After you left the company

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natflingdull@reddit

The MSP my company replaced my team with called me three months after I was laid off to try and hire me/brain drain since they were in deep shit. I found out that about a month after I left they had close to a two week long almost total service outage of all their on prem stuff which account for about 70 percent of the data they use on a daily basis AND they’d had multiple ransomware events. Oh and the MSP ended up being more expensive than my entire department, theres that.

I could have probably negotiated something lucrative and I could use the money, but frankly I just realized I wasn’t feeling angry or vindictive, just tired of it: I simply don’t want to do any more work for a company that seemed to value me so little despite having many high profile accomplishments under my belt. Ive been dealing with executives who are obsessed with technology but don’t value the people who make it work my entire career. Ive cautioned too many people about the issues that come about from outsourcing only to see them make the same mistake over and over again. Ive seen too many executives complain about IT overheard and then turn around and drop obscene money on software products that nobody ends up using. Ive seen the same people lose more money in a year through foolishness than I would make in five years. The people who lost that money either buy purchasing a product they didnt understand, simply mismanaging subscriptions for software nobody uses, or straight up just blowing it on useless consultants: those people still have a job.

Im pretty checked out of corporate life in a way I think subconsciously has affected my performance. I simply don’t care what happens to that company or any of the people who work there. Kind of wish I did in a way, but it is what it is.

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bishop375@reddit

Company is doing fine, but they had to hire two people to do the job I was doing myself.

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che-che-chester@reddit

I'll never understand why companies don't grasp what it means when a rock star employee leaves. Many of us are or have a team member who literally do the work of multiple people. If an average employee makes 20 widgets a day and you make 50, doesn't it make sense to give you a considerably raise to retain you?

The company would temporarily lose productivity, need to replace you, train your replacement and then hire an additional employee (salary, benefits and training) just to likely get 40 widgets a day. If you made $100k, they'll be paying $200k for lower productivity. And the new employees may not work out, so the company gets to start again.

Or the company could have offered the rock star another $10-15k to stay. Or... and sit down because this idea is crazy... the company could proactively given the employee $5-10k so they stayed happy and didn't look for a new job.

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PreparetobePlaned@reddit

Part of the problem is that the widgets we make are often not easily quantifiable to the people making those decisions.

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flummox1234@reddit

If an average employee makes 20 widgets a day and you make 50, doesn't it make sense to give you a considerably raise to retain you?

You're looking at it from a worker standpoint though, that's not how managers think. To them they needed you to make 20 widgets and you made 50. So they got 30 for free without having to do anything or pay you more. If you walk they just find someone that can do 20.

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unprovoked33@reddit

I feel like this is the reality for most “this place would fall apart without me” situations. Nah, the place will be fine without you. It’ll cost them, though. This is also the value of knowing your worth and being able to make a case for your value to others.

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RabidBlackSquirrel@reddit

I always say, everyone is replaceable - it's just a question of cost. Sure that one greybeard who has everything in his head, the huge single point of failure is in fact, replaceable. It might take an expensive team to come in and piece it together, but it can be done.

The management wisdom is in recognizing the winning play. If the budget is tight, then giving that guy good raises and keeping him happy/golden handcuffed is your cheapest and best option. That guy rage quits it forces your hand to the alternative. Got the money to address risks? Then looking to staff up and counteract single points of failure is the play.

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dasunt@reddit

One of my coworkers is a guy that's been there for 20 years. On paper, he's easily replaceable by any person with decent tech skills, but he has decades of institutional knowledge, has been on a dozen different teams, and knows the processes and how to get things done.

I fear the day a bean counter decides that in order to balance the budget, he can be laid off and later backfilled with a contractor.

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ElectroSpore@reddit

I had this happen when I worked for a very small shop.. Feels very validating when you leave because you feel under valued.

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Bird_SysAdmin@reddit

same they hired two people (for more than what I made) and then still had the audacity to complain to me that the new hires were not up to par.

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Apprehensive_Bat_980@reddit

Yep, with me, the manager was sitting back chilling. Until I left they had to get involved and hired my replacement (wasn’t as good). Then hired another person, 2 techs, 1 manager.

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TheGooOnTheFloor@reddit

I had that happen once. The company I was working for kept falling for the buzzword of the month and I got tired of trying to control changes that weren't good for our environment. I spent a couple of months convincing them that it would be OK for them to include me in a 'right-sizing' plan so I could take the separation package. With the leave I had accumulated and the incentives they offered it turned out to be about a 6 months paycheck.

And I found out 4 months later that, like your case, they hired two people to pick up my work.

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Special_Luck7537@reddit

This happened to me at three different jobs.... Then I learned that I was a dumbass for working too hard at jobs....

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Antscircus@reddit

Contract I was working on at the client went stale and client eventually booted the provider

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lonewanderer812@reddit

First company I left, they struggled afterwords. Then got hacked about a year later and lost about 2m dollars estimated.

The other place I left, I got called a month after I left asking what it took to get me back, I asked for double what my salary was. They said they couldn't do that but could give me 20k more that I Was making before (which was still less than what I left for) and it really made me annoyed that they couldn't offer that a month ago.

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DoesThisDoWhatIWant@reddit

I'm still get Network Solutions auth texts. Sooo, doesn't sound great.

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MrKahnberg@reddit

Oh. I forgot about that. I got some domain administrator notifications for years. I politely notified some one 3 times.

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techierealtor@reddit

The fact they use network solutions is its own problem

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terrydqm@reddit

Gone 1.5 years, still hear from former coworkers that the one person they hired to replace me hasn't been enough, and that they're searching for a second. Having 4 people on the sysadmin team that had been there a decade plus leave within 6 months was hard on them. But not enough of a wakeup call that they need to pay more and treat employees better.

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MrKahnberg@reddit

After a few years wo my calming influence, the wife was fired. Then the husband flew a plane into a hill. She sold everything, invested the proceeds and life insurance in commercial real estate. The End.

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Barangaroo11@reddit

I spent three years delivering a programme of work, putting in a load of new capability. A bigger programme came and tried to do stuff that would break what I’d put in, which was a key service. I spent those three years advising strongly against what they were proposing. The second I left, they did it and broke everything, but broke it in such a way that it sort of worked, but all the data was completely wrong. For example, John Smith would be able to see Jane Smith’s payslips or get access to her financial approvals. Absolute compliance nightmare and more than 12,000 tickets from affected staff.

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jakedata@reddit

Direct boss lied to get me fired. I didn't contest it and my actual departure was amicable. I told them I would have my stuff cleared out by noon and thanks for the generous severance.

Direct boss was fired and escorted from the building 6 weeks later.

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asic5@reddit

It took them a year to replace me. Things run a little less efficiently, but they get by. They are good guys, just stuck with a lot of bureaucracy and low pay.

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CloakedNexus@reddit

They got hit with ransomware. I didn't answer any calls after hearing that.

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punkwalrus@reddit

Most of them immediately forgot me, I'd say. But in a lot of cases, I was leaving a sinking ship in general and they had a lot bigger issues to think about. A few missed me, and I'd run into an old coworker and we'd chat. A few rare cases I got some schadenfreude because boy... did they fuck up making me leave.

The one that I always default to happened in 1999. Terrible management. My boss kept losing people, and I did a majority of the work (I'd say 60% of the work and 90% of the projects in a team of 5 people). But she treated me like I was one foot in the grave as far as competence and keeping my job. I *thought* I was doing amazingly, but she would always find some spin of disappointment, which was easy when you're overworked and on call 24x7 and not getting sleep. The other workers were slackers, too. Well, up to a year after I left, vendors and call center managers would call me, begging me to fix something, because the staff left behind just couldn't hack it. "I'm sorry, I don't have that access to fix that; I don't work there anymore." "Please. We'l give you a root account!" "Nah..." I didn't know about contracting back then, but I doubt it would have worked because the people still calling me didn't have that kind of authority. My former boss quit shortly after I left, too, because she must have known that she was screwed without me.

I made more lifelong friends than enemies, though, and have a bevvy of professional references to choose from. My resume is impressive and it's always tough selecting which parts to leave out.

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TheBeckFromHeck@reddit

Working as a contractor, the site I was at hired my former company with a huge service contract that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars right after I left to replace my work. It went so poorly they dropped my former company entirely.

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Yozzie_ZA@reddit

Left for another sysadmin job after the “family” business was getting way too verbal and abusive.

1 month later they contacted me to return and I said no. But, I will do it remotely as a contractor and I work my own hours. So now I have 2 jobs handles easily and two pay-checks coming in.

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Smiles_OBrien@reddit

Left MSP to do K12 internal IT. Last I heard they were doing great, which is great. Still in touch with one or two from over there. Left on good terms.

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timrojaz82@reddit

Yeah. One company I left as they moved my role outside the business had a major security breach due to the outsourcing third party screwing up. Made me giggle.

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jason9045@reddit

I figured when they called me up three weeks after I left and offered me my old boss' job that things had taken A Turn.

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BloomerzUK@reddit

Did you tell them to kick dirt?

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jason9045@reddit

I used more words but yeah. They would have needed to fire a lot more people, including the husband-and-wife ownership, to make that place palatable to anyone without a humiliation kink

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I_am_not_Spider_Man@reddit

Oh, so you worked for Emprise in CT. That husband/wife combo is legit humiliation kink

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posixUncompliant@reddit

I never say no, I just ask for more money.

For some people, that's moving the dot to the right. No one has taken me up that yet.

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flimspringfield@reddit

I would ask for more money and a contract for at least 2 years with a clause that they have to pay me for the two years if I get laid off or fired.

I don’t know how feasible that is but fuck them.

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BamaTackle@reddit

There's always a number.

