I worked for a similarly horrible person many years ago.

I was doing on call support for a bunch of Linux machines. Literally it was him and me left because the moment I started the other two engineers bailed. One went to work packing salad because it was a better job (big warning!) and the other one had a breakdown.

So didn't get paid properly, argued mileage down to the mile, the clients and him constantly gave me verbal abuse over and over and I ended up working until 10pm some nights with my 9 month pregant wife at home on her own and virtually immobile due to a back problem.

So I get home one night after a tirade of abuse for the day and sent him an email saying "Fuck you I quit". Get a call about an hour later and he's drunk shouting abuse down the phone. This suddenly turns into undying love and care for me after the abuse wasn't working and he realised I couldn't be brow beat into coming back again. Then there's a thud which I assume was him falling off his chair. Never spoke to him again but the company folded about a year later.

So I sit down and I'm about £2000 down then on salary and expenses that were missing. I had £250 in the bank, £400 rent due a week later, wife about to have a baby and an empty fridge. So fuck it. I sold all the stock I still had of the company on ebay (back when you had to take photos and get them developed and scanned and futz with cheques which was hard work), broke even and scraped a first pay cheque at a job just before my credit card melted into a puddle.

It took 10 years to get out of the hole and back to normality. NEVER put up with this for a second. If anyone treats you like this RUIN THEM before they ruin you, your life, your relationships and everyone else they go near. I don't usually advocate this attitude but the damage and destruction that type of person leaves is immense.

Stories like this are important.

Because sometimes the situation is bad for your boss too, the company is in financial straits, miscommunication, {insert other extenuating circumstances}.

... but sometimes your boss really is just an asshole, liar, alcoholic, and/or a sociopath.

Never assume the later off the bat, but never completely discount the possibility either. Because it'll probably happen at least once in an average career.

A good boss does not mistreat employees simply because the company asks them to, just like a good engineer does not implement backdoors simply because the company asks them to. If there's no way to do your job ethically, quit. Don't harm others so you can keep collecting a paycheck.

So the difference doesn't really matter. You have a bad boss; take care of yourself first and don't let them push you around.

Who cares if the boss has substance abuse issues or Cluster B personality disorders? These considerations don't put bread on the table!

Point taken, but either way, it's so not my problem. Maybe in the former case I'll refrain from aiming a flamethrower back behind me as I run as fast as possible out of there!

> Because sometimes the situation is bad for your boss too, the company is in financial straits, miscommunication, {insert other extenuating circumstances}.

So? That's the boss's problem to deal with. You owe the company absolutely nothing beyond your contracted hours in exchange for your contracted salary.

I say this as an employer.

You owe common decency to other human beings trying to act decently.

If your boss happens to be a cog in a broken machine, treating them like it's their fault isn't fair to them or you.

Of course, you can always quit (and usually should). But failing to determine root cause and mis-blaming your boss is about as useful as screaming at the gate attendant when your flight gets a weather delay.

You only owe it to them so long as they do it to you.

And someone who by choice decides to be (or remains) a cog in the broken machine, specifically at the point where it requires being nasty to someone, is fully responsible for that action and its consequences.

They are either dishonest or an a##hole then.

Couldn't you have taken him to small claims court?

Court takes time. Court takes money, or at the least incurs opportunity costs. And court takes emotional reserves. People in dire straits don't necessarily have enough of any of those things, and that is why people like the described get away with shit.

(Labor advocacy programs help balance the scales a little, if only because your advocate is predisposed to believe you and help you navigate the options available to you. But they're fairly thin on the ground in the UK and the US.)

Exactly. In this circumstance at the lowest I had £12 to buy a week of food. I had to cash advance the rent from my credit card and the £12 was what was left. I also had to maintain a perfect appearance and state of mind and hide all this from my new employer for the 4 weeks until I got paid.

Didn't have the cash or energy to start it off and after 5 years I didn't want to go back to that bit of my life and kick it all off again. Plus he folded the company after a bit so chance I'd get anything were near zero.

I'm glad things worked out for you eventually. That super sucks to go through.

