But I'll quickly qualify that by adding that it can really only be a one-time catharsis. He can't afford to make a habit out of this kind of post. In that sense, I agree with you. Professionalism is important in terms of him getting out of the hole he's in and getting a proper gig, but if he had been professional with this post I'd never have seen it or read it.
Brokedev: My advice would be to follow the recommendations given by "ecliptik" above. Work on your professional development: your resume, LinkedIn, GitHub, etc. Then market yourself like crazy with a good personal blog (showing what you're doing, learning, and experimenting with) and Twitter. Follow programmers you admire, and use Lists on Twitter to create a custom list of RoR developers so you can check out what they're working on and filter out noise. That won't be hard to do. Then keep at it. Make sure you're programming every day. Get involved in an open source project, and get your code on GitHub.
But I actually think he's shown himself to have good character here. He isn't attempting to sabotage the company even though he could. This happened very recently so you'd expect some of the emotions to be raw. I don't think this person is "high risk" if firing them after abusing them means that they're still loyal enough to you to not reveal your identity publicly. It sounds like this person was a trooper right up to the very end and is in fact pretty much the opposite of high risk.
Also please explain where he 'blackmailed' his boss?
Good managers let their employees vent, when necessary, and don't take it personally.
Insecure ones get all uppity about things like that.
Wikipedia: "Blackmail is an act [..] involving unjustified threats to make [..] cause loss to another unless a demand is met."
Regarding your Wikipedia quote, leaving a job in which you are abused and underpaid is not at all unjustified.
And I understand that you don't want to see yourself as a blackmailer.
"I'm more worth than that" and leaving is standing up.
"Give me more money or I leave" is blackmail.
"Regarding your Wikipedia quote, leaving a job in which you are abused and underpaid is not at all unjustified."
Leaving is not the blackmail part, threatening to leave is the blackmail part.
No one would ever be found guilty of blackmail for simply saying "Give me a pay rise or else I'll resign". (But, "Give me a pay rise or else I'll report your illegal activities to the authorities" would be blackmail.) The essence of blackmail is demanding money for an illegitimate reason - money which you are not legitimately due - and there is nothing inherently illegitimate about demanding a pay rise. It simply means that you put a different value on your own labour than your employer currently does, and if you and they cannot reach agreement on that value, you'll look for someone else with whom you agree more.
It is absolutely the correct call. He was being taken advantage of. He used his only point of leverage to get a fairer deal.
And it's not extortion because the "threat" was not wrongful; the boss is not his owner nor is he entitled to his work.
The word you're looking for is haggling, and it's a common part of negotiations.
HN regularly mentions the book "how to win friends and influence people" or talks about hacking various interpersonal processes.
This is just an interpersonal hack. Saying "give me more money or I'll leave" causes many - but admittedly not all - managers to respond with "go ahead and leave then", even when the manager knows that replacing the leavig employee will require a higher wage than the employee is currently getting and some expenditure on the recruitment process.
People are not rational and they do mot make rational decisions. We know that management, and recruitment, is very broken.
Blackmail is defined as a demand for money in exchange for not revealing compromising or injurious information.
"Give me more money or I will publish these naked photos of you" is blackmail.
One of those is illegal. The other one isn't.
"This bounty hunter is my kind of scum, Fearless and Inventive"
When dealing with sociopaths,, to negotiate from a position of strength; you need to have an offer in hand from another employer, because it is very likely that you could be fired on the spot when you confront this type of individual. The sociopath doesn't care, and will just find someone else to exploit.
What he did was give his boss an entirely reasonable ultimatum.
I can see how it might seem threatening to someone who feels threatened by the thought of an employee standing up for himself.
WRT your definition of blackmail, I'm getting "the action, treated as a criminal offense, of demanding money from a person in return for not revealing compromising or injurious information about that person." It's a VERY specific term having to do with hidden information.
What you cited seems closer to the definition of extortion ("the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats"), but frankly, as long as what you're threatening to do is legal, that's business.
Your relationship with your employer is first and foremost a business relationship - they are not your best friend, your family, or your surrogate father. You have no obligation to play nice with their feelings.
I understand your impulse to not give in to an employee that demands like this, but you need to drop the moralizing BS - what you're saying is "they know what they're worth and I can't afford to pay that, so I'll only hire employees who don't know what they're worth". Sound accurate?
That is bs, leaving is the only leverage you have as an employee. If you do't use it, you might have a problem, because you lack the ability to negotiate. The age of feudalism is over you know...
To be fair, this could have been wrapped up in some better language, like "I don't think my salary is reflecting my talents", but in the end it all boils down to leaving for a better opportunity
A manager who knows someone is worth it but would still rather let me go than pay market price for their labor (because he doesn't like negotiating when he's not in a position of absolute power) is probably doing so because he can't man up and negotiate with someone his own size figuratively speaking. The stereotypical "I'm not letting a woman tell me what to do." sort of insecurity/attitude.