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VexingRaven@reddit

Incredibly true. I'd work for the shittest boss ever if he paid me $10k a day. A year of hating work to retire young sounds awesome. Is that ever gonna happen? Hell no. But there's definitely an amount of money that could bring me to any company.

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posixUncompliant@reddit

Hell, with enough money I wouldn't even hate work. Getting paid 2.5k to listen to an asshole rant about how important their project is would be pretty sweet.

Taking home 50k after building something a jerk is going to pay you 50k to take apart next week seems like it would be freeing.

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LRS_David@reddit

They would have needed to fire a lot more people, including the husband-and-wife ownership

Yep. Many times closely held small companies with romantic / family issues at the top keep trying to fix issues with technical solutions when the problem would be best defined by them looking in the mirror.

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zakabog@reddit

I figured when they called me up three weeks after I left and offered me my old boss' job that things had taken A Turn.

I had something somewhat similar, they offered me my old job at a huge pay increase, they were looking for someone to fill my role, thought they found someone, they were awful, and the job hunt was so difficult to find someone that could fill the knowledge gap (I originally came on as 'level 3' then the rest of the guys left shortly after and I was all alone.) My old boss asked how much it would take to come back, I threw out a number so large I would happily eat shit and deal with the stress anywhere, but I knew it would be way too much for them to pay. I'm talking FAANG level developer salary.

I now make significantly more than that at a far less stressful company that actually has their shit together. It's been a nice journey.

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tdhuck@reddit

That's one scenario. Another one that I imagine happens often is that people don't want to give you credit so they will 'lie' and say stuff to make you look bad or not give you proper credit.

I remember working on an issue for hours, which turned into days, which turned into weeks (I was only on one end of the issue) and it turns out the person on the other end (co-worker) was giving me bad info and wasn't doing their part in the troubleshooting.

Finally I resolved the issue and I wasn't looking for any credit or acknowledgment, I was just annoyed that my coworker lied and he lied in a way that made our IT department look like a bunch of idiots.

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DoubleDee_YT@reddit

The headache I knew was brewing blew up.

Wasn't anything exciting just was heavy reassurance I knew what was going on and made the right choice.

When the good people of your workplace leave/quit it's a good cue to start looking.

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civiljourney@reddit

I left, things went to shit, the average employee felt it and let me know they missed me, but the company leadership struggled forward without caring.

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ahhhhhh12343tyhyghh@reddit

I don't really think about it or care.

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ThatGothGuyUK@reddit

I never left the company but my boss sold it with me included in the sale.

He was not a nice person and told us that when he was ready to retire he would sell us employees the company and we could pay him back from the profits. Instead he sold the company to the first company who made an offer and sold us employees with it, he remained with the company for a year as a "Consultant" but only really called us to help him with PC and network issues.

As soon as the year was up I was able to tell him that due to the contract he had us sign with the new company I can no longer help him with ANY of his issues or even communicate with him.

Last I heard he was divorced and living alone, I hope his wife took everything. We are still going strong.

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TheAsados@reddit

My first Department was out of work for half a year. No Special skills required to make it work.

The 2nd company i left was kinda normal and prepared. They got more work todo but thats it. Some other coworkers left after they saw someone leave the company.

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AceOfPains@reddit

Got laid off along with my entire department because we weren't writing any code🤷. Within 2 months the person that was told to lay us off resigned. In 7 months the person that coordinated the layoff was fired after a year in that position along with their boss in the C-suite.

A relative of mine that's a software engineer was looking at jobs there and saw a position quite similar to mine was open but at 2x the salary, along with a ton of IT positions.

Checked in with a coworker that's still there and they're still doing quarterly layoffs.

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oxwilder@reddit

I tried shopping on the site of the company whose site I developed until I was fired, and basic things like add to cart and add payment were broken. Why would you push that code?

Btw, the lead dev quit so they hired a project manager. He blamed lack of pushes on me while I was on my one week per year PTO. Then when he couldn't get the two remaining junior devs to make anything work, they fired him.

Fucker tried to add me on LinkedIn too. Clueless.

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spazcat@reddit

I left my company to follow my boss who had left two months prior to his new company. Almost exactly a year later, my old company asked me to come back to head the department at almost twice what I was previously making, so here I am, back again.

The guy that had this position for 11 of the 12 months I was gone screwed so much up it has taken me almost a month to get it all cleared up.

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CricketSwimming6914@reddit

My manager confirmed to me what I had already figured out. Upper management wouldn't let him offer bigger raises to keep employees but were more than willing to offer more money to new hires. As the only one in IT with a degree and 20 years experience, I was a lvl 4 tech and the lvl 3 techs were making more than me. This is for a traveling IT position which I constantly drove about 1k miles a week, on-call 24/7, and had long days (see driving a lot). I rarely talked to my boss because I just got things done and he didn't have to worry about it. Compared to one of the other techs who made more than me and was constantly screwing around and needed lots of reminder calls from my boss but somehow still made more than me...

The first guy that they tried to replace me with, they fired less than a year later. I think the second guy lasted a little longer. He didn't get fired but kept complaining that he wanted to go back to his previous position (which wasn't even in IT). Last I heard, they were trying to fill the position again. My boss new I was in the market for a new job because I had started complaining about making less than others. His only response to that was "how do you know how much everyone else makes?" Wrong question.

I ended up finding a job that make 1.5x as much as I had been making. A job I wouldn't have been tried for if he had bothered to pay me well. So in the end, I guess I can't complain too much. Their unwillingness to pay well got me into a much better job.

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MentalRip1893@reddit

yeah, they went from solo IT (me) to two IT guys and an MSP. Every now and then I check some endpoints like webmail and helpdesk, to see that they are still the same versions hosted still on prem.. and I moved over 3 years ago. So, even with all that horsepower it's more like donkey power.

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BloodFeastMan@reddit

I left a company on good terms many years ago .. How long ago? I had built their email server out of OpenBSD / Exim / MySql :) It ran for over two years after I left without a hiccup, until I suggested to the son of the owner (buddy of mine) they farm it out.

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Mishotaki@reddit

gave them 14 weeks notice after they hired a programmer that was supposed to help(never did) my solo support job...

they found a replacement after 13 weeks, the guy never showed up... told HR that no one took my tasks, the programmer spent a couple hours listening to me and not taking notes.

2.5 years later, i still hear about how the replacements were all incompetents and the systems always go down, my replacement left last month and the programmer is leaving this week... there is a MSP guy coming to the office to work 20 hours every week, from the company we were using for server support back then.

why did i leave? incompetent boss, bonus from being solo becoming a bonus for goals, changing ERP solutions and being the power user that has to be present 20 hours a week of training while not a single task removed from my full plate, hasn't taken a day of vacation without being called for support for years.

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thefold25@reddit

After one of my previous jobs I heard they hired a consultant to come in as they were trying to get away without hiring a new sysadmin. I was the single IT person for a department of 100+ academics and medical researchers. I left quite suddenly due to not wanting to put up with the toxic environment some of the senior people there had created.

When I left everything was running smoothly on VMs with the major ones able to fail over to a replica, all of the data was stored in either RAID 10 or RAID 60 arrays. The backups rarely failed and were replicated off-site with weekly tape backups.

This guy they brought in apparently messed up all of the servers and lost or corrupted data on a large scale, including the backups.

They then hired a guy to replace me who didn't even know how to create an AD account.

The last I heard though the new guy was still there so he must've picked things up, although it took them about 8 years to remove my personal phone number from the HVAC alerting system, every now and then I'd get a slew of missed calls with the badly recorded alert message, I'd contact the one person I still spoke to asking for it to be changed and it would be ignored. That's not happened for a while though so I guess they either fixed it, the alert system broke or it's been replaced.

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gremolata@reddit

I have a reverse story - they left and things got better.

Back in the 00s a friend of mine worked in a startup that was making "security appliances". They made rack-mounted boxes that were BSD-based.

Since they were a "security" company the board insisted on hiring 2 IT security guys. VCs were pinged, they produced two incredibly overpriced seniors and they got hired.

As it turned out these two douchebags knew absolute shit, but the posed really well. They were also in their 40-50s vs. the devs that were all in 20-30s, so there was also that to support them. They spent two months doing the "software audit" that involved weekly harassment of the dev team. When finished, they sent an AlaRmiNg report to the board and the execs that they found an absolutely CRITICAL exploit in the appliance firmware. They were shocked that it existed and how the company was saved from the brink of the imminent collapse through their vigilance. The CTO replied, CC'ing all, and asked what the issue was, they pointed at a CVE, to which the same CTO replied with an one-liner that not only the issue was patched before the company was formed, it was also with a different BSD flavor.

This was followed by crickets. These two clowns had a quick one-on-one with the CEO and were gone next day. Everyone got back to work. Et voila, the happy end.

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flummox1234@reddit

when you said BSD, ngl I saw where this was going. BSD is pretty damn secure and their patching is regular and vigilant. Glad they got called out by it. I always have a soft spot for BSD infra.

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First-District9726@reddit

Very satisfying story, thank you so much for sharing. People who get high level overview jobs should be spending a long time observing and learning the environment, before asking to make changes.

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Shadax@reddit

I wasn't fond of my old company at all, but before I left I still did my due diligence and found a viable replacement, so things are going well as I understand. They had me hire and orient him with the network before I left, so it was basically a direct hand off.

The company I work for now though, incredible. I've have been here for 13 years.

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UriGagarin@reddit

I think every company I've left have been in a worse position after I left. admittedly nothing to do with me - just managed to leave before that last rat, or in one case before the management decided that award winning teams are too expensive.

Have offered free advice to folk I've worked with - but that was about personal relationships and nothing to do with the company.

