
My Angry Letter to My Ex-Employer - cookiecaper
http://angrylettertoexexployer.blogspot.com/
======
patio11
Rather than continuing with the passive aggressiveness, the professional thing
to do would have been to exchange a firm handshake, make the usual nonspecific
promises about looking forward to mutually beneficial opportunities in the
future, and parting amicably.

[Edit to add: Even supposing sending the letter was a good idea, it is
terribly written, and it is entirely the author's fault that (quoting the last
line) "I'll be surprised if anyone except IT reads this far".

Here, let's try this again:

Subject: Why Project X Has Missed Its Deadline

Dear Boss 1 and Boss 2:

Project X is currently 4 weeks past its planned deadline, $87,000 over budget,
has 20% of the feature set yet to be implemented, and performance is 30% worse
than the legacy system it replaces. These circumstances were preventable.

Functional code was repeatedly discarded during development, resulting in
delays and cost overruns. This occurred as late as two days before the
predicted shipping date, at which point a rewrite was guaranteed to negative
impact the schedule. The technical justification for replacing the functional
code did not advance company objectives.

Management of X was apprised at the time that the team was unable to resolve
their difference of professional opinion as to whether to keep the functional
code or reimplement for aesthetic reasons. Management was apprised that the
decision to reimplement would negatively impact timely deliverability of X.
Please find attached supporting memos #41 (request from team member to
reimplement authentication), #47 (opposition by self to team member's request
to reimplement authentication), #49 (decision by manager to reimplement
authentication), #51 (warning by self that schedule would be negatively
impacted), and #73 (request for authorization of 3 man-months to address
slippage).

I am writing you out of professional courtesy. Management is aware of all
facts in this memo. I recommend action to avoid further cost overruns to the
company in the future; no reply to myself is required.

Respectfully yours,

~~~
cookiecaper
Heh, like they have memos or anything more than a verbal communication and
private notes in that company. I could have referenced commit hashes, but
decided that legally it'd be more prudent not to.

I did consider the succinct route but decided against it. Yes, I understand
that makes it less likely that management will read it all or that it would
come off whiny, but I think it shows more involvement and seriousness.

The executives already know everything is weeks behind schedule. I wanted to
give them an idea why.

~~~
cookiecaper
Also, the executives also know I was unhappy with the situation and attempting
to make a ruckus, though I'm not sure they understand what parts I was
ruckussing about. There is some point behind the exposition, though admittedly
much of it is venting.

------
dryicerx
People get fired all the time for the stupidest thing, this including, but
writing angry letters is a complete waste of time (other than venting your
anger, nothing will change) and it hurts your credibility and reputation. Move
on.

~~~
scotty79
Venting anger helps. Often when I was pissed off at my client I wrote angry
letter pinpointing all the inadequacies in his behavior. After I wrote it I
was calm enough to write another letter where I proposed constructive ways to
alleviate the problems we had.

Of course I was just sending the second letter because only useful purpose of
the first one was to help me calm down.

------
byoung2
It's never a good idea to write an angry letter to your ex-employer. Just find
a new job and move on; it doesn't do any good to burn any potential bridges.
This letter sounds like something I could have written to my last employer,
but I didn't, and I still have a good relationship with them and my company is
doing contract work for them. In fact, they are paying my outsourcing company
more now than they paid me to work there full time.

~~~
TomOfTTB
This, to me, speaks to the issue more than all the other responses here. Yes,
it's stupid to burn bridges and Yes, it accomplishes nothing. But more
important than all of that is you never know when someone from your past is
going to pop back up or in what capacity they'll be when they do. You risk
making yourself a liability to a new employer if you've made enemies out of
people they might want to partner with, hire, etc...

~~~
byoung2
_you never know when someone from your past is going to pop back up_

Very true. In some cases, you may be the one to pop back up. I left my old
company in part because I was brought on specifically to work on a number of
projects that were later shelved because of the economic downturn. I
eventually left to pursue them on my own, and they may be interested in buying
the finished product. That possibility would be off the table if I had written
a nasty letter when I left.

------
radley
Write it. Never send it. Don't look back. Politely respond "sorry, no thanks"
if they call.

Moving forward is the best (and oddly easiest) solution.

~~~
plinkplonk
"Moving forward is the best (and oddly easiest) solution."

