Micromanagement has a funny way of creating the very problems it claims to fix.

So when a group of hardworking startup employees found their startup boss micromanaging their hours, it sparked a mutiny that would show the boss who really ran the show.

Keep reading for the full story.

Boss introduces new timetracking tool to “avoid time manipulation”, backfires on him

I work in a small startup company of around 12 people.

It’s a very good atmosphere in the office, and everyone pulls their weight and is super motivated.

The boss is a different story though.

However, our boss likes to micromanage us, even though he has no expertise in any of our fields (Marketing/Design/Accounting/…).

Especially those of us in Marketing and Design suffer a lot from that, since he will make changes to our strategies, posts, and website, sometimes without telling us.

Then he gets upset at us when the customer feedback is bad and we aren’t reaching our predicted goals.

He soon cooks up some conspiracy that would explain away his own bad leadership.

Recently, he told us that the reason he thinks we aren’t seeing enough results is because we are manipulating our hours and not actually putting in the work we should.

Until then, we each wrote down our hours manually in an Excel sheet.

This new tool would be much more granular.

But with the new time-tracking tool, he would see how long we were working down to the minute.

We also could only log in on our desk PCs (and previously approved home office devices), but not mobile because “if you are not at your desk, it is not work.”

After our initial shock passed and our boss left for the day, our manager called for a meeting.

That’s when everyone banded together to fight back.

We came up with a plan.

We would do as he says, in the most “just following the rules” way possible:

1. We would not engage in work-related conversations with him unless we were sitting at our desks and clocked in.
2. Any questions he asked after we clocked out would only be answered once we clocked in again the following day.
3. Every phone call, text message, or otherwise work-related matter outside of the office would only be answered once there was an option for us to clock in, either the next day in the office or, for some of us, on our home office device.
4. Since we no longer had the option to “shift” time manually, all work minutes and hours would be clocked exactly when they took place.
5. We would stop any independent activity (like posting on social media or writing an email) and would send him everything to approve before following through.

It didn’t take long for the boss to throw up the white flag.

After about a week, our boss was so fed up with this that he gave us the option to clock in from our mobile devices so he could get a more immediate response to his questions.

However, this of course led to us clocking in way more frequently, since, as I said, he likes to micromanage and is therefore asking a lot of questions.

All the employees’ hard work finally paid off.

I’m happy to report that as of 2024, we have abolished the system again and regained most of our independence.

Even though our boss is still upset about how we exploited the system, it brought the team closer together and hopefully taught him a lesson.

Now this is malicious compliance perfectly executed.

What did Reddit think?

It kinda seems like bosses should know better by now.

This boss is really just mad about getting outsmarted.

This boss has no one to blame but himself for this outcome.

This user almost thinks they should have just stuck with the boss’ way.

The bottom line is that good bosses just don’t act this way.

It’s a job, not a surveillance state.

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.