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Out_of_my_mind_1976@reddit

When I left the client site my company had the contract for they went through five people before they finally brought in the one guy they wanted but my company refused as they abused him as a traveling tech. He ended up having to do BOTH and it literally killed him as he passed from a heart attack less than a year in.

Funny enough my old site manager told me that within the space of a week two managers from my old company as well as my site managers boss all asked if I would come back. I loved working at that location but I was tired of my company screwing me over and once I found out the degree, I was done.

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Tomahawk72@reddit

I felt awful when I was let go for the most miniscule thing they could find (boss hated me) then I found out more IT people across various teams quit/let go at the same time due to them being worked insanely hard. I feel better now after hearing about that, apparently some where pissed they let me go

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Dry_Marzipan1870@reddit

i got fired for sorta vague reasons from my first help desk job. I think main thing that happened was i had to do a home visit for someone who was friends of the owner, and i guess i didnt verbally suck them off enough or something. i did the work but guess that wasnt enough. anyways they hired some guy after me who i think they paid less, and would also like verbally assault people on the phone, and his english wasnt great. My friend who still worked there told me all this. It was pretty great to hear. My next employer was fine, and now my current one is pretty great overall, so im ok with it now. But getting fired always sucks, especially when not living at home anymore.

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flummox1234@reddit

As a programmer, if things go to shit after I leave, I feel like I didn't do my job correctly. Maybe it's different for pure IT but I get more joy when I find that code I wrote a long time ago is still running perfectly fine and my documentation allowed them to keep it up-to-date, etc. Maybe I'm a weirdo though.

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blanczak@reddit

Ha. Yeah… I was the sole IT guy at this shop that ran four industrial plants, 17 distribution centers, and employed around 700 people along the east coast. One guy. Ran a small server room up in Ohio that the whole company depended on but the place abused the heck out of me. I did all the telecom, acquisition, new site build outs, end user support, printer/copier support, managed the website, all the tech contract management, a fleet of blackberries, etc.. =$40k annually. I lived at this place to keep it running and being my first “real” tech job out of College I kind of liked it. If anything used electricity it was my responsibility, I even changed light bulbs after hours. The owner would even call me for personal / home WiFi issues and such after hours, it was wild.

Well after a few years of that I found a job that paid triple for significantly less work and a promise of work like balance so I jumped on it. This left my previous employer in a bit of a pickle, they had no backup “me” and nobody remotely close to understanding this stuff. They ended up hiring a fleet of contractors to try to stay afloat and to their credit it seemed to kind of, kind of, but the company took a nosedive real quick. They went from four industrial plants down to one and went from 17 distribution sites down to one. Four years later they had someone I was buddies with there reach out to see if I knew a good data recovery specialist because they had let so many drives fail in their SAN that the array broke and everything was down hard. The array was not recoverable and (of course) nobody had been managing the backups so there was no recovery option. Place folded like a house of cards.

I feel bad for the 700 or so people who had to find employment elsewhere but I don’t feel bad at all for all the upper management who ran this family owned operation, they brought it on themselves.

Sidebar: The “Christmas bonus” every year was a box of hand soap for everyone.

Fuck that place.

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BlackFlames01@reddit

You went from 'I kind of liked it' to 'fuck that place.' XD

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blanczak@reddit

Yeah, I went from college to having a kingdom (per se) of tech that I managed. It was cool for a minute and I kept holding out hope they’d realize they needed me and increase compensation to accommodate, never happened. Still kind of proud of myself for keeping all that stuff working solo for 4 years or so.

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Curious-Money2515@reddit

Similar. I thought at the time, "do a great job, and the money will follow". Nope. I had to job hop for the money to follow.

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3Cogs@reddit

I've always needed to job hop for a decent pay rise, until where I work now. I'm desktop and end user device support. We are moving our virtual desktops from Citrix to Azure Local and this has prompted a team reorganisation. I'm now dealing with new stuff like gold images and host pools.

Our management is really good and they've regraded everyone on the team which brought a £10k payrise.

Did I mention our management is really good? It bears repeating.

One last point, this is a fair sized corporation. I've only had shitty managers in small companies. Some people might find working for corporates boring but I much prefer it due to the general lack of ego from managers. It's like we all work together as a team, we all want to do a good job and get paid but nobody is desperate to screw more work out of us.

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OldschoolSysadmin@reddit

Those jobs can be a great learning experience NGL. It’s when you internalize the abuse that it becomes a career killer.

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blanczak@reddit

Oh I learned a ton. Lot of cool tech, it was the early years of virtualization and during my tenure there I took a room of 40ish independent physical servers and virtualized them into a properly built 4 host VMware Cluster backed my a SAN and all the proper redundancy. VMware vSphere 4 days running on HP hardware and an HP EVA SAN, simple yet very much so an upgrade from what I walked in on. I also got them off a nightmare of landlines and onto a SIP VoIP setup saving them thousands on long distance and landline costs. I was hooked up with tech; no wife, no kids, just a 20yr old IT Director making moves. It’s just not tenable though long term, especially for a measly $40k salary. 😀

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DrNoobSauce@reddit

It's what happens when you realize what you are worth.

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vonkeswick@reddit

I feel bad for the 700 or so people who had to find employment elsewhere

This always gets so tricky. I've been in similar situations (not 700 people holy fuck) knowing that peoples' jobs and work/life balance would be impacted by my leaving, but in the long run the only people to blame for that are management making stupid decisions and overworking everyone.

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CarnivoreX@reddit

If anything used electricity it was my responsibility

Oh this hit hard. The memories

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AncientWilliamTell@reddit

a bit better where I am, but not much: "if it has a glowing rectangle, you have to fix it."

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blanczak@reddit

One of the more brutal calls for me was when the owners son couldn’t get his PlayStation on their home WiFi. 30 minute drive at 10:30pm on a Saturday to enter a WiFi code.

Or when the co-owner said “my printer needs fixed” and I asked “what seems to be the issue?” only for him to respond “oh I don’t know it wouldn’t print so I threw it in the pool”. Thing got a paper jam at his home office and he got so angry he chucked it into his in-ground pool. So I had to book a flight, acquire a printer, fly from Ohio to Florida, and install it in his home office.

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blanczak@reddit

We legit had an ice storm come through once that took out power for the whole area, with an estimate restoration of potentially days. Of course they were too cheap to have a permanent on-site generator too. So I sourced a 100kw generator, borrowed some electrical cabling from one of our plant sites, and hardwired it into the building so the place could keep moving. Zero formal education in electrical, especially not high voltage, and I did all that during an ice storm with no power or help. Place was wild! They didn’t even give me a “thanks” or anything; entire company was at a standstill potentially for days had I not took action. I probably have PTSD from that place, I seemed to care about it way more than they did.

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Capta-nomen-usoris@reddit

You have been a lifesaver and got no recognition. Many of us have been treated like that and that is not good. I always make sure to show appreciation to someone who helped me out. But that company you worked for should have gone overboard in showing gratitude.

Fuck that place.

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BrorBlixen@reddit

I had a very, very similar work environment many years ago but they had half that staff, half the sites, and I got paid more. I did write their warehouse management system from scratch though. I loved working at that place.

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Fritzo2162@reddit

I kind of enjoy knowing my former company is stagnate and trapped in a dead business model due to a bunch "I told you so!" decisions.

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latchkeylessons@reddit

Not really doing sysadmin, I manage programmers, but this has been the way it's been every time I left anywhere. It's pretty clear when things are going to shit and that's the time to leave. I've never regretted it or been wrong - every place either got sold off, outsourced, even bankrupt more or less a year later. My last gig is still around, but revenue is tanking because management is checked out and forcing all the developers to work 50, 60, 70 hour weeks. No thanks.

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Lopsided_Speaker_553@reddit

Owners sold the place to some big-wig corporate capitalist endeavor.

Never been more happy to have missed that boat.

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che-che-chester@reddit

Assuming you have some talented co-workers remaining, I've never personally experienced things falling apart when someone leaves. And the employees we worried about the most impacted us the least when they left. They hoarded knowledge so there was a lot of unknown, but I've learned that hoarding is often is a sign you're not very good.

But I've seen plenty of situations second-hand where the lone IT staffer at a smaller company leaves and they got royally screwed. When you have one sysadmin who does everything and let's be honest - lone staffers typically aren't great at documentation, you're pretty much screwed.

I'll admit I was a lone sysadmin at my first IT job and I unintentionally left them in terrible shape. I cringe now 20+ years later when I think of what they probably went through after I left. I was mostly self-trained at the time, so I just didn't know any better. I get why big companies are hesitant to hire lone sysadmins.

The thing I tell everyone who wants to move to a bigger company is there is nothing stopping you from doing everything teams at big companies do - change control, documentation, password management, monitoring, etc. We would be impressed if a candidate told us they did all this stuff voluntarily because they understand how important it is to protect the company. But I have friends at medium sized companies (~250 employees) with 5-10 person IT teams who I give a hard time about this stuff and they simply won't do any of it.

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IronVarmint@reddit

First one? Did great. I interviewed her and she fit the path we needed to take. She was there until they closed a few years later. OP's username sounds like it could be her. If so, thanks for being there for them.

Second one was a layoff of the entire department. Fuck those guys. Outsourced to a board member's own company. Got an excellent severance package though. They hired some support folks back immediately since no one knew the apps. Me? Got some certs, the best gig I've ever had till then, and a 30% bump in salary.

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mercurygreen@reddit

The only one of my formaler companies that still exist is the U.S. military...

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Emotional-Study-3848@reddit

My old company literally lost the biggest contract with a local hospital. They've since sold to new ownership

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kenspi@reddit

My last 3 employers are no longer in business.

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BlackFlames01@reddit

Are you Death?

