a 20% pay cut (since he wont’ be living in NYC and John called that a cost of living adjustment).

To which John said “No, I want a 15% raise above what I was earning”

John sits back and responds, “The reason we pay what we pay is because we ask you to live in NYC and we understand thats an expensive city to live in.”

To which Tim says, “You pay what you pay, and you pay it because I am worth it. If I wasn’t worth what you pay, you wouldn’t be paying me. Now my first condition is if you want me back it’ll be a 15% raise.”

John goes “And second?”

He was going to get revenge on Larry!

“The second condition is I’ll come back so long as Larry isn’t there.”

John sighs, “Your asking for too much.”

To which Tim goes, “You don’t need to bring me back if you don’t want too, I’ll be fine elsewhere.”

John goes, “I’ll talk to the partners.”

Tim says, “My offer is good till Friday.”

John goes, “What do you mean?”

Tim says, “Next Monday is when I’m going start looking for work, this offer is good until Friday.” (It was Tuesday)

John leaves.

He got everything he wanted.

That Thursday the phone rings, its John.

In Conclusion

“Tim, we are transferring Larry to a different fund, he won’t be working with you anymore and we are fine with giving you a 15% raise, can we send you an offer letter for you to sign?”

Tim said “Of course, and Larry is really gone?”

John goes “Yes, you will never need to interact with Larry ever again.”

That was at the start of this year, Tim hasn’t been in NYC, hasn’t heard from Larry, hasn’t seen Larry on any communications, etc.

When you bring major value to a company, you can make major demands.

Read on to see what the people on Reddit had to say in the comments.

Here’s a good point…

Wow, that is taking it to extremes.

Yes, make yourself invaluable.

Larry was just doing his job.

Yeah, at least let HR know.

He must have been a top tier programmer!

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.