Imagine working really hard on a project at work, but during the next team meeting, a coworker acts as if they were the one who did all the work.

Would you let them take credit, or would you call them out on their lies?

In today’s story, one software engineer lets the coworker take credit, and it really backfires!

Let’s read the whole story.

My co-worker loves taking credit for other people’s work. Then he got exposed

I work as a software engineer and in my team we follow the usual process of writing code, reviewing it, testing it, and deploying it.

One of my co-workers, Steve, had a habit of taking credit for other people’s work in front of management.

He isn’t a bad developer, but he loves making it seem like he was doing more than he actually was.

He doesn’t like confrontation.

I’m quite introverted, so I don’t usually speak up in meetings unless I have to.

Calling someone out directly doesn’t come naturally to me, so I usually just let things slide.

He had a big project to work on.

During a big project, I spent days fixing a complicated bug.

The problem ran deep, and the fix had to work across different parts of the code.

If you hadn’t actually worked on it, it was pretty hard to follow.

After a lot of testing, I finally got it done.

Steve took credit for his work.

At the next team meeting, before I could even say a word, Steve jumped in and started explaining my fix as if it was his.

He kept saying things like “We decided to…” and “Our approach was to…” making it sound like he was the person behind it.

I was annoyed, but I kept quiet.

This is going to backfire on Steve!

The next day, another bug popped up in the same area of the code.

Our manager turned to Steve and said, “Since you worked on this, can you patch it?”

And that’s when the fun started.

Steve froze.

Steve had no idea what to do.

The thing is, if you didn’t actually write the fix, it wasn’t easy to understand how it all fit together.

He had no idea where to even begin.

He tried stalling and even sent me a message asking if I could explain the logic of the code real quick.

Steve finally had to admit defeat.

I told him that I was busy at the moment and that I will catch up with him later on.

I didn’t.

After five hours of struggling, he finally admitted in the team chat and wrote something like “Actually, I didn’t write this part, maybe OP can take a look?”

I replied, “Of course, I’ll check it.”

It wasn’t hard for OP to fix it.

Ten minutes later, I had it fixed.

Our manager came over and congratulated me.

We were chatting for a bit and before heading off he made a deliberate comment about how great it was having someone who actually understands what we are working on.

Steve didn’t say a word

That worked out perfectly!

He might need to work on speaking up when someone else tries to take credit for his work, but in this case, it worked out even better since Steve was the one who had to admit defeat.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

He really needs to speak up in meetings.

Here are some suggestions about how to make it easier to speak up during meetings.

This is true.

Perhaps Steve should change careers.

Karma had a hand in this.

We love to see it.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.