It is one of the reasons I am so very suspicious of folks who diminish the value of labor protections. Most of us end up downrange of some shady stuff at least once.

So mission accomplished from his point of view: "This person is weak, let's just add some adversities to their life, they would quit; my cousin can't wait to join us."

Same thing happened to my wife. A newly promoted VP transferred her out of a great position she loved to work on a special project he invented to make department look innovative, under promise of a promotion once complete. Instead as soon as the project was done he hired a new manager into another newly created position above my wife, only supervising her. He proceeded to have the manager take all her responsibilities and make her life hell until she quit. Manager was told she would get a director position for doing it, instead they did the same to her a few months later until she quit too. VP promoted to SVP.

Yeah, it's fun :( Sociopathy seems to be the norm these days.

Anyway, nothing beats that one German bank that told all employees of a branch on Friday that on Monday they are working at a location 80 miles away and are required to be there as usually.

Even in the US something like that would trigger labor law protections (generally it would be treated as a constructive layoff, triggering unemployment benefits and any contractually or legally obligated severance benefits), so this story seems more like a fable than something that actually happened. Do you have any more details about this?

EDIT: Europe generally has stronger labor laws than the US, so if something wouldn't pass muster in the US, it almost certainly wouldn't pass muster in the EU.

And what happened? My understanding of German labor laws is that, for any reasonably sized German company, there would be a workers council that would have to approve work level changes like this. Did that happen?

> Sociopathy seems to be the norm these days

What else would you expect from a society that worships profit above all other gods?

Well yeah, but who cares? I went on to much bigger and better things and he's probably still just a twat. :)

He might still be taking advantage of and hurting people though, just like there's people like him making life harder for someone with a disabled child and many other "horror stories", the worst of which will never come to light. Please don't get me wrong, I don't blame you at all for not picking that fight, at age 25 in a situation I know nothing about. But that situation is over, other situations aren't, future situations are incoming, be it with that person or others. When someone throws someone else out of the window, I don't shrug just because the victim happened to land on their feet. The other didn't plan for that, they didn't care. I cannot fully get over that.

As an individual, it's great you let it slide, and I think forgiveness is really important mental hygiene, it's something you do for yourself more than for someone else, IMO... but as a member of a society that ideally would be somewhat just and decent, we shouldn't forgive something that hasn't even been repented of and is still ongoing. Disarm, explain, forgive, that'd be my preferred approach. Not fail to disarm, fall on deaf ears, forgive.

Yeah, I am actually upset I didn't take one such person down when I had all cards in my hand, but I still believed in innate "goodness" of all humans; now that person is doing damage at a higher position at one of FANGs; who knows how many people were destroyed on their ascending path? The usual argument about stopping one that would allow another horrible person to rise, so it's futile, has some merit though; I've been shocked multiple times when I helped some desperate person only to observe horrible behavior of that person once their problems went away.

Forgiveness can't be dispensed automatically; it has to be deserved/earned by real actions/intentions. I think because mainstream culture was "meek", it allowed sociopaths to hack it and pervert it, pushing victims to always forgive while laughing at them and making their lives more and more miserable. I think in middle ages required penance was quite brutal by our contemporary soft standards.

So much this.

Well amazon hires a ton of H1Bs. When they let go, they have to go to back to their country unless they can find another company to sponsor their H1B.

So people go to extreme lengths and managers can get away with anything.

I’m super grateful for Microsoft to help me with my green card. However my life there was miserable and my manager frequently asked us to work weekends. Pagerduty was hell and I once came home at 5am from work.

F that.

I’m glad I wasn’t born in India. My Indian x-colleagues didn’t have that freedom simply due to where they were born.

I imagine Amazon is a worse slaveshop.

Yea you can feel this when you work on a team mostly of H1B. Most of them don't speak up and just say yes to whatever project management gives them. Ofcourse upper management loves this, they take all the credit and become the face of the project and if it fails they simply blame it on h1b/contractors ect.

I've seen this many many times in all company sizes over last 15 yrs. I would steer clear of teams where most ppl are h1b indians.

