He Did What He Was Told And Stopped Helping His Former Staff — Now Productivity Is Down And Deadlines Are Slipping
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Time zones can turn simple workplace questions into day-long delays.
Management still ordered an experienced programmer to stop helping his former team.
He followed those instructions exactly.
Deadlines soon felt the difference.
Read on for the full story.
OK – I won’t answer my old staff’s questions and help them …
Before I retired, I was a manager and programmer in a department located in the US. I would program, manage, assign projects, create timelines, answer questions that my staff had, etc.
The company I worked for decided to consolidate the US and UK programming departments, and the new boss decided to have only managers in the UK oversee the programmers in the US.
This meant that I was only supposed to keep programming (I had the most experience among all the US/UK programmers) and no longer needed to do the management side of things (but I still got the same pay I used to).
The time difference made it difficult to communicate with the new managers.
Due to a 6-hour time difference between the US and UK, that meant that there were only 2 or 3 hours each day that we overlapped.
This left the rest of the day for my old staff to either wait until the next day to ask their new boss or come to me and I could answer immediately.
The latter made more sense so they could keep working, but eventually the UK managers complained to US/UK boss that the US staff wasn’t coming to them to help and were still coming to me, which the UK managers were having a conniption about.
My boss told me to stop helping my old staff when they asked me questions and that they needed to ask their new manager.
So it was time for malicious compliance…
This former manager stopped helping, and the team’s productivity suffered.
I went back to only programming. And when my old staff came and asked me questions (usually in the afternoons US time since the UK was done for the day), I told them I was told to no longer help them.
I said they should ask their new UK manager the next day or send their UK boss an email with their question. I told them it was time for malicious compliance – since the US programmers knew exactly what would happen.
So my old team started deluging their UK bosses with questions, problems, etc. and then had to wait until the next day or 2 to get answer. Within 2 weeks, the US team was missing deadlines, etc. and the UK managers had to answer for why their team was missing deadlines.
After a couple more weeks my boss and the UK managers came to the realization that due to the 6-hour time difference, there should be manager in the US (which is exactly what I told them weeks ago).
Finally, my boss asked me if would like to be a manager again and I told her I was happy just programming and didn’t need the other work. They ended up giving me a raise in order to get me go back to managing the US programmers.
Now that’s how you get more money for doing the same job.
Here’s what the other people in the comments are saying.
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This one is happy for the former manager.
A valid observation.
This user finds the story relatable.
A user likes how it ended.
And more commentary on failed management decisions.
Once every question had to wait for the UK managers, the US team quickly missed deadlines.
The company restored his management duties and gave him a raise to accept the extra work.
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