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elkab0ng@reddit

I moved on from a position I had been at for almost 15 years. They only called me like twice. Three times, but the last one was almost five years later - other than social stuff, I’m still friends with people there - but I took that as a compliment, that I’d documented things well and left a stable environment they could manage until a successor was hired.

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Khue@reddit

Worked in a regional market that was a joint venture between two different businesses with an equal ownership. Ended up being hyper profitable and one of the ownerships decided to buy the other out to gain full control over the market. Their own intention was to roll the established market up into their main product and manage the highly profitable market I was involved in.

As soon as we got bought out, the new ownership started looking for IT systems to gut and roll into their own. We were much smaller than them so we had a thinner budget but we spent a lot of money on some really significant technologies and because we were smaller we had way better implementations because there were fewer hands. I left after sitting in on a few meetings hearing that they wanted to take our systems and roll them into their inferior systems. I often asked questions in meetings about how their systems lined up with certain security and compliance policies we had established and in no uncertain terms, they didn't have existing solutions or controls in place to replicate our capabilities. Perfect example of this is how they wanted to remove all of our Cisco gear that was integrated with ISE, Active Directory, and RSA and replace it with HP Procurves because they were cheaper. I asked them what their support was for 802.1x and what their NAC solution was and it was met with silence, meaning they didn't have one. I confirmed this by going into their office one day for a meeting and plugging my laptop into the nearest Cat5 jack and i was able to hop in the network immediately. Meanwhile, the interior of the place was immaculate with marble walls and painting and a lot of free stuff from the break rooms like sodas and coffees.

Anyway, I quite and a lot of the existing IT followed me and I heard the product went down the toilet and they never really returned to the same level of profitability.

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therankin@reddit

I had a buddy that bailed from a printing/service company when he felt it was written in the cards that things were going downhill.

I still use the company just for covering the small laserjets service and supplies, and for sure the company has gone to shit.

We recently had a meeting with them because we got a new rep, and he mentions how they do all IT consulting related things. Just so happens I have a project coming up that I want to replace two hypervisors, upgrade to 10Gig connections between them and the SAN, and spin up 2 new dcs, a fileserver, and a print server. So I tell them about it.

They're all interested, we have a meeting with one of their senior engineers to go over the project and it becomes pretty clear that this guy is trying to sell me on 24/7 monitoring, extra security products, etc. So fine, I let him do his spiel and we go over the project. That was like 3 weeks ago. I haven't heard from them since.

Talk about dropping the ball on a potential sale. I was ready to spend like 65k (not with them, but they didn't know that).

Any way, my buddy was not only glad he left when he did. He poached another guy he liked for the new company he went to.

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Bio_Hazardous@reddit

My old company hasn't removed my access to several systems and HR called me asking for a password to something last week. Seems like it's going swimmingly for them

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richf2001@reddit

Well over a decade later they’re still using the access “dayabase” I wrote. It saved 40 hours of work every month.

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BlazeReborn@reddit

No, and I could care less how they are.

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Alorow_Jordan@reddit

I was the well liked employee. Someone told me I was the first domino in the team falling apart. I didn't believe them. 3 days after I left 1 person quit at the end of day.

Next I hear a power struggle occurred and the leader of the group was ousted and someone took that position by force.

3 months later and I am observing multiple open to work tags on former colleagues linked in. I hear my former leadership is either in fowl moods or not having having good days.

I am at a new job were I genuinely enjoy coming in every day.

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Angelworks42@reddit

Not system admin related, but after I was fired in job for a company where I was a TAM - they lost every single client I had (this is a software company everyone has heard of and loathes). I was only making 85k a year - the entire team of Indians hired to replace me had to have cost more than that in wages alone.

This was millions in revenue in support contracts. I have to imagine it greatly affected sales as well. Not sure what the motive was here - 85k should have been a rounding error. It's possible they (my bosses - former Mcafee managers no less) REALLY hated me. I'm a bit on the spectrum and I had a habit of pointing out all their math errors in the various reports and spreadsheets they used to make all these dumb decisions.

Anyhow it made me feel like less of a screwup for sure :).

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mtesm@reddit

Last company I was with hired 7 people to replace me. Then fired most of the team a year later due to financial constraints.

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stratospaly@reddit

I had my direct report and her boss in a meeting say the words "If we lose the client you take care of, you may not have a job with us anymore." I asked for clarification and her boss repeated the sentiment but in more flowery words, you know the kind using 40 words when 8 is more clear. I had been looking for another job and turned down an offer with $5k more per year. After that meeting I emailed the owner of the company that I turned the job down from and asked if the offer was still valid and he said yes. I took the job and turned in my 2 weeks notice.

Insert shocked Pikachu meme from everyone in my company including my boss and her boss who tried to backtrack saying that's not what they meant. I asked for the recording of the call because they CONSTANTLY used that BS for "training" to prove their $0.25 raise was generous. I took care of 95% of the work for a $1,000,000/yr client and made less than $50k. A month after I left the client sent termination of contract paperwork and three months later hired their own IT department. My boss was fired, but her boss was a VP and is still with the company.

Moral of the story, feed the golden goose. Also Pigs get fed, Hogs get slaughtered.

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ohyeahwell@reddit

I asked for the recording of the call because they CONSTANTLY used that BS for "training" to prove their $0.25 raise was generous

Did they provide the recording/transcript? How did it go down?

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stratospaly@reddit

Every time it came up they were still "working on it". It was odd because they could quickly get the recordings for any of my phone calls within hours.

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che-che-chester@reddit

I worked for a company that acquired a smaller company and sent the IT staff retention letters (if you stay until X date, we'll give X% bonus). They couldn't understand why the entire IT staff quit within a month. If I say 'here's a bonus to stay until August', what does that imply about your job in September?

The saddest thing is we acquired multiple companies and never 'cleaned house'. We might get rid of a troublemaker or change your role, but we kept the existing IT staff. The company had put someone new in charge of acquisitions and she was clueless. She thought she was protecting the company but by chasing away the staff, it more than doubled the time and effort it took to migrate their infrastructure and added considerably risk. Not to mention, it send a chill through the non-IT staff who interpreted the move as the beginning of a mass layoff. When you get acquired (happened to me twice), employees are looking for signs to bail. Her punishment? She soon got promoted again.

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Limetkaqt@reddit

Love the stories with happy endings.

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i_am_fear_itself@reddit

100%

This was a good one.

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Responsible-Gur-3630@reddit

I feel the same way about my first job in the field out of college. I took anything I could get and ended up working for a company in a computer role and IT on the side although I went to school for Comp Sci. They let me work on their databases and front ends.

I did $50m+ in technical estimation quotes a year and was their most tenured person in that department besides the department lead at that time. I held relationships with major clients that valued me to the point they personally sent me letters during C-19 to say that I was essential to their businesses and needed to keep working, if possible.

I was being trained in place by the husband/wife owners to take over the IT portion of the company when the company was sold to a competitor. I was told that I would have a spot and never got it. When I pushed for it, they pushed back and basically told me the IT portion of my job was done.

I decided it was my time to move and took a small paycut to work solely IT for another company. Last I heard from my first employer, they still use my beta frontends that were released for testing. There are multiple different versions because I was going to consolidate the new functions when I rolled up the Access 2003 to upgrade to the latest version. They pay $100/hr to transfer calls, IT is only at the buyer's original location, and they still run Access 2003 because they never updated. The new president got released a bit after I left.

If they would have paid me better and kept their promises, I wouldn't have had a reason to move on.

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Cultural-Corner-2142@reddit

Wow

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blackout-loud@reddit

Also fafo. How are you liking your new job?

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mchampion0587@reddit

Last I heard, the former program I was on at a previous employer went to total hell. There is no price, real or imaginary, that would make me choose unquestionable loyalty to one's employer and their profit margin over unquestionable loyalty to the U.S. My former employer gets what they deserve.

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en-rob-deraj@reddit

I still do side work for the company I used to work for... nothing conflicting.

They aren't a very organized company though... Glad I left. Hope for the best for them but 5 years later, they still have the same problems as when I was there. The owner.

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kidrob0tn1k@reddit

I’m about to start a new role with a new company in about a week. Definitely curious as to how things will go at my current place of work… just expecting things to stay the same honestly, which is part of the reason I’m leaving to begin with.

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immortalsteve@reddit

I swapped to a more centralized team in my org and the situation I left seems to be rapidly deteriorating without me and my previous supervisory structure.

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JohnnyUtah41@reddit

i left my old job back in march. i heard its blown up since i left.

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MBILC@reddit

After I left a past job, a major client did not renew their contracts with them.....take that for what it might be worth...

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bwalz87@reddit

After I left, the company went under. Good thing I left before all of that.

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Lunatic-Cafe-529@reddit

A company hired me to improve security, among other things. A year goes by, and they still hadn't approved any of the changes I recommended, not even the stuff that wouldn't cost anything. I decided to move on, since keeping a network together with duct tape and positive thoughts didn't appeal to me. Three months after I left, ransomware took out everything, including the backups. I heard it was brutal.

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CatStretchPics@reddit

This was 20+ years ago: Novell Netware, everything CLI, etc. I worked for a small 100 person software company as the only network admin.