Ex Indian h1b here. Here are some of the things I experienced that finally ended up with me throwing away everything and come back to India.

1. Was working on a project without issues. Ex manager forced me to go back to India 3 times over a 9 month period. Every time my ex manager tells me to go back, I get ready packing and then he tells me stay for 3 more months. On the 3rd time, I said I am resigning. Now my manager doesn't want me to go to India. I got another job and went to resign. Manager indirectly threatens me that I won't get service letter (which is required for green card). I was afraid and ended up staying. It turns out my manager was lying to the customer also. Everytime, he will tell me to get ready to go back and then tell the customer that I have to go back due to visa issues. Customer had still some work for me, so they ask for 3 more months and this repeated 2 times. Each time, I would be under incredible stress. It was like telling someone waiting in jail for their death sentence that they will be hung 2 weeks from now, then a few days later tell them it was extended.

2. Came to India for my marriage. Forced me to cancel my honeymoon and work from India for 1 month for another customer while lying to the original customer that I extended my vacation. I spend one whole day in my room sad and angry. I still want to beat up the manager who made me do this even though this happened over 2 years ago.

3. Asked me to work for a temporary customer in another state. I didn't want to, but agreed since I was afraid and worked for around 5-7 weeks while staying in hotel. This was before marriage. After marriage, again asked me to work for this customer for 1 month. My wife is completely dependent on me because she cannot drive in US. I said I cannot go because my wife is alone. Lead told me to ask my wife to stay in hotel for 1 month with me. I didn't want to because she already spend 3 weeks in a hotel with me instead of honeymoon. Thankfully manager agreed and sent someone else.

4. Forced me to relocate to another state. I didn't want to. After a lot of pressure, I sort of agreed and asked to at least adjust my salary for the rent increase. The customer was paying $20+ per hour more if I was working from the new state, so I expected at least a little bit of raise. Manager lied to me saying he will take care of it. I didn't trust him because there were many stories from my ex colleagues of being treated like a donkey with a carrot tied to their front. Sent him an email asking him to reply. He didn't. At one point, he said "I will snip you". He had said a similar line once before - "I will cut you". At that time, I didn't even understand he was threatening me, I was wondering why is he talking about circumcising me. This time I understood it was a threat. Got everything ready for move and told him I am ready for the move, and as expected he said HR didn't approve the raise which is a lie.

5. Moving expenses was about $3500. Getting that refunded was another big battle. Thankfully, my manager helped me in this and got the money after about 1.5 months.

6. Got RFE for visa extension. Employer waited till the last moment to submit the response to USCIS. I couldn't drive because license duration is tied to visa. Asked my manager and immigration team multiple times to speed up. No. They submitted the response only 5 days before the last day. So couldn't drive for 3 months. Since I was in a new state, I had no friends to help me either. Employer did pay for my Uber for these 3 months, but still I hated every moment of it, especially because of a few bad experiences with Uber drivers. Thankfully, I had sent my wife back to India before all this happened, otherwise I don't know how I would have managed.

Even though my visa got extended for another 3 years, I threw away everything and came back to India.

One more point I forgot to add. They delayed my green card till the last moment. I am not saying I am entitled to it, but they should tell me if they won't do it. I ask my manager and he would say we will start the process next month for sure. It continued for about 13 months. Finally they started. But by now green card applications as well visas from Indians were getting a lot of scrutiny from USCIS. Mine got denied and went for appeal and got approved finally. Took over 10 months just for the whole thing and got approved just 30 days before visa expiry. Applied for visa extension as soon as possible, got RFE on that also and spent another 4 months in uncertainty.

Really? Name and shame that manager - that shouldn’t be happening at Microsoft

I was recently offered a job by a software company, work from home, paid monthly. I presently work in metal fabrication.

Not only was their offer $30,000 below my current income, their deal was I front cash for expenses and submit claims monthly.

Is this standard in the software world?

Because from my perspective there’s only one possible answer to paying expenses out of pocket and having to claim them back: No.

