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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/runnerdan on 2024-09-30 22:29:02+00:00.

People asked, so i’m sharing a story from 20 years ago:

I was a developer for a large financial services company and, because we lacked many tools, I was usually tasked with building various tools, scripts, reports, etc. to help automate the environment and really just worked around the inadequacies of our off-the-shelf tools. At my peak, I probably had around 300 apps and/or scripts in production. Due to the number of asks from leadership and to keep the lights on, I usually booked anywhere from 4 to 10 hours of overtime per week.

After about a year, I got a new boss who decided that she would ensure that I take NO overtime for any reason. She proclaimed that I would ONLY be allowed to 8-hours per day and not a moment more. “No exceptions”. I wasn’t a full-time employee, so I didn’t have any grounds to push back. I usually started at 8, so with my 30-minute lunch, that meant my new hours were 8 to 4:30.

Flash forward to later that SAME WEEK, an upstream system changed their data feed and it corrupted one of our downstream systems. Stuff like this happened often enough that I had translation tools built to resolve any of those feed-related issues, but even then, I still had to spend a few minutes figuring out what changed in order to adjust my own code. Anyway, as the operations have come to a halt, my boss and HER boss are looking over my shoulder as I’m diagnosing the feed problem, which I found pretty quickly, the clock strikes 4:30 and I lock my computer, stand up from my desk, and say “well, it’s 4:30. That’s my 8 hours. I’ll see you tomorrow.” and walk out. The look of confusion, rage, and exasperation was just (blows chef’s kiss). At this point, all of our overnight backups have stopped and WILL NOT RUN until I resolve things. This means a global financial institution no longer has any data backups being made for that entire night and will be completely screwed if, well, ANYTHING happens.

Flash forward to the next morning as I walk to my desk at 7:56, as I made sure to never be in a situation where I could be called out as coming in late, my boss’s boss is waiting for me. He directs me into his office and very calmly says “Moving forward, I’ll manage your time sheet and you can take as many hours as you need.”

I left that job about 4-5 months later and the entire building was laid off about 2 months after that. Only two of about 200 people weren’t laid off and one of those people was the guy I hired to backfill me as someone had to keep all the code running!