They did a round of layoffs, but said they could never lay me off. A few months later they did another round of layoffs, and I was one. They said the devs would manage the network…

They tried hiring me back literally two weeks later. But I had already found another, much better job. My old company went out of business in the next year

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techierealtor@reddit

Not IT related directly. I was in charge of contracts and closings at a real estate company. Small office of 3 people - husband, wife and me. Larger company but I didn’t deal with corporate at my level. Salary at like 13 an hour (20 year old with big boy job in an office, felt like I was doing well). After a while, 70+ hour weeks to keep up with the load was the norm. I did the math and realized how fucked I was. Then I got sick with a throat infection - needed a few days off. Boss called and said “come in for 2 hours to get me up to speed on your stuff and then go rest”. I said fine but I’m at the doctors right now so after. Doctor took my blood pressure at like 180/120. No caffeine, woke up, sat on the couch and then my mom drove me there. Doctor gave me meds and advised I need to get my stress down as that is a problem. Mom said either move out or quit. I put in my notice and found a new job way lower stress.
8 months later found out they couldn’t find anyone qualified to do what I do for near my salary. They called and asked me to come in and talk. I agreed to come back for a $17 an hour and capped at 50 hours a week (there were times where work would come in heavy for 1 day and it would take extra hours to catch up). They agreed and I went back, they held to it and I worked there for another few years until the recession hit and they had to downsize heavy. The husband was the only one who kept employment at my office. Wife had backed down and stayed at home with the kids at that point.

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jobu_needs_refill@reddit

They stopped updating the firewall and got ransomwared about a year later.

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arblazer2@reddit

Small tech team of around 10 people at an msp. The general manager abruptly decided to fire the manager that was in charge of all service and the face of our company to our clients. They were a saint and always kept things flowing smoothly. He replaced them with a 28 year old army buddy of his with no experience in tech. He was full of confidence, but had no competence in anything. I immediately voiced my disapproval for this change, but was of course ignored.

Two weeks after this, I had my annual performance review with the new "Head of Operations". I had always had exemplary remarks every year, but he raked me over the coals with his complete misunderstanding of how our ticketing system worked. (.15 hours is not 15 minutes...) Then he had the nerve to say that at the ripe old age of 36, I may not have the desire to work hard anymore.

I noped out of there pretty fast. I found a job not too far away with over double the salary and a 95% reduction in stress. Last I heard, the new manager lasted six months longer before the owner had to swoop in and fire him because he was losing clients. What was a tech staff of 10, became a staff of 4 in less than a year.

I have had a few of my former clients reach out to me personally to see if I could take them on. I haven't yet, but the offers could be tempting.

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WWGHIAFTC@reddit

Two stories

#1, my replacement when I left on good terms (who I helped get up to speed on infrastructure and promptly warned mgmt that this will not end well, hire someone else...) Proceeded to screw up so many systems, there were major outages at 50+ retail locations across two states. It took them another 6 months to replace him.

#2, I left for another opportunity. It took them 9 months to replace me, and another 6 months to replace that guy before his probation period was up.

I'm not perfect. Someone could come through behind me and criticize a huge amount of what was unfinished, or not done 'the best' way. But to walk in and just screw up a job so fast blows my mind.

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Nik_Tesla@reddit

Nothing super flashy, just several jobs that, when I catch up with former co-workers that are still there, they tell me how everything has just gotten shittier and shittier, and reinforces my confidence in moving on when I did.

Usually my leaving is around the time that the company merged or was acquired by private equity, which inevitably takes an uphill trend to a backslide.

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PhantomNomad@reddit

They replaced me with 3 people. It actually pisses me off. I busted my ass for 10+ years there and begged for help. I quit and they realize that yeah I had a lot on my plate. In my exit interview I told my boss that I couldn't keep it up any more. I found a job that I work 36.5 hours a week and never work overtime. Never before or after my shift and never weekends or holidays. It might pay less but I also get a pension at this job.

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stickytack@reddit

MSP here. We had a client fire us and go with a cheaper "IT Company" about a year ago. I spoke with the office manager last week and he basically told me their whole infrastructure went to shit, people constantly getting phished, no MFA, getting service calls is like pulling teeth, just overall horrible. The executive director is too proud to fire them and too embarrassed to ask us to come back. They were notoriously cheap so it is what it is. You get what you pay for!

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flatulating_ninja@reddit

I hope to find out soon.

I'm the entirety of North American based IT for an international company of about 500 people with only 5 people in the IT department. I've been here for 8 years and have been asking for a jr to take some of the helpdesk duties for a year or two as we've quadrupled in size since Covid. I was just told that the company has decided to bring the sys admin duties to the UK office and replace me with a jr helpdesk. The new helpdesk manager is already currently spending 80% of his time working tickets. Good luck getting from under that when I'm gone and you're training my replacement with only 1 hour in overlap in your working hours unless he's willing to start at 6am as well.

I guess the moral of the story is never ask for help.

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Humble-Plankton2217@reddit

Is this pharma? It sounds so familiar

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flatulating_ninja@reddit

Software

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Ivy1974@reddit (OP)

I had something similar. I was getting bored at my job and was at level 2. I said in a meeting I can do level 3 work which I can and did. But man that was a mistake. The work load doubled if not tripled.

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BlackFlames01@reddit

I hope your pay also doubled, if not tripled.

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Ivy1974@reddit (OP)

Nope!👎

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jplivecmh@reddit

They laid me off January 2023. I warned everybody in October 2022 after the company had been aquired that they would be laying people off. i was the first to go.

The building is on my way to costco and is currently sitting for sale after they laid everybody off.

the hr lady who stood at my desk when i was getting laid off and asked "is this going to take long? i have other things to do" while i was packing my things reached out on linkedin after she got laid off asking for a recommendation. that went silently in the trash.

place was a dumpster fire from day one

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Karfedix_of_Pain@reddit

First company I worked for was a small, poorly managed MSP. I was basically the sole engineer/architect/whatever. We had a few bench techs, but nobody who could manage a server or configure a Cisco or anything like that. The company all-but imploded when I left. Google says they still exist, but the website is gone.

The second company I worked for was a rural hospital. They're doing fine. They've been swallowed-up by one of the big, regional health networks and they've got all the IT support they need.

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Apoptosis-Games@reddit

My old employer got sold, lol.

So, started as a senior admin at the corporate office of a gas station and travel center company. The old owner and founder died very suddenly and he was well-loved by the people there.

One of his set-in-stone policies was to give paid days off for birthdays for anyone there after 90 days. Just so happened my 90th day fell on my birthday, so I inquire about it. I figured if I got it, cool. Otherwise, not the end of the world.

Well, apparently I picked the crappiest day ever to ask about it because I asked my boss who then got the VP of technology involved who then passed it up to the new asswipe who took over after the founder died.

No less than 15 minutes after my inquiry did a general memo email go out from new Asswipe CEO. "From this day forward, the paid birthday off policy is null and void. Anyone who had this day planned must now use PTO to cover for it."

So, by the end of the day, over 13 "we literally cannot function without this person" staff pack their shit and leave.

CEO frames it as a good thing. "The trash taking itself out" he worded it as. One of the people was my immediate supervisor who was the IT backbone of the entire company basically from its founding.

I got a "lateral promotion" that day which is corporate doublespeak for "you now get the responsibilities of four people with your same pay!"

Also, the VP of tech of an ass kisser who tried to fluff us up by claiming "Dominoes Pizza's IT team is only 3 people and they're way bigger than us!"

I left within the next month and they skirted by for about 6 months until they'd been run into the ground so hard they ended up selling to a competitor for literal pennies on the dollar this same competitor offered right when the founder died

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Happy_Kale888@reddit

Why look back....

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Snowlandnts@reddit

Was doing a break fix for 5 locations. I tried to automate it, setup source of truth for each department. The manager wanted to stay with the break fix process. The company added 2 more locations and not hiring more people in the IT department. If I can't automate the processes, they aren't going to hire more people for the IT department, and I am not going to inherit the company I am going to move on to a new job.

They hired my replacement, but I heard from co-workers that the replacement is not me and my manager has to do my break fix work. It is working, but they are definitely in a struggle bus.

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sonicdm@reddit

When I gave notice I was told I was making the biggest mistake of my life. I was IT web sales engraving, shipping receiving and customer service. They were bankrupt within 6 months after I left.

They managed to run six stores into the ground because the web sales were the biggest profit.

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Carribean-Diver@reddit

They wound up trusting the guy we tried to warn them about. He ended up holding their data hostage, it wound up in court, millions in damages, and he skipped the country.

One of the guys who was still there called me out of the blue and asked if I still had the admin passwords. I did not.

Schadenfreude.

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xXSyphexXx@reddit

I left and heard 6 months later they went under. My boss was one that was never in the office and we had the freedom to run the place how we thought it should run and we did well for 4 years. He came back and started his power trip and shortly after I found a much better job. Didn't feel bad in the slightest and the cool part was most of my favorite clients came with me to my new job after they closed.

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hot-pixel@reddit

Coworkers I still talk to after I left said that morale bottomed out and complacency bloomed and waning accountability withered up. Apparently in my leaving, several others have also found new work or left. I knew my absence wouldn't bring the place to a screeching halt, but rather would be the canary to other, newer employees that that place wasn't healthy. Apparently the CIO was livid wondering why one of their "best performing" analysts walked, even though I thought I was doing everything to scrape by the bare minimum carrying a few others on the team. I think which just goes to show how disinformed and lacking in ownership the leadership was. I left without notice after toxic, belligerent personnel were not held accountable, even after documented, multiple-witness accounts of threats for workplace shootings, years-long bullying of a team member for having an autisic son, and lack of attendance. I walked out from a dream job with nothing lined up, but the stress of not having a job somehow pales compared to how I felt having to go to that office every day. Oh well, better things are on the horizon now!

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DestinationUnknown13@reddit

I left after 26 years of providing my best service and being loved by my customers. They forced a pay cut that started that ball rolling. I had customers and users calling me for the next several years asking for help. I just blocked their numbers. The manager even tried to pin something that was missing on me, 6 months after I was gone. It's good when you leave on your terms, and make almost twice what you were making.