Echoing the HP employee, submitting claims monthly for remote work expenses (phone/internet bills, office supplies, travel) is normal. Ive worked as an apps engineer at a couple BigCos with same policies and the process never bothered me, I submit my claims as soon as a trip ends or when I get the bills.

The thing I would press is to get paid fairly, and bi-weekly. I’ve never had a salaried job that was paid monthly.

Google let's you choose. But yes common practice.

A huge benefit of fronting the costs is getting points on the spend, it adds up quickly

I'm currently a software dev getting paid monthly, and fronting around 3 grand this month. It happens.

Isn’t this why you have a corporate card?

> I’ve never had a salaried job that was paid monthly.

Interesting. I'm Dutch and I've never heard of a permanent job that was not paid monthly. If someone told me they were not paid monthly, I would assume they are a temp with variable hours.

Bi-weekly, or every 2 weeks, is norm in US as far as I know. It's easier for everyone in my opinion, except maybe employers that want to take advantage of their employees.

It's just a cultural convention, nothing more. Monthly seems to be the norm in Europe, bi-weekly in US and Canada. I've done both, and there's no practical difference.

It’s always beneficial to have your money faster. No reason employer should get to hold on to it longer and get interest and liquidity. In the extreme case, at least you’re not working a whole month before finding out employer has no money to pay you. And while you may legally be entitled to it, who knows how long the legal system delivers it to you.

> Is this standard in the software world?

This is standard in every world. Corporate credit cards are usually reserved for senior executives or people who travel/entertain a lot (e.g. sales reps). Cash advances aren't a thing outside of small companies.

Huh? Google made it super easy to get a GCard, you just request it on a web form and it arrived a few days later. It was pretty common for L4 engineers (that's the level below senior) to have them.

I am also a former Google employee. I also had a GCard, and it is exactly as easy to get one as described.

Google is the exception here, IMO. Every other employer I have had has generally required the employee to front the cash for expenses, and used something like Expensify to get reimbursed. There are some exceptions, such as hotels or airfare, which I've booked through corporate booking systems; these only let you see "approved" flights/hotels, and once booked, is charged direct to the company.

Same story at Amazon but most people I know prefer to use their own cards to churn points.

FB is similar, especially in remote offices.

Same at Cisco.

And corporate credit cards aren't blank checks. Employees will generally have to pay back any spend on their corporate card that is not approved as an expense.

It may prevent the employee from holding the bag if the company goes bust. But some "corporate cards" are issued by banks in a way that makes the cardholder jointly liable.

I had an AmEx @ Deloitte as an intern

I had one at Bank of America as an intern, too. Booked first class transcon tickets on it, no less.

I work for a small (<20 employees) software company. Every single employee has a company AmEx card they can use for any expense.

It's actually quite unusual to make employees anything except for incidental expenses (like meals) up front. Generally, making employees pay big-ticket expenses (including travel) and seek reimbursement is a legal and accounting nightmare, so it's something that a well-run business tries to avoid. (In some states, it's even illegal to require employees pay for necessary business expenses.)

The exception tends to be law and accounting firms, which issue cards to their employees for business use. The employee "pays" up front using the cards, but the card is connected to the employer's expensing system and the funds are deposited to the employee's account the payday following his submission of the expense report.

My employer wanted us to pay upfront and then claim. I was an Indian h1b. One time, they forced me to relocate to another state even though I didn't want to. "I will snip you" was my ex-manager's words when I refused. My moving expenses was about $3500k. I paid everything from my pocket. When I tried to claim, finance team refused to pay and agreed only after a lot of escalations. I finally got the money after about 1.5 months. This plus many other bad experiences made me literally throw away everything and come back to India.

At lockheed we were given unlimted limit cards for certain roles.

You would rack up your tab, submit your expense report and then they would issue you a check with which it was your responsibility to pay the tab.

One guy racked up like $50,000 on his card, got the check and then quit and never paid off the card...

Dont know what ever happened to him.

My employer issues corporate Visas to any employee expected to incur >$500/year in expenses. Which means most of us have cards, at least in the US. We still have to complete expense reports, but we don’t pay anything out of pocket.