The best revenge is to live well. (Making it big rubs it in ;-) )

------
petercooper
Employers that are stupid enough to make these sorts of mistakes are too
stupid to deal with even constructive criticism, let alone a round of
firebombing.

~~~
cookiecaper
Yeah, that may or may not be true. The only reason we have those people in IT
is because the bosses don't know better. Everyone is really scared of the
bosses; they both have tons and tons of money, and rumors circulate about the
ruthlessness of at least the primary administrator. I don't know if anyone has
ever given them a plain overview of the situation, so I decided to see where
it would go since I had nothing left to lose.

I hope something good comes out of it, though I realize that the probability
of such is quite low.

------
eli
I sympathize, but this really seems like one of those times where you should
have deleted the letter after writing it, instead of mailing and definitely
instead of posting it where others can read it.

------
azanar
You needed to say these things _before_ separating from your employer. In
fact, you needed to say these things _as they came up_ , rather than letting
them pile on and form into a huge rant like this. I'm actually having a hard
time following each and every point you have, even though some of the ones I
can pick out seem pretty valid. It is overwhelming, and overwhelming usually
means nothing is going to get done, because no one knows where to start.

I agree with the other comments so far that this shows a certain degree of
passive-aggression which isn't particularly appetizing.

However, I will _strongly_ disagree with the point in a couple of the other
comments that the acceptable alternatives are: shut up, do as your told, and
detach from your job as much as you possibly can while still performing it;
part ways politely without indicating anything was ever other than you
expected it. These take an adversarial stance that you and your employer have
nothing more to offer one another than what was strictly agreed to as the job
duties and wage, and that any such attempt at offering will only result in bad
outcomes for the weaker party.

When did we get so fucking bitter and jaded? And when did we decide that this
outlook was _optimal_? I honestly wonder if this sort of attitude contributes
to polemics like this, because we insist that people have an seemingly
infinite ability to remain stoic and bottle their frustration. The alternative
of trying to separate emotionally from a job never, _ever_ works. Doing
bullshit for eight hours a day to fund eight hours of "recovery time" is not
zero-sum; the effects are real, as much as people want to blame those effects
on the mere state of being alive. _You are not preprogrammed to be depressed;
this is not a least-energy state!_

The other option is to quit, but employees usually don't until the get to the
polemic-spewing boiling-point of their frustration. It sneaks up on them,
because they've been bottling it so long. Writing it and then deleting it is
therapeutic, but doesn't accomplish anything. The next job will likely be the
same, like a self-perpetuating prophecy, because a lot of employers suck,
because a lot of employees within are trying every day to convince themselves
they don't care. This is least-energy for the employer, _not_ the employee.

If you really want to step off this cycle, perhaps it is time to admit what
you've known all along: you _do_ care what you are doing 8 hours a day, and
who you are doing it for.

~~~
scotty79
From my experience I learned one thing.

AVOID DUMB PEOPLE.

Never work for dumb people. Never work with dumb people. No matter how
beneficial for you the deal is (or seems to be) so far, if you notice that
people you rely on are dumb, just quit as soon as you can.

Dealing with dumb people almost always backfires hurting you financially and
psychologically.

I don't say that you have to quit as soon as somebody around you does
something dumb, but you definitely should quit as soon as you learn that
someone you rely on is dumb, even if he hasn't been dangerous for you so far.

------
strlen
This is somewhat of a side note, but I don't get why people who certain could
do better, choose to work in "IT" (vs. in an engineering department of an
Internet or software firm). There's much less challenge (writing internal
applications in PHP), the people you work with are neither passionate nor
particularly bright and I am guessing the pay or career options aren't great
either.

I don't mean it in an offensive way, could somebody explain some of the
reasoning behind why people might want to make that choice?

~~~
azanar
I can only surmise, but I have thought about this same question every time I
end up in an engineering department that turns "IT" underneath me -- it has
happened a couple of times now. I have left both times, after making attempts
to push the organization back the other way hard enough to be threatened with
termination.

People make this choice because they have convinced themselves they never had
a choice. They remain there because they are convinced they still don't have a
choice.

The explanation is usually a story of falling or being forced into a position
followed by stating the tautology of it being a job. They are willing to take
a painful known quantity over an unknown quantity elsewhere -- which is
assumed to be at least as painful --, all the while saying to themselves
repeatedly "I need to be stronger than the pain for the people who rely on
me." Sometimes this will become even more self-fulfilling, and they will
assume they have no other options, painful or not.

Along with this, they will provide rationalizations about how, even if they
had a choice, it really would not matter. The purpose of a job is money. Full
stop. If you make it anything else, you are martyring yourself to your
employer. Thus, it doesn't matter where you work, so long as you are. Any
desire you have to make those hours of your day more meaningful need to be
bottled away, because they never will be. Those who don't accept this are
ignorant of the facts of life, which are assumed to be true by means of
circular logic and a desire to rationalize one's own rut in life.

Humans are amazingly good at rationalization, even when it starts from the
usually faulty premise that where they are now is the best things can possibly
get.

Hope this provides some insight about your question.

------
keefe
ranting and anger are never appropriate in the workplace. They have a job that
needs to get done and money they are willing to pay, either you can get that
money or you can't. Don't get so involved in a job, save the emotional energy
for your own work.

