Company secretly slashed workers' pay by $6,700 to fatten their own bonuses — by 9:30am Monday, 26 tech department employees torched their plan
What's interesting is that all of them quoted the same clause, which was somewhat of a loophole
It's a classic corporate gamble: squeeze the workforce to fatten the executive suite and assume nobody has the leverage to fight back. This was exactly the case back in the summer of 2006, u/Large-Meat-Feast's tech company, whose upper management thought that they had curated the perfect heist. They slipped in a generic filename that would strip the person, who was an engineer at the firm, and others of their salaries while filling the pockets of their managers. However, that was until a senior engineer stumbled upon this file and planned the perfect clapback.
The management's plan gets exposed
At first, everything was going smoothly, with the person who was working at this tech company in their city. Even though the company did not give the most lucrative packages out there, given the city's cost, it was still pretty decent. However, in 2006, that changed when the company first stopped providing overtime, flexitime, and no pay raise. In fact, they even sold a part of the office's land to a developer, depriving the employees of permanent parking. However, the last straw came on July 21, when one of the senior engineers found a document.
"It's a restructuring plan that the board voted in last week," the author wrote. "Apparently, this had to be made available for the company for three months before any changes to terms and conditions could be made, so the board gave it a generic filename and tried to bury it in the large staff shared area of the network." One of the three directors was moving on, after being recruited by another firm, so the remaining two wanted to increase the profit to sustain their incomes. Nonetheless, the restructuring would result in a nearly $6,700 per year loss for the engineers, while the management's pay would bump up to a whopping $87,000 per year.
The employees craft a plan
This information spread like wildfire across the office, so the team decided to meet up at a senior engineer's house during the weekend. Following this, on Monday, 26 people in the tech team arrived at the office, each with their letter of resignation for their senior manager. What's interesting is that all of them quoted the same clause, which was somewhat of a loophole, allowing them to be off-site during their 1-month notice period, known as the "gardening leave."
This caused panic within the office, with the senior management making calls left, right, and center, trying to figure out what went wrong. In the meantime, the unsolved open queue went from around 35 to nearly 100 by lunchtime. Then, after the month had passed, the senior engineer invited all the people who had left to join his new company, where he had already secured 10 large orders. The pay was better, the environment was better, and the employees were finally happy. In contrast, the old firm struggled to stay afloat and, within a year of this incident, was forced to close.
Employees have low trust in management
Although this incident is from over two decades ago, employees' trust in the manager remains low. According to a recent survey held by Gallup, only 19% of employees believe in their company's leadership. Additionally, most employees believe that if not for their immediate supervisor, they'd not know what's going on in and around the company, with nearly 27% of people agreeing to this.
Readers chip in
Nonetheless, this exact feeling was also on display in the comment section of this post. u/3rd-time-lucky wrote, "Exactly what happens when management forgets who's doing the actual work. Well played!" Meanwhile, u/72lrac commented, "I love this. The company screws over employees, and employees ruin the company. Gold star."
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