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EarthySofa@reddit

We were a team of 8 people and after I was fired for no apparent reason, 4 other people left, so I guess there was a management issue and my former manager had basically burned all their bridges with their other colleagues and is just a shadow of themselves since people found out their true color. They have a pending friend request on FB which I just leave hanging there. I took a screenshot of it and sometimes look at just to remember how absurd and how little self awareness some people have.

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Superb_Raccoon@reddit

Mine was a little sad.

The guy that repaced me quit 5 days after I left because of the stress. HIS replacement did the job for 6 weeks, had a heart attack from the stress.

They ended up hiring 3 people to replace me, all over a measely $5k raise...

BEST thing that ever happened to me.

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gangaskan@reddit

I have buddies that have moved on to progressive and zscaler that I still talk to.

They worked in our dept and we went to school so he asks me every so often.

More about antics at the workplace, because I'm at a local govt.

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chevytrk454@reddit

They fired me after 17 years and reached out a month later for some passwords nobody could find. I told them where to stick it, felt great.

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Foddley@reddit

The guy that fired me got fired for getting drunk one night and leaving a nasty voicemail for a troublesome client. Since I was one of his critics calling him out on his shit, I feel somewhat vindicated.

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Leopold_Porkstacker@reddit

Small company that did pos programming and pos hardware support. New owner did give me a huge raise when he saw how much I was actually doing and hired a guy for me to train so I didn’t have to be on call 24-7.

New guy worked really hard at polishing the apple and being the best friend of the boss and I never got to train him. He just went around everywhere with the boss and shadowed him.

Took me a few months to realize I was being edged out, so I started preparing my exit. Boss even decided to put me on a pip because I had too many sick days. (Covid sucked)

Well, 2 weeks after I quit, the guy who I never got to train called me in a panic because boss was out of town, unreachable and all the receipt printers at a small restaurant chain stopped working and he didn’t know how to fix it. I told him I couldn’t do anything about it because boss man had me sign a noncompete on my way out the door.

Peace out.

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sunburnedaz@reddit

They are doing fine and I wish them well. A few things are still rocky like they replaced system X with a company wide system Y. Only problem being that system Y has a very different API and the custom line of business software still will not interface with system Y because that's on the dev backlog.

We were the last vestiges of the OG IT department from 3 companies ago when they were their own independent company. We went from owning all the keys to the kingdom, to being a fiefdom within the broader org to just supporting the custom line of business application and basically supporting nothing purely IT.

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cousinralph@reddit

The dipshit VP I worked for "resigned" three months after I left. Turned out he didn't realize how important my role was to incident management for major outages with our SaaS products. Mostly because all the teams there trusted me and despised him. He tried to handle that part of my job, failed miserably, and was shown the door.

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admlshake@reddit

Well they shut down about 18 months after I was "asked to find a new position". Then they let go all the other non yes men. Which happened to be all their talent. Then the owner cooked the books, sold it to another company who's owner he attended church with, and well lets just say his life got VERY difficult after that.

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graywolfman@reddit

I worked at a healthcare NOC for just over 5 years. We went from ticket jockeys whose only actual other tasks were physically walking the data center and watching the generator run, to installing and removing hardware, power, networking, etc. I personally began updating and pre-configuring switches for deployment, programmed the new 1.5 megawatt generators controls and fuel monitoring systems for automatic running and testing under load, and more.

The CTO changed and everything went to shit. The quarterly letter went from talking about patient care to how much equipment costs and saving money. They began chopping people off at the knees with benefits even canceling people's benefits that were grandfathered in on their retirement plans and time off amount. They purchase multiple hospitals forcing IT to integrate them with existing systems and did not hire a single new person or contractor. That same year, they canceled all raises saying they didn't have the money and thank you for being a team player. The next year my raise was 23 cents... They wouldn't even let me talk them up to 25 cents. I applied for the new NOC Supervisor role, and was told I don't just have the personality, and it was given to the guys who only other experience was being a used car salesman and the other lied on his resume about his experience.

After I walked, I kept in touch with one person from my department that I was friends with. The other three people I liked had already left before me. Not a single word of documentation was written after my departure... Apparently, I was the only one doing it.

The resume fabricator was fired for time card fraud, as he was caught clocking in and going home, only to return to clock out.

They moved most things to the cloud in the same mistaken manner most people did, shooting money into space for no good reason, other than "the CLOUD!"

My boss was fired with less than 6 months left before his retirement, begging to stay until he could officially retire.

The rest of the IT team of over 200 people left the company and most followed the old CTO to another healthcare system, except for one person... The used car supervisor, who was soon let go, as the company split into multiple entities and the NOC dissolved.

Fuck that place. I should have bailed sooner.

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Yomat@reddit

1) First employer let me go for budget reasons. They were in worse shape for years, but they knew that was going to be the case. Recession forced them to accept worse/cheaper service from an MSP vs having their own guy (me).

2) Next employer laid 400+ US IT staff and outsourced to India. Went horribly. Business ended up forcing leadership to fire VP of IT and Finance that made the decision. They have slowly brought most of the jobs back to the States.

3) Next employer decided they didn’t need a full time sys admin supporting 3 remote sites and could just use cheaper techs at a central HQ location to remotely support them, then hire local contractors when needed for anything that absolutely needed a physical presence. Went horribly. They eventually gave up and hired a new local sys admin to refill my old position, but it took them a year to find someone for a total horrible support period of 2 years for those remote locations.

4). Current employer honestly probably wouldn’t flinch at all losing me. Back in a huge enterprise environment where I’m just an employee ID to leadership.

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Hot_Efficiency_9347@reddit

Back in the old 10Base2 network days I did computer consulting on the side, worked for one client for years, no issues, UNTIL the owners retired and their kids "took over", see the writing on the wall as I was called in less and less. They had a Novell server and a few dos workstations. I get this call from some unknown number, asking if I could come in and help them get the data transferred from their old server..... If you ever had to connect a dos workstation to a novell network, you know how much more work that is from scratch..... see, this person dismantled their entire network and though you could just boot the server via a floppy to get the data... I said sure, $250/hr with a 4 hr minimum, funny, they never called me back after that.

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bottleofmtdew@reddit

Leaving my current company in 2 weeks

They haven’t posted my job yet, and they’ll only have my IT Support who doesn’t know or want to know the things I do as the IT Manager

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bobs143@reddit

Most of the time the new admin will do things their way. So why spend time and energy caring? If you are starting at a new org you are probably "fixing" stuff from the previous admin.

This is the IT circle of life.

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posixUncompliant@reddit

If they've got enough of their own way for it to matter that means they probably also have the ability and drive to read the documentation and change over info you left.

That's very unlikely in my experience.

I don't go in and strip out everything that was in place when I start a new job. I find out what's going on, and where the current pain points are, and work from there. But I don't do small org or solo stuff anymore.

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bobs143@reddit

Really my point was just to move on. Do exactly what you posted at your new gig.

Leave the past in the past.

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The_Wkwied@reddit

When I was green, my manager chewed me out for answering my desk phone with "hello this is name" instead of some spiel people in the helpdesk say.

Well, I wasn't in helpdesk.... I was eventually let go for reasons that I should had sued for (20/20 hindsight!), but the manager tried to apply at the company I went to next.

I think they might had mentioned me, because my ass.man, man, and director who were doing the interview called me in after they left. I think I cost this Karen a comfy directorial position... but you reap what you sow.

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aintthatjustheway@reddit

Oh yeah.

I moved to a new company during covid and work there for two years.

It was a small company that was bent on their own personal politics and they all saw things the same way; so whoever didn't have the same views was usually slighted in some small way.

I was let go two years, to the date, after I started.

The explanation my manager gave me was "they couldn't rely on me".

With in two weeks I had a few phone calls letting me know my manager almost immediately regretted firing me.

That felt pretty good.

They tried to replace me with someone younger and less experienced but that backfired because we enjoyed working together and she was shocked they fired me.

She quit less than three months later.

In the next year they went through three more replacements for my position. The last one realized one of my former workers was embezzling money and conducting other shady business practices on the side and then charging the company for her time.

That person was the majority of the reason I was fired. Lets call her 'Leigh'. She didnt like me and I didnt do her job for her so I wasn't reliable to her. Whatever. My manager believed her and didnt speak to me about anything she said.

Within two years of me being let go, she was fired after everything was found out.

So the CEO and the front office staff had to fire their coworker and friend of more than 10 years from the company they all jointly founded.

Within a year of that they sold the company. They lost a lot of contracts from the fallout everything Leigh had been up to and they ended up not recovering.

A few of my coworkers from there still keep in touch and get lunch once in a while.

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Pymmz@reddit

6 years ago I was let go for my IT job due to company restructering. Negotiated a great 3 month severance. Found another job 3 weeks later. SCORE.

1 year later the copmany was sold piece by piece and the Service Desk I was managing was moved to India and the main company assets were sold.

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zakabog@reddit

I'm in touch with colleagues from all of my former employers, I know I was good at my job but I don't delude myself into believing that my leaving is the reason any of them are struggling. Many of them were barely holding on by a thread when I started anyway, that's what contributed to my decision to leave in the first place, but I left enough documentation that anyone can sit in my former chair and pickup where I left off.

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LRS_David@reddit

I always try and maintain a "hit by a bus" file. How it is used is not up to me at that point.

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titpetric@reddit

Not anyone, for lack of docs reading alone

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initiali5ed@reddit

I got replaced by three people.

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justlurkshere@reddit

In a previous gig I actually had a good employer that wanted to hire people to lighten my load and to get things in order. By the end at least eight people were hires with the specific reasoning that they were brought in to offload tasks from me.