Employees have been "on the bottom" in the traditional work relationship for so long, it can seem "unfair" to employers to have to deal with employees on a more level playing field.
that's exactly how salary negotiations work. If I don't do a good enough job, you demote or fire me. If I do a good enough job AND the market says I should make X, then X - Y isn't fucking good enough, and you should be warned that I'm happy to find an employer that WILL pay me what I ask for.
Sounds like he gave the job his all, but given his situation in life, I don't know how else he could have reacted to this. Added to that he doesn't really have the support of his wife since she doesn't yet know.
My point is that a lot of factors are at play, so labelling him as unprofessional is a bit unfair to him at the moment. He's in panic mode.
The important thing is that he's just venting, and trying to use his bad experience to his advantage. Let's say you get a resume from a web developer with some factory experience, some design experience and an internship. If you check his references you might hear that he was fired and that he acted unprofessionally. Maybe that he had "unrealistic salary expectations", or that "his personal life got in the way of work". (Because the CEO clearly was an ahole).
He had some bad luck, tried to do a good job and now he's in a tough spot. I think that's easy to sympathize with.
As someone who actually hires people, allow me to assure the poster that nothing about his story says anything of the sort.
It screams "person of good faith who got taken advantage of by an asshole."
I'm kind of curious, if you're willing to give a general corner of industry. I can't think of anything that doesn't have "bad boy" characters. Seems like any federal agent kind of person would attract attention from the CIA. A doctor maybe? Still seems like someone willing to write off-topic prescriptions would command more salary.
It's actually kind of tough to think of a profession that needs to be perfectly ethical, and also appear to be perfectly ethical. Aerospace designers kill test pilots. SEC agents that appear to be on the take probably get bribed more often than the squeaky clean.
Maybe there's some corner of insurance that having a reputation would endanger your employer somehow. Everything i can think of right now implies higher salary.
I just don't think this case is analogous. mchurch became instantly infamous with all Googlers, which made him radioactive in a big swath of the upper tier of the software industry, not just in NYC but also CA and other tech hubs. In contrast, this guy posted one thread to Hacker News that (from what I can tell) is fairly anonymized. Maybe folks close to him will recognize that this is his story, and maybe in his local dev community word will get around that he wrote it. But he's looking for remote work, and I think it extremely unlikely that he'll go to apply for a remote job a year from now and they will somehow connect him to this post.
Just want to clarify my meaning here. The intent is really a more frank and critical version of mmaunder's advice above.
When I say he is unprofessional, I'm not talking about per se what he did at work, how he left (involuntarily), or his reaction. That was more amateurish, which isn't exactly "professional," but not unprofessional. He should have set expectations and negotiated better and harder earlier. He should have done a job search on the DL so he had something lined up before giving an ultimatum; the writing was on the wall anyway. Woulda shoulda coulda. Well, coding and negotiating skills are not correlated. Join the club. Hopefully he will learn and do better next time.
What is unprofessional is posting a pseudonymous rant to Hacker News with your email address and "begging for work."
Posting a pseudonymous "My shitty employer shafted me" story to HN would be spot on. But turning that into a job solicitation is a huge, unprofessional blunder. Yeah, he touched a nerve and got bumped up the page. Yeah, he's probably going to be inundated with offers. Charity offers for weak positions of the kind he left. Maybe he won't be screwed over hard, but he won't be treated like a professional and get the terms he could if he were working from a position of strength, competence, confidence and success. He'll get an offer consistent with desperation. Do you want to work at a company that seeks out desperate candidates as your colleagues?
The fact is, if you want $75K, you have to find someone who thinks you are worth $75K. If you don't have a degree or a distinguished resume, you've got a lot to prove even in a tight job market for engineers. The way you do that is show that you kick ass on the front end and can lay down code with the next guy, and communicate your worth and expectations with confidence.
But yeah, those of you who think a self-pitying rant about starving in a trailer and getting fired from his first glorified internship in a winning career strategy, you do what works for you.
What does that mean?! Erase the tumblr post?
And start over, not with another tumblr post, but with a legitimate career hunt.
If this is a serious job solicitation and not just catharsis you are doing it all wrong. Starting with how desperate you are, how proud you made your mom, and how shitty you've been doing and been treated does not make the hirers of desirable jobs want to hire you. If nothing else, go google "just-world hypothesis."
I'm not in a hiring position right now (although I know plenty of hiring managers itching for referrals) but if I were I wouldn't touch you with a 10-foot pole even if on some level you make your plight sympathetic. Why? Because your post radiates "danger, high risk, unprofessional, possibly unstable individual who does not know how to behave in a business setting."
Scrub this and start over.