Write Some ****ing Code

[loinburger]

The company I'm at isn't being managed well and my immediate supervisor is pissed off about it, so I sent out a few resumes as a backup plan in case he quits. If he quits then either a. I get promoted to his job, b. the other senior back office programmer gets promoted to his job, or c. the front office manager also takes over the back office manager role. None of these is a good outcome - I don't want to be a manager, the other senior back office programmer is too nit-picky about stuff that doesn't matter and not assertive enough about stuff that matters, and the front office manager is an *******.

My boss's last day was today, no word yet from the CTO about who's in charge. Fortunately, the ******* front office manager has lost a lot of face recently, so it's not likely that he'll be put in charge.

We have a license for an instant messaging program. During a chat session about the whole not getting paid thing, one of the employees kept asking questions, and the front office manager sent him caustic replies via private message instead of replying in the chat room. The employee copy-pasted the replies to the chat room, and the front office manager banned his instant messaging account. The employee sent out an email to everybody, addressed to the CTO, saying that this was some petty bull****. The CTO replied by saying that he had unbanned the guy's account and that he never authorized its being banned. So in other words, the front office manager has reverted back to a Kindergarten mindset.

[C0ckney]

it sounds like they're motivating everyone right out the door.

[loinburger]

Every time I've ever posted my resume I get a handful of job offers (not requests for an interview, but outright unsolicited job offers) to sell life insurance. The depressing thing is that there are probably people out there who are stupid and/or desperate enough to accept them.

[Hauldren Collider]

It's not like they've got enough money to sue us all

Yes, but word gets around. It's a small world.

[loinburger]

They owe me $5,000. When I quit I'm going to make it clear that I'm holding on to the computer (which is not worth $5,000) until I'm paid what I'm owed; if they argue then I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, but the CTO is reasonable and probably won't object

[Elok]

Hmm. Are you okay with a future where you just hold on to this computer? Because I don't imagine it's worth even half of five grand, and it sounds like they're going to be liquidating a ****-ton of jobs, so they'll have PCs to spare. They will not, however, have 5K to spend getting back a used computer, which they might just turn around and sell off at a loss anyway.

[Elok]

Also, have all the code-theory princesses you wrote about earlier gotten the axe?

[Sava]

The company already stole your best years. I think they're winning so far.

[loinburger]

Hmm. Are you okay with a future where you just hold on to this computer? Because I don't imagine it's worth even half of five grand, and it sounds like they're going to be liquidating a ****-ton of jobs, so they'll have PCs to spare. They will not, however, have 5K to spend getting back a used computer, which they might just turn around and sell off at a loss anyway.

I figure these are my options:

1. Sue them

1a. Go through small claims; this is complicated by the fact that the company is in New York and I'm in Boise (and I don't want to fly to New York to deal with this and don't know how I'd deal with this remotely via small claims or if this is even possible), also my experience with small claims in Ohio is that the court does not enforce the ruling and so even if I won I'd need to take out a lien on the company's stuff (and they don't have much stuff - our servers are in the Amazon cloud) which wouldn't mean much when the company went bankrupt

1b. Go through the regular courts and lawyer up - I figure the most likely outcome here is that I spend money on a lawyer and still don't get paid because the company goes bankrupt

2. Stick it out in the hopes of getting paid. I've got enough in short term savings to afford to not get paid for a few months, but I see this option as throwing good money (the money I probably won't get paid over the next few months) after bad (the money I've already not been paid).

3. Find another job, which is what I'm doing. I figure this will reduce my chances of getting paid should the company remain solvent, but I'm okay with that.

I don't think my holding on to the computer or not holding on to the computer will affect any of these options, in particular for option 3 I don't think they're going to say "well we were going to pay him, but since he's been holding his computer hostage we've decided not to," nor are they going to say "oh **** we'd better pay him so that we can get back that computer!" Holding on to the computer is just me trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation - maybe I can sell it for a thousand bucks on ebay and then I'll only be out four grand instead of five.

[Sava]

Why stop at just the one computer?

[loinburger]

It's the only one I've got, unless I want to fly to New York and raid their offices

[Sava]

Ah, I see.

[Sava]

You can always sign your bosses up for a bunch of magazine subscriptions, checking the "bill me later" option.

Those can be a pain to cancel.

[loinburger]

I was going to give their names to all of the life insurance companies that keep offering me jobs

[Hauldren Collider]

What exactly does your company sell, if you don't mind sharing?