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TireFryer426@reddit

Only time I've ever been RIF'ed. Company hired me to fix their monitoring infrastructure and then come up with a move forward plan. Complicated part is that all their alerts ran through an in house built middleware and then processed out in to custom formatted tickets. Guy who wrote the middleware was gone.
So I get through this whole thing. New platform, and I found a way to trick the existing middleware into letting me run whatever I wanted through it. I only had one piece left to do that would have taken out the reliance on that middleware.

I end up getting transferred to a new manager because the one that hired me was moving up. Manager of the networking team. Probably should have caught on right there. So the new manager I'm under doesn't like the platform I brought in, he wants solarwinds. RIF's me so he can do whatever he wants. Figured he can break my job up across three people until they can unwind it all and move on.

Well - it doesn't end up being that simple. Despite the step by step documentation I left that explained how to get across the finish line - down to the exact SQL queries and SP's that needed to change and the exact changes, they couldn't get it there. The maintenance contract on the software I was pulling out was some where in the ballpark of 350k a year. I was on target to have it out by the next renewal.

They had to pay that renewal. They brought in a team of contractors to try and finish what I was doing. Had to pay the next renewal - plus whatever the contractors ran them. From what I was told, they ended up getting hit with a third renewal before they ripped the band aid off and started completely over from scratch.

Cost the company easily a million.

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sorely_whacking@reddit

Doesn't make me smile. I've both left due to shitty work conditions and been left off - both are just signs the company is on the downturn. Yeah you might feel good the C levels finally can eat crow but I worked with a lot of good people who got screwed because of mismanagement and greed.

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teksean@reddit

I tried not to find out. Once I left I did get hit with a question from someone who ghosted my turnover meeting, so I told them they would have to pay me for the answer.

I think its better off not knowing. I like a clean break, and if they are not paying me (I retired early) why should I spend my free time on problems that are not mine anymore.

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jaymef@reddit

Not going to name names but I was a sysadmin at a web hosting company and left about 8 years ago. I was curious and checked into things and still til this day their servers are a nightmare. Running CentOS6 with PHP 5x

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MAlloc-1024@reddit

last company was a manufacturing/tech company, but small, less than 150 employees. I did internal IT, so MS office/windows, on prem servers, networking, phones and some light programming for the finance ERP and sales CRM. I was there a long time. They rehired the old MFG manager to be the new COO after he had left to go be GM at another company (and tanked it out of business). After he came back onboard he made it clear to me that he and I quote, "plan to completely outsource all IT functions."

Well, I immediately got my resume together and started looking. I was pretty well paid apparently since it took me many months (like 14/15) to find a new position willing to pay me more than I was making at the time, but when I left, in the exit interview I laid into the COO. His mismanagement was the reason I was leaving, and in the timeframe since he had been made COO revenue dropped 20% so I wasn't the only one.

I stayed in touch with some colleagues that didn't leave and in the following 12 months they went through 5 different IT guys. About 18 months after I left I got a call from the COO guy asking me if I would come back, and if I still had any passwords for the system...

My contacts there have all left, but I do know that the COO guy is no longer there and the whole business is under new ownership/management now.

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WoodenHarddrive@reddit

Yeah I heard from one of my juniors that after I left things....went really well actually. Massive improvement, I'm terrible at my work.

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wotwotblood@reddit

I jumped around and there were two of the old companies tried to rehire me back. One, was and still a shitshow. Another, hired three replacements to replace me. Rejected both offers.

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robbdire@reddit

Last place I left was recently informed the majority of their staff all abandoned ship within a year, along with most of their clients.

Made me smile.

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ImALeaf_OnTheWind@reddit

I was the last IT guy and they were already gutting the company. So everyone that was left that i knew eventually moved on and it was sold off. Shame - it was awesome for a while and I was glad I got to experience it - but not sustainable when the Founders stepped away and the new leadership had other plans.

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Deathwalker2552@reddit

Last report from a job I left 2 years ago was that 2 people were hired to replace me. They were struggling to teach the new hires. I had converted them to Intune Hybrid Joined before leaving. I managed SCCM and Intune alone. As well as other management servers. Not sure how they are doing today. I had everything pretty automated except packaging applications.

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Tireseas@reddit

I'm blessed enough to have stepped away on good terms with my former employer. As far as I know, life went on as usual and it worked out pretty well for all parties. I did get a nice thank you email from my replacement a few weeks later for leaving things well documented.

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Leucippus1@reddit

A predictable disaster. It wasn't because of me, I was just one of the (many) canaries in the coal mine. After 5 years I went back after the entirety of senior leadership was replaced by the board. The shop, itself, wasn't in bad condition but the company incinerated 15 million dollars (which is huge for them) which was sadly predictable.

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posixUncompliant@reddit

All the time. The ones I left in good order, usually things go well.

The ones that went away due to outsourcing or poorly thought out lay offs (lets get rid of the expensive guy because cheaper guy says he has the same skills), yeah. Those go badly. Often very badly. There's nothing like scanning social media while getting coffee at your new job and seeing how badly an org is doing after they cut you.

Really makes the latte better.

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doubleu@reddit

After I left, I heard my last job replaced me with a $200k/year MSP. (Safe to say I was not making $200k lol; not even half that.)

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PrincipleExciting457@reddit

I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, and I’m not a crazy well rounded individual, but I’m a work horse and still good at my job. The last few companies I worked for are all still fine and operating, but have had to hire 2 people to do the job I was doing. I would have stayed at any one of them had they just given me a raise. Now they pay a bit more than I was asking for lol.

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Curious-Money2515@reddit

The company treated me awful for years until they thought I might leave. I received two promotions within a year, but it didn't matter.

They year I left, they lost one of their major customers. They were terrible to work with, but I kept them going and happy. They've made the news for a couple of outages which I'm sure involved fines. I had that system running flawlessly back in the day.

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Steeljaw72@reddit

I have purposely avoided hearing news about old companies I left. Mainly because I know I will like the news, and I know I will like it for wrong reason. And I don’t want to be that kind of person.

But sometimes, I’ve been that person.

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ThatAJC88@reddit

Perfectly fine. But then, I did everything I could to make sure all the loose ends were tied and no fires would burn after I left. They replaced me with 2 new people that I trained and a third existing person took part of my role that I am so trained as well.

Maybe I'm too nice, because the Head of IT there was toxic as fuck.

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Humble-Plankton2217@reddit

My personal work ethic requires I make things better for those that come after me. I'm just wired that way.

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Valdaraak@reddit

All I know is that not terribly long after I left my old MSP, a few of their clients (and a bigger one) cut ties. Those were conveniently clients that I was the main go-to for and they liked me.

One of those clients was half-jokingly trying to poach me while I was actively working at the MSP.

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Daritari@reddit

Recent job change here. I fought through an issue where my boss made things covertly hostile for me. Finally, I had enough, and was offered a position in the next town over. I wasn't planning on giving my notice on a Friday, but rather on Monday morning.

Queue getting pulled into the office for the fifth time that month. Boss starts laying into me. I make eye contact and say "Well, I guess it's a good thing it won't be your problem much longer." Stone-silence. "What do you mean!?" Well, it's been clear for a while that you really don't want me here, so, I've been looking for alternate employment.

Gave my two-weeks, and started the new job. Even though it was a small pay cut to move, it ended up being for the best. I still get texts and messages from my former co-workers, both to check-in and see how I'm doing, and to ask quick questions. Sounds like their new guy is doing alright, but I was there for over 10 years, and completely designed that system. It takes a long time to get someone up to that level of speed.

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FluidGate9972@reddit

Left the job, they hired 2 people to do my job, both got fired within a year. Now they have a new guy that's seemingly OK but not great.

Don't have ill feelings towards that old place, they treated me well and I worked there for over 10 years. But it was a little bit of an ego boost 2 people couldn't fill my shoes, ngl.

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wyndwatcher@reddit

Typically, I am replaced by 3-5 people who take on different roles for everything that I did solo. Things are typically worse and within a year, former employers are spending more on regular and contract workers just to keep up with my established workflows. I really get a kick out of seeing my original work being passed off in a junior employee's personal portfolio. It is both sad and hilarious. But, I don't care. I can always originate new things from scratch. I doubt any of my replacements can.

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Brufar_308@reddit

Well they paid for my cell phone for about 2 1/2 years so they could text me occasional questions. Was very limited. Anything in-depth I billed an hourly rate for. I was offered and accepted multiple side gigs with them to deploy new vm’s and assist with troubleshooting some issues.

I left on my own for something closer to home. The $10k I made in side work over the 2.5 years along with the cell was an easy gig for me. Feel bad for my old coworker as he’s been solo since I left and the company that bought them out about a year after I left is not replacing me.

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moderatenerd@reddit

Left a charity after 5 years. 2014-2019. I was the system admin that stayed. After I left they cycled through field techs but none were at my level and all lasted a year. My boss continued to only watch right wing YouTube videos on options trading and continued to lose money.

In 2025 I learned from him that they outsourced the whole IT dept. My boss' entire career was spent there and for 20 years he didn't learn a thing. He later asked me for help with his resume.

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OmenVi@reddit

I'm sure the company is still doing fine, or whatever, but...

About 2 months after I left, my boss (and the rest of the dept heads on the technical side) were all fired.

Within a year ALL of the project engineers I'd worked with had quit, including the guy who I'd figured was a lifer.

