We’ve all dealt with the green-eyed monster… either from within or without.

But in this story, employees at a startup struggle for control and dominance, all amid a pressing deadline and a lot of unnecessary conflict.

Let’s run the numbers here…

Cool, Embarrass yourself the perfect way!

Used to work in an startup as the lead developer managing a team of 8.

I had this manager (calling him B from now), who had a long history of jealousy.

On any occasion, he used to mention he used to be a programmer in his youth as well and he knows much better than everyone (believe me, he was a 50 year old kid).

Yeah some people never grow up. How will this man child ruffle feathers?

At some point our company got a project from one of the banks, with deadline of two months.

The project was somehow complex mathematically but doable in two months with right choice of people and planning.

Something tells me not all the right choices are gonna be made…

I was explaining this in a mutual meeting with B and CEO, when B jumped in:

“This is a serious project, unlike other projects you are in charge of. I will manage this project personally and will hire new team reporting directly to me, it’s better if you do not get involved in such a serious projects.”

Thing is, I had a successful experience in rich mathematical projects and CEO got that project exactly because of its similarity with our other project which involved the same mathematics.

I exactly knew what must be done there.

Sounds like OP is an expert. But will B get the opportunity instead?

But B? It was the best opportunity for him to embarrass himself.

“Perfect! I’ll focus on our own products then and you take charge of this project,” I said to B, in front of the CEO.

B started interviews and asked me to participate. I helped him a bit, but it was a challenge for him to accept people I rejected.

Just because they answered nonsense questions asked by him (like, how many doors did you see coming to our floor, what was the color of the third door, like, really?!).

Not sure how those are germane to the topic, but maybe the answers will come in handy?

The project started, and after one month not hearing anything from them, I had a request from B: “My team has done everything, but we need a little help, can you give us these APIs to return some data?”

Told him let me see our plannings to see if I can dedicate time for this. Then sent him a letter in our system something like this:

“As per our discussion, Our team can deliver the APIs in a short time. We just need you to respond to this letter with a short description of inputs and expected outputs of whatever API you need. it doesn’t need to be lengthy, so we are ready to start as soon as we get the documents.”

Straightforward enough. Will B use the color of the third door to get this done?

No response was given and I forgot about it until next month, when the deadline had been passed by a week.

While shopping on a weekend night, I received a call from the CEO, with the angriest tone I had ever heard.

Uh-oh.

He was screaming: “WHY HAVEN’T YOU GIVEN B THE APIS? THE PROJECT CAN NO LONGER WAIT AND B SAYS YOUR TEAM FAILED TO GIVE THEM WHAT YOU PROMISED.”

I responded, “Look, stop screaming and give me 5 minutes, and then you can do whatever is needed.”

How’d this convo play out?

+”Ok, tell me.”

-“Search for this letter in the system from me to B at that time range. Open it and then I’ll continue.”

+”Found it.”

-“So B requested this last month, all he had to do was to respond to this letter in 10 minutes and I could give him whatever he needed. But not only he didn’t, he never again mentioned it in person as well.”

+”Got it, will call you back soon.”

OK. I wonder how this callback is gonna go…

One hour later I called again to see why didn’t he call me.

CEO responded with:

“He and his team didn’t do anything except some mockups for the bank. Not a single line of backend code was written and they were looking for a victim to blame him. He didn’t respond you because he couldn’t write that they need all the backend fully be implemented by you.”

Ah, got him! Fireable offense or no?

Due to friendship B had with the CEO, he wasn’t immediately fired.

But next month he left the company on his own. During that month his team was merged into my team, they were good people despite previously being rejected by me.

Just they were not suitable for a 2 month deadline project. And I got the role of him right after. Still one of my best stories so far.

Vindicating for OP, deflating for B.

What do the comments think?

One person is like, yeah, let ’em fail.

One person wants to know if there was a true happy ending.

Someone else throws the rule book at OP.

This user wants to know another fact about this happily ever after.

Someone else suggests management failed here.

This coder did not have an embarrassment of riches.

Womp-womp.

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.