When you are just starting out in the workforce, some employers will try to take advantage of your inexperience.

What would you do if you were performing well, but the employer refused to give you a reasonable wage or bonus?

That is what the young developer in this story was dealing with, so when his contract was up he left them with undocumented code that made them lose a major client.

We are making “Investments”

I am an electronics engineer, currently working in the comm industry.

I started my job as an intern at the company of one of my professors.

Here in Iran, employers are mandated to pay 80 percent of so-called “insurance” which is a flimsy health insurance and retirement fund.

Another one of my professors introduced us and having seen how passionate he was when teaching, I assumed my employer would be honest and treat me well as i learned the ropes.

My whole interview with the project manager of that company (which my professor was the chairman and CEO) lasted around 15 minutes and they immediately put me on writing a driver for a rather complicated IC.

After a lot of self study which I didn’t expect, I finally finished the project and got a contract for getting hired.

However, no insurance for a year and hourly wage which was less than half the mandated amount.

I dismissed my worries by telling myself i was just learning and i enjoy electronics so no worries.

It is clear they are just trying to take advantage of him.

I brought this up once with my project manager, yet he laughed at my face by telling me that i still haven’t made any “profit” and they would compensate my low wage by “bonuses” when they see fit.

Unfortunately… I complied.

Months passed, until i got my first big assignment.

It was a heavy project which had me write drivers for memory peripherals, ADC’s etc. and implement a whole signal processing chain all by myself.

At first I was excited, but a month into the project, I was burnt out.

I worked on holidays and overtime and in the meantime I was getting fined for small mistakes.

I brought this up with the management, and they said they wont give me a raise and i have to wait for the end of the “phase” (which meant a milestone in the project).

This phase thingy was a holy grail that made employees at that company burn themselves out in hopes of the juicy bonus.

By that time I was seeing the chain of events and how a pattern of abuse was being formed.

Excuse me for the language, burn out the employee with hope, bleed em dry with reductions, throw them a small bonus like a bone for the good doggie.

Every time we asked for a raise, they would tell us that they are “making investments” by buying new equipment and hiring more employees.

I decided to resign.

This type of employment contract can be exploitative.

At first I asked to leave on good terms yet my manager told me that I’ve signed a contract so I have to abide by it.

I sneered and said OK, cue malicious compliance.

Then I pushed hard.

Like very hard.

I even did side hardware projects and handled everything related to the project without complaining.

They asked me to document my codes and designs but I excused myself by doing more work.

One month remaining to the end of my contract, I wrote a resignation letter.

This letter legally allowed me to leave my job at the end of my contract without allowing my employer to make me work to deliver the project.

They really thought he would stick around.

Of course, seeing how timid I was, they dismissed it as a whim and decided to accept it without bringing it up later.

When the deadline of my contract came, it coincided with a demonstration to the client.

After this demo, the client was immensely satisfied and told us that they would like to invest a lot on it, making the prototype a full product.

Now here came my moment, I packed up the next day and left.

Just left.

By working as a multi role engineer I’ve gained enough experience to land a good job at another company and all this time I excused myself from documenting my codes and designs.

Code that is not properly documented is very hard to work with.

This made all my designs unusable for the company as they couldn’t just give it to someone else so that they could continue my work, meanwhile they all thought how good and obedient worker I was and made me an example to everyone:))

A week or so later after I left(all these days, my phone was constantly ringing) I got a call from my manager.

He had just wired me a bonus to bring me back to the project, yet I answered “Well Professor, your “investments” can surely do what I always struggled to do” and I hung up.

Wow, that is a huge increase!

Currently I am enjoying a salary 8 times more than the amount he was paying me with no overtime or penalties.

Needless to say, the multi million dollars project failed and was scrapped.

Hopefully, that manager learns that it is better to treat his employees right than to abuse them.

Let’s see what the people in the comments think about this story.

Absolutely true.

When will companies learn that employees are the most valuable asset.

Glad to see he kept the bonus money.

Yeah, this worked out well for him in the end.

LOL – So true.

Glad to see that it all worked out well in the end.

For the poster, anyway.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.