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Forsaken-Discount154@reddit

So the company I used to work for laid me off as a cost-cutting move. It sucked, but whatever, I get it. That was about four years ago. The thing is, it was a nightmare just trying to get them to approve something as simple as a flash drive, never mind backup software. I ended up buying two 2TB external hard drives out of my own pocket and used Veeam Community Edition to back up our email, OneDrive, and SharePoint. When they let me go, I told them the data was on my personal drives and if they wanted them, they’d have to pay for them. They said no, and on my last day, the office manager literally stood there and watched me wipe the drives. About a year later, they called me. Turns out the MSP they hired didn’t back up the OneDrive of the former contract admin, and now they were trying to close out a bunch of contracts worth millions… without copies of the contracts. I still had the drives and they asked if they could have them forensically examined. They said they’d give me 500 bucks if they found the data they needed. I told them if they wanted my drives, it was going to cost them 1000 dollars upfront. They paid, and I figured that was that. Three months later, they called again saying they couldn’t find the data. I politely reminded them that they laid me off and I don’t work there anymore. I also told them that from now on, if they contacted me about company stuff, it was going to be 300 bucks an hour, four-hour minimum. Haven’t heard a word since. And now, they’re not even in business anymore.

Funny how that works

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PtansSquall@reddit

I was the lead telecom engineer at my previous job (at a local bank), but then a new CEO started and began seemingly random layoffs to all departments. I got hit, after nearly 7 years of being there.. I built the phone queue, custom made the UCCX phone scripts from scratch for each department including the main 1-800 number that received 85% of all the calls. With me gone, the only phone support they have is now TAC.

I still bank with them, and recently had to call in for another job I started to get direct deposit information, and guess what wasn't working? The phone number, 1-800 number and several branches. I asked a friend of mine who still works there and apparently it's been like that for a while, some days good some days bad. It honestly made me feel better lol the way I built it requires an extremely specific call flow, caller ID, and information hand offs from the PRI to the IVR. If conditions aren't met, calls won't route. Someone must have changed something they didn't fully understand, breaking the whole thing. Oh well, it's not like 90% of their business is done over the phone or anything..

Though, in the end, my situation is much better-- better paying job, better benefits, less stress, more time off, etc. Ironically it was the best thing that could have happened to me.

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Burning_Eddie@reddit

The Second company I worked for couldn't meet payroll. They took too many state contracts without the capital to float above the styates ridiculous payment schedule.

My paycheck bounced twice.

I quit the next day and got a corporate IT job.

A friend actually bought the former company and asked me back but I declined. A year later several former clients approached me and I started a side business which now fully supports me. I still have 3 of those clients 15 years later.

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die-microcrap-die@reddit

I was at paramount.

Lots of bad news but they might be too big to die.

Fuck you steve.

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BlackFlames01@reddit

'Lots of bad news...' give us the juicy details!

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Humble-Plankton2217@reddit

International corporate did a huge reorganization and one part of that was cutting all on-site IT roles in favor of travelling IT people that covered a region - 1 person per 3 or 4 states worth of offices.

My old office was converted into a "pump and pray" room for new mothers and people who require a private place to pray. This makes me pretty happy, I loved that room and I like knowing that it's used to meet employee's personal needs instead of going to some jumped up wanna be middle manager lol

International corporate replaced PCs with thin clients, services were transferred or cut completely. My people lost a lot of things and lots of other things were replaced with systems that are less user-friendly.

After all the changes implemented by corporate, IT and other changes as well, many people that had been there a long time felt it was no longer a good place to work and found greener pastures. Most of us had been with the company for 15 years or longer.

ALL of us "long-haulers" who left found out other places paid a lot more money, too.

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noideabutitwillbeok@reddit

I heard almost immediately. My replacement was poor at best but our manager loved him. After a bunch of calls my new manager called my old manager and asked him to please remind staff I was no longer there.

They did call later to ask me a favor. I agreed and billed them for my time. But I only did that as a favor to someone who always had my back.

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DStandsForCake@reddit

After I left, basically 80 percent of the operational staff also left within a year whom they never managed to replace (the company got a terrible reputation, especially among us in the industry).

It ended with the owners where bought into a larger (and more serious) company for basically nothing, and losing their mandates as owners. It was probably their salvation (thinking especially of the poor techs who never got off), and hopefully the old owners will never think of starting a company again.

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TheGooOnTheFloor@reddit

On a more positive vein:

I did work at one company where I wrote a communication package that retrieved data from remote sites via modem (yes, I'm that old). Because I wanted to work with some newer technologies, I left that company on good terms to take another job. Before I left I made sure the comm package was stable, adaptable, and easily portable.

I found out 22 years later they were still using that software. (Although with a lot fewer sites still on dial-up.)

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WillVH52@reddit

Last two places I left the IT team changed radically with the Infrastructure Architect leaving and the other a Senior Developer took over all the local IT Functions.

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Markprzyb@reddit

Worked for a company as an IT Manager. They had never had an IT person on staff before. I tried to get them on a good IT foundation. One thing that was terrible was the password policy, there was none! Lots of people had the same password and it was the same password for the admin. I told my supervisor that we needed to make a change, but he was refused because it meant a lot of changing things. So I let it be. I was new. Had to pull an all-nighter once in the office. I was on call 24-7. Raises come out and I get 2%, co-worker gets 5% because he's buddies with the boss. I find a new job. About a year later I run into a former co-worker, she tells me the organization got ransomwared. Whole company was shut down for 2 weeks while they tried to undo the clusterf***. I had a chuckle to myself because i knew that admin password of the company's initials followed by 123 would bite them in the ass. I'm sure I got the blame for not stressing to them enough that it was bad policy even though I must have mentioned it a dozen times.

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SpaceF1sh69@reddit

I worked remote and the 5 times we did get together in person for work or team building, I witnessed my director break down and cry on 3 separate occasions.

A new CTO came in and the director was overly toxic and abusive towards him. Director and I had a falling out and he made a return to office mandate with 24 hour notice that I promptly called in sick for. I was let go the next day, the one and only job I was fired from without cause.

I was on LinkedIn and I saw him posting that his time at X company was over and that he was looking for work. Reached out to an old colleague who gave me the tea, the new CTO dissolved the entire IT infrastructure branch, fired the director and his yes men, then merged existing infra team into the sister analyst branch.

His ego unfortunately destroyed an entire corporate branch and threw a couple dozen careers into the pan fire. It was the most toxic corporate environment I've ever witnessed and I was lucky enough to get let go instead of kissing his ass for nothing in the end.

I wish I was a bigger man, but the news put a massive smile on my face.

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Nephvius@reddit

Wow that’s rough. Shows how important good people really are

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MLCarter1976@reddit

When I left a company they hired a consultant for a year I think and the project I was going to work on updating version, hadn't been done in that time!

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MLCarter1976@reddit

I left a company and they hired THREE PEOPLE to replace me! WTAF!

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Few-Dance-855@reddit

Their systems crashed took Friday to Monday to get it back up and running . I was made aware by my replacement asking me where I could find the “backups”

Some time passed by and I reached out to him. Apparently he left the company and then came back. He was incredible overwhelmed. I’m glad I declined their offer.

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Tymanthius@reddit

I never feel good about my clients/end users suffering. But when the clients go to a different solution and the former company loses $, that's funny.

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Consistent-Slice-893@reddit

The company can't keep anyone at the role I was in, now the salary range is just below what I was asking for in the counteroffer process. They have gone through 2 people in 9 months, and have to fly people in for two weeks stretches to cover the site.

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IAmTheM4ilm4n@reddit

You wanna know one of the best perks of retiring?

Answering this question with "Don't know, don't give a rat's ass."

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NightMgr@reddit

They needed someone versed in SCO, AIX, OS/2, NT, and Tru64.

I was part of a mass layoff of 33% of the workforce on a Friday with no notice.

I was upgrading a production server when I paged and told I had to leave immediately to go to a remote site.

I packed my briefcase because it smelled like a lay off.

They refused my offer of $2000 to complete the last 4 hours of work.

After several months they did what I suggested and retire the old DEC and replace it with a new AIX machine like the vendor requested.

It was a billing system but this was so long ago they ran the ad for a replacement in the newspaper.

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Maximum_Bandicoot_94@reddit

Over the next 18 months they had to hire 5 guys to replace various roles I was performing and things were still crap. Pay crap, whip the employees, get crap product.

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corky2019@reddit

Same but they had to hire 6 guys to replace me.

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OCAU07@reddit

Replaced with 2 people.

They broke my SCCM config for Asia pacific on day 2. They went from a fully automated image of new hardware in 40 - 60 minutes in Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand to a half day process.

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nowinter19@reddit

I left because my manager gave me a $0.25 raise and declined my request for a promotion. I left and they hired 2 people. Awesome

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dented-spoiler@reddit

Business as usual I assume.

Their funding sources haven't cut and ran yet, but I suspect they will soon if things don't change.

Doesn't really matter, the bigger org away from them has funds for years to keep it afloat if they can't.

The tech was laid out well, it's the human factor that will cause issues at this point.

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90Carat@reddit

Let's see.... I was the guy to turn off the lights for one company. What was left became a massive tax payer burden for the government to handle.

Several companies I left were acquired by other companies. That was the reason I left. The people that stayed have done OK, some thrived at the new company.

I'll say this, become attuned to the writing on the wall for a company.

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Brilliant-Advisor958@reddit

They paid me higher than normal contract rates to come in and fix it about 4 months after i left .

The guy they hired really messed up and stopped following the well documented back up procedure. So they lost a months worth of work.

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Sample-Efficient@reddit

About one year after I left my first real job as IT guy the company was closed down for good. In November I left a company where I had worked for 24 years. Don't know how things go there.

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knightofargh@reddit

Last I heard they still use most of my processes and automations but things were real rough for six months after losing myself and 3 of 4 of my techs in six weeks to better offers from better companies.

I had made their environment stable enough and consistent enough as a MSP that they could go off inertia for 3-6 months. It started getting bad as maintenance slipped 4 months in.