This is how it has always worked for me. When I was more junior and didn't have a corporate card, I had a person who booked all my travel on the company account. At worst, I might have to cover a few incidentals like food or taxis.

This is the way it should be done. No employee should carry the burden of loading up their own credit or paying for big ticket items up front no matter how trustworthy the company.

Sony Computer Entertainment does this, but then they don't pay back for 6-9 months, forcing your personal credit to be their credit cushion. One of the reasons I quit.

When/where did you work? Corporate cards are normal at SIE, even engineers on my team have them. I don't dispute your experience, just curious.

Edit: As an addition, the expense isn't paid by the employee. Costs over $2000 need justification above your boss, but your immediate boss can approve up to $2000 no issues.

Worked in Santa Monica Studio, and was sent to Tokyo several times. Each trip was in the $8K range, as each trip was for weeks at a time. Their slow payback was killing me.

I don't understand, if it's a corporate Visa, there's nothing to pay back - the bill goes to accounting, not the employee.

I have a corporate Amex card, and even though its a "Corporate" card, given to me by my employer, it is in my name and I am legally responsible for it. My company will reimburse me for my expenses if approved by my manager. I have always thought this was a liability and weird, but everybody else at the company (a 500 company) thinks it's normal. So any expenses not approved at the end of the month are my responsibility. Anybody else have similar experiences?

What major expenses do you have in a WFH software position? Other than one-time office set up?

Sorry, neglected to include important details.

Approximately one week a month on-site at client(s) location. So, flights, food, accommodation.

I expected company payment card. If everything turns to shit one month the employee, in this sort of situation, could be left holding a fairly hefty bag.

In my experience, the norm is minor expenses are, well, expensed. Dinner, taxis, whatever. The big ones that require planning, sometimes HR just take care of - i.e. booking your flights and hotel for you. That being said it isn't unheard of for that to be something you "expense" as well. If they fuck you, sue them. They probably won't though.

Side note: if you're in a situation where you're loading up a credit card with business expenses that are later reimbursed, you may consider looking into a credit card that offers rewards like airline miles. It's essentially a "free reward no fee ATM." I always volunteer to grab the company lunch tab for this reason.

A company who values inclusion and diversity should understand that people who are unable to float a monthly expense buffer are very often those same demographics that have been marginalized by those working in the software industry.

Getting credit card points while you know your employer is almost certainly going to reimburse you is a nice benefit, but the industry should definitely seek to improve by making this optional. Especially for prohibitively large large expenses (flights, lodging) default to paying these upfront.

Well put.

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

Are you actually paying cash? Assuming you're using a credit card, and assuming your company isn't looking to defraud you, using a card with decent cash back makes it a nonissue and "fronting the cash" for expenses is just a way for you to get a kickback from your credit card company for using them as a payment processor for work expenses. (And kind of a net positive relative to if you had a company credit card where the company claims any kickbacks.)

I do not possess a credit card for ideological reasons.

I do have two debit cards, one Visa and one MasterCard, for redundancy.

I see what you are saying and it makes sense. I’m just ideologically opposed to the use of consumer credit for regular / recurring / general living expenses.

If you're ideologically opposed to consumer credit because of the cycles of debt it incurs just pay off your credit card in full every month (which is what I do). No interest will be paid.

I do not have the self control to make that work.

I bet I’m not alone.

Submitting claims monthly is fairly standard, at least in my experience. At HP, they gave us a corporate AMEX card but I was responsible for paying it while I waited for the outsourced^2 HR operations to cut me a check.

Definitely need more pay not less to work remotely. Also, biweekly is better than monthly as another here stated. As for expenses, can’t talk much on that but it’s best if you get them paid up fast or if they are fairly typical in terms of the amount each time, ask for a payment up front to cover the bulk and make up the difference later. Employee does not mean you cannot make demands. Make all the demands you want and if they say no then you can say no too. It’s a 2 way street.

Yes. Fronting your expenses and then getting reimbursed after is pretty normal practice. Every employer I've had has done this with the exception of certain major purchases like airfare where the company has just purchased it for me directly, but some employers I had to front large costs like that as well.

