Some companies do not realise how much value an employee brings until they are forced to live without them.

Imagine giving years of loyal service, only to be demoted after a health issue, and watching your department fall into chaos without you.

Would you quietly accept it and carry on?

Or would you let your absence speak for itself?

In the following story, one programmer finds himself in this exact position.

Here’s what happened.

Stripped of Manager Position … OK I Can Do That

I was the manager of a programming department.

I initially had 5 programmers reporting to me, and I was able to spend half of my time programming and half managing.

I had always gotten ‘exceeds’ or ‘far exceeds’ expectations on my annual reviews.

About 10 years later, my team had 25 people, and I was spending less and less time programming.

Fast forward a few years and I missed 2 months during the year for a surgery and hospital stay and in my annual review my boss (who knew nothing about programming) told me I was not doing a good job and the programming department was missing deliverable dates (probably because I was in the hospital).

Things went downhill pretty quickly.

They wanted me to go back to just programming, and I was stripped of my manager and only focused on programming.

I was mad, but I told him that I could do that.

I told my former staff what had happened and told them to direct ALL questions to my boss (who knew zero about programming).

He was overwhelmed, and soon senior management figured out that my boss was the problem, not me.

They canned him and replaced him with the VP of programming in the UK (I am in the US).

She was great since she started as a programmer and was an excellent boss in general.

Since I was just a programmer now, all of the managers were in the UK, and I told my former staff to direct all questions to their new bosses in the UK.

Since there was 6 6-hour time difference and we only overlapped 2 or 3 hours each day, that made getting questions answered in a timely fashion quite difficult.

They finally reached an agreement.

In the meantime my health wasn’t the best and my doctor told me I should go to a 4 day/32 hour work week so I my health wouldn’t continue to suffer.

Since my employer was a strict 40-hour workweek company, I looked for another job and got 8 job offers in about a month.

I was ready to resign.

Finally, after a few months, my new boss asked me to be a manager again because of the time difference between the US & UK and because I have the most experience as a programmer in the company.

Instead, I gave her my resignation and explained why.

She asked me what it would it would get me to stay and I told I wanted a 10% raise and wanted to work 4 day/32 hour work work.

I gave her 24 hours to respond.

She spoke to higher-ups and finally came back the next day and agreed.

Yikes! That sounds like a nightmare for everyone.

Let’s see what Reddit readers think about this.

This is an interesting comment.

As this person points out, the new boss may have been surprised.

According to this person, he could’ve sued.

It does happen sometimes.

They got really lucky.

He could’ve just gone on with his life and not accepted their offer after what they put him through.

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.