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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/blueboy714 on 2025-04-15 13:21:20+00:00.

This happened decades ago -but after reading another MC I figured I’d post this.

I was a manager of a programming department. I initially had 5 programmers reporting to me and I was able to spend half of my time programming and half managing.

I had always gotten exceeds or far exceeds expectations on my annual reviews. About 10 years later my team had 25 people and I was spending less and less time programming. Fast forward a few years and I missed 2 months during the year for a surgery and hospital stay and in my annual review my boss (who knew nothing about programming) told me I was not doing a good job and the programming department was missing deliverable dates (probably because I was in the hospital). They wanted me to go back to just programming and I was stripped of my manager and only focus on programming. I was pissed off but I told him that I can do that.

I told my former staff what had happened and told them to direct ALL questions to my boss (who knew zero about programming). He was overwhelmed and soon senior management figured out that my boss was the problem not me. They canned him and replaced him with the VP of programming in the UK (I am in the US). She was great since she started as a programmer and was an excellent boss in general.

Since I was just a programmer now - all of the managers were in the UK and I told my former staff to direct all questions to their new bosses in the UK. Since there was 6 hour time difference and we only overlapped 2 or 3 hours each day that made getting questions answered in a timely fashion quite difficult.

In the meantime my health wasn’t the best and my doctor told me I should go to a 4 day/32 hour work week so I my health wouldn’t continue to suffer. Since my employer was a strict 40 hour week company I looked for another job and got 8 job offers in about a month. I was ready to resign.

Finally after a few months my new boss asked me to be a manager again because of the time difference between US & UK and because I most experience as a programmer in the company. Instead I gave her my resignation and explained why. She asked me what it would it would get me to stay and I told I wanted a 10% raise and wanted to work 4 day/32 hour work work. I gave her 24 hours to respond. She spoke to higher ups and finally came back the next day and agreed.