~~~
jongraehl
Unless you're desperate and have to work with malignant people, why shouldn't
you care about your work?

I agree that in a bad situation it's best to move elsewhere, because people
almost never change.

~~~
keefe
Most companies are about making money and most jobs offer very little
ownership. They're hiring you to get something done on THEIR project. When we
get emotionally invested, I think it is typical to want to see things done our
way. If it's some early stage startup where you get to help set the direction,
this is different but rare. This doesn't mean you should be apathetic, of
course you should care about your work. However, I think everyone should have
their own goals and most jobs should just be a means to an end.

~~~
cookiecaper
I agree, but it's hard not to get attached to something you dedicate a lot of
time building, even when it's on a strictly for-pay basis. That's what
happened here; it was bad when I left, but coming back and seeing what became
of the system I spent so much time designing and looking after in the
beginning was really difficult. They really did a lot of bad things to a good
base.

People get emotionally involved in things by nature, and it's generally for
the better. I just wish I could find an employer with some amount of
comprehension on these things.

~~~
keefe
I agree that it is difficult and I have been there myself. The thing is - if
it's a typical work relationship, it's theirs to do with as they wish, even if
you built it. That is the difficulty of doing creative work for hire. I think
it is a tight rope walk, balancing sufficient investment to do a good job
without becoming overly invested. It helps me to think of everything in terms
of a means to an end. I still feel the same emotional attachment, but I run
all my actions through a filter of whether that particular action is
beneficial. Writing such an email and sending or publishing it simply cannot
ever do you any good.

------
Herring
Quit dancing around the issue. Tell us how you _really_ feel.

------
mrtron
Don't white knight this situation.

You quit. You got fired shortly into a 60 hour contract. Your losses are
small, you planned on leaving early, and the contract should have protected
you from something like this.

Move on, very little to gain by attempting to show them their wrong ways. You
can't make changes from the outside.

------
maxcap
You projected your desire of getting work done onto the company's desire to
keep people working.

Full time employees need to be 'busy' all of the time to justify investments
the company makes in each person (opportunity to learn on the job is the
biggest investment). If you go there and finish all of the work, there won't
be anything left for the FTEs to do.

You're better off giving FTEs (full time employees) learning opportunities and
telling them they are really bright.

And don't burn bridges - just fake it and pretend to be nice - life sometimes
works out in really strange ways.

------
Dilpil
Gosh, I had heard jokes about naming conventions resulting in religious wars,
but I had thought they were only jokes.

~~~
cookiecaper
How I wish that were true. This is the second time in my relatively short
professional life that I've come across an otherwise competent programmer that
got so caught up in style conventions (opening bracket on new line or same
line, etc.) that he was unable to see any value in or provide any value to
anyone else on the team.

At the other place, the guy was boss of IT/engineering and just resorted to
hiring designers and giving them on-the-job programming training so that he
could mandate the habits before they were set instead of trying to counteract
extant tendencies. And that guy refused to even produce a formalized style
guide. I quit after about a month.

The programmer has in both instances been a relatively successful "lone wolf",
self-taught programmer; he's built a successful business on his own right out
of the gate, either as an independent freelancer or the technical savior to a
struggling ad firm, and as such, has almost never been exposed to other
styles, conventions, or thought processes, except those present in the
(obviously unsatisfactory) systems he was hired to replace. I'd avoid bringing
guys like this on anywhere without leadership willing and able to teach
professional etiquette, courtesy, and mutual respect on the job.

------
jbellis
I must be even more blunt than I thought, because this didn't really sound all
that angry to me. More "frustrated."

~~~
randallsquared
Most people, I think, would have to be quite angry before they would bother
writing all this about a place they were never going to set foot in again, so
we assume he's seething, even though the tone isn't even as angry-sounding as
Zed used to be.

------
simplegeek
Never, ever, burn your bridges.

~~~
jrockway
Why not? There are many more programming jobs than there are qualified
programmers.