Unfortunately, yes

Software engineer pay at tech companies in the US tends to be $150k for junior engineers to $300k+ for senior engineers.

Both of those numbers are possible, but much higher than average by my estimation. Glassdoor says average ~$111k for software engineering as a whole[0]. A more realistic expectation for a 'good' compensation package would be ~$80-95k for junior engineer and ~$180-250k for senior. Obviously there are many factors to account for, and both those numbers can vary widely, but the ones you gave are not what one should be expecting outside of a very select few 'elite' companies, and even then they are on the high end.

[0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-engineer-salary-...

At least for big tech companies, Glassdoor has notoriously low numbers. Last I checked, levels.fyi was closer to the truth.

May I ask (in good faith) how you know what the real "truth" is? I would totally believe Glassdoor is a bit low. Levels.fyi, which I didn't know about but just checked, seems really high. I believe both are based on real data points, but is there any reason to believe either is a better reflection of the actual numbers? (My relatively poorly-informed speculation is that Glassdoor is using old/irrelevant statistical data while levels.fyi is suffering from some pretty extreme selection bias being a comparatively obscure site relying on self-reporting.)

Glass door either only shows base salaries or is completely out of touch with tech companies.

Sure, the lone "web developer" at a small nonprofit might make $80k, but at a FAANG? Please.

FAANG is 5 companies. Granted they have a lot of employees, but they do not make up a significant portion of all developers in the US.

> they do not make up a significant portion of all developers in the US

I'm not sure that's true, but I will admit that most of my friends work at FAANGs (outside the bay area). So let me add that I know at least one senior engineer at a non-FAANG tech company that left a $300k job for a "significant pay bump".

Frankly, no large tech company could survive if it didn't pay competitively with other large tech companies.

I fully agree that pay is less in small, non-tech companies in rural areas, but I would be surprised if such businesses hire the majority of developers. Big tech hires a LOT of engineers.

All numbers from statista.com

Alphabet - 98,000 (2018) Facebook - 35,000 (2018) Apple - 123,000 (2018) Netflix - 5,500 (2017) Amazon - 647,500 (2018)

Total - ~909,000

That is total number of employees worldwide. so lets conservatively take off a third. Also Reasonably only a third of those employees (probably a lot less at amazon) are actually developers. That gives us ~200,000. The Bureau of Labor statics says there are 1,200,000 software developers in the US in 2016.

FAANG does make up a lot more software development jobs than I thought, I would have to say a significant portion. Very interesting.

Microsoft hires junior engineers out of college at ~$80k in Seattle. FAANG might be a bit higher, especially with COL in the Bay Area, but plenty of people get hired by the big companies in that range.

They don't get bonuses or RSUs??

That's not true at all. That's bay area large companies. The rest of the country is nowhere near those numbers.

I know a handful developers in this pay range and only one of them is in the bay area.

No, this is false. The top paid junior engineers might be paid $150k in base salary PLUS bonuses and stock/other compensation. Same goes for the 300k+ for senior engineers.

Why would you think bonuses don't count as pay? All financial compensation is pay.

Too late now, but the way to deal with it would have been first to go to HR, and then to your state's Dept of Labor if HR did not remedy it.

Gonna disagree. Do not go to HR. HR is there for the company, not for you. They will seek whatever is the fastest, easiest way to resolve things for the company — which probably is not firing a manager.

In case it's not clear, I have not had helpful experiences with HR.

"You'll pay it or see me in (small claims) court."

Wait you didn't contact authorities and/or sue them?

What does his or your age have to do with anything?

Just sounds like a penny wise pound foolish story to me.

What 25 year old has the resources to take on even a 100-person corporation, much less a megacorp?

At 27 I took on a multi-million dollar, VC-backed property management startup that was trying to defraud me on my rent and rental deposit. It’s amazing what some legal research and a few hours of spare time can do.

This. At a similar age, I sued Citibank and won. You can used forced arbitration to your advantage.

The salient part of that story was the unfair reimbursement policy. My point was that it would have been unfair regardless of the age of the manager or age of the employee.

Where did I suggest that anyone "take on" the company?