Feeling Betrayed Before a Possible Layoff
Posted by Vegetable-Clock-4488@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 83 comments
So, since the beginning of 2026, the company has been laying people off. More than 40 people have already left, and they are still continuing. From what I’ve heard, I think they are planning to let me go as well. I think it’s because there are only me and my manager left in IT, and maybe they feel that two people are too many for the number of employees who will remain.
From what I heard, they asked my manager, “If he leaves, will productivity drop?” and he said no. Lately, he has also been asking me a lot of technical questions, almost like he’s trying to learn everything he will need. Even though he is technically the IT manager, most of the time he is not around, and I’m the one who actually works with the users. Honestly, technically speaking, he’s not that good.
Him saying that “productivity will not drop” really made me angry at him, and now I don’t even want to teach him anything anymore. Any advice, guys?
ciaza@reddit
I would read between the lines and brush up on the old resume regardless of whether you might get let go or not.
If your manager isn't good technically then I wouldn't worry about whatever advice you give him, they won't be able to fix anything regardless.
HotTakes4HotCakes@reddit
I've yet to encounter a situation where someone was leaving or possibly being let go and a few weeks of extracting what they know or pushing documentation solved anything. You need more than just some specific bits, you need the whole picture they possess.
The_Koplin@reddit
^ this I did not get let go, I found a better job. Told my boss you have two weeks to ask me anything, etc. I warned my soon to be ex-boss that if he called me after I left that that I expected a very large consultation check or I would not take his calls.
I left and within a month he had deleted both core switch configs at the same time. I had a redundant pair of switches running a SAN for a VMware cluster that operated every compute environment for 20+ buildings. With clinics, dental offices and administrative offices.
He called to ask for help setting them back up. I asked for the money and he said “I didn’t think you were serious!”
I just hung up on him. It was glorious. Then hired his next best staff away from him. Turns out taking all the credit but not knowing how to do something can bite.
Later that year my ex-boss ran into my new/current boss at a tech conference. Had the audacity to try to bad mouth me. My boss responded “Ya, I doubt that” and walked off.
RikiWardOG@reddit
HAHA what a shit show, how does someone fuck up that bad and then not expect to pay for someone to fix it. Also, how did he not get fired for that shit jfc
Nu-Hir@reddit
The place I used to work at had a guy delete all of the user profiles on a Term Server that everyone in the company used for dispatching trucks at a trucking company. He didn't get fired over that.
Baiteh@reddit
Blimey, would you have to kill someone? 😮
Nu-Hir@reddit
Same guy was doing backup test restores to test the backups. He didn't know how to do a restore in Veeam so he googled it. He followed the instructions, but something happened and he lost connection to the server he was doing the restore for. So he tried again, following the same instructions. This time he did the test restore for the DC. Same thing happened, the server went offline. He tried to do a third server, but he couldn't log into it. That's when he called for assistance.
Turns out, instead of the instructions for restoring a file, he had the instructions for replicating a server from backup and just knocked two servers offline. Didn't get fired for this.
This one is another guy. Client called in saying they got this email from Microsoft asking him to log in and it wasn't working. So in his infinite wisdom, he decides to try clicking on the link. He tries logging in and it isn't working. So he decides to ask a tier 2 for help. He was trying to log into a phishing link using the Tenant admin account. He was let go, but it wasn't for that incident.
Feisty-Shower3319@reddit
This just kept getting worse.
The_Koplin@reddit
Long story short, I was the IT director, upper management got tired of me pushing back. Hired this guy to replace me in title not in capacity(I agreed to the change it wasn’t forced). I got to keep my pay, got to fix things, didn’t have to babysit anyone. Win/win.
Fast forward to him taking credit for everything I was doing. Fine, don’t care. The people that cared knew the real story. But he threw me under a bus when he directed me to fix a computer system and a board member wanted a cell phone setup and had to wait her turn.
When my raise needed to be approved by her, my boss agreed with her that I had not made her a priority. No kidding, I was told by him that the medical clinic patients were more important, so fix that first. So no pay increase. Because of his decisions.
I had worked there for years with no change in pay so I just found a new job at 2x the pay. Took a trip to a tech conference and got a job offer. Knew soon to be ex boss man had paper skills only and no real experience. So when I left and he had no time to learn, that was on him.
The (small) datacenter that I had just engineered and built along with a local fiber and regional network, were all just finished. I setup the VMware + SAN but didn’t document anything because I was the guy and no one asked for anything. The passwords were the defaults we used on everything!
I was no longer there but I still had a coworker that kept in touch. Apparently boss man didn’t know how to login. So he just reset them. But he didn’t know about all of the VLAN’s. He just thought it was a dumb switch. You might see where this is going.
Since it was a cluster and a pair of switches. Resetting one didn’t kill the network. No one called or complained because I designed it to take the loss. So in his mind, the reset worked…. So he did the next one. That is when the entire system gave up.
He didn’t know the default password. He didn’t see the 10,000 alerts that went to my company email, once the first switch was down. He just saw blinking lights and no calls, and stupidly kept pressing forward. Then came the fun part once the 2nd switch was offline. I had the iscsi timeouts set to allow for a bit of time before giving up. So if he had just put the tags back on the ports it would have been fine. But since he didn’t know about them. The timeout expired and the cluster collapsed.
lost_signal@reddit
Raising iSCSI APD too high (over 180 seconds) risks crashing hosts generally.
RikiWardOG@reddit
Honestly though, that's kinda hilarious. Has to have felt good to quit and make bank from leaving and then watch it burn.
The_Koplin@reddit
In some ways VERY, in other not so much. I could care less about my former boss or an agency's management that allowed that entire issue to happen. But the cluster collapse had to have had a blast radius that impacted innocent patients. Taking down, phones, electronic health records, internet access, etc. So on that side of it, that sucks, but also not my fault when I did everything I could to prevent it.
The cherry on top of that. I called up one of my former coworkers and asked about the entire thing. Got all the details, then found out they passed him up for a promotion shortly after I left. I was able to hire him away from there, he got nearly a 3x pay increase. So that agency lost two very skilled staff members only months apart.
BoysenberryDue3637@reddit
I was THE mission critical guy in the late 2010's for a Fortune 50 telecom. They laid me off but gave me 2 weeks before the layoff happened.. I was the only person who dealt with all layers of a mission critical stack - think servers/Oracle/F5/sizing. During that two weeks, I said I was available anytime to train. Manager said, we good fam.
Well fam wasn't good. A month later they replaced the customer facing web site for 50M customers. I had sizing ready to go but they didn't look at it. Did you know you can try to support 50M customers on a 4 server env? It won't work but you can try. My numbers were 64 servers.
By the time they called me, I already was working somewhere else and I would not have helped them no mater how much they paid me.
BooHorde@reddit
I was let go shortly after teaching the IT tech from our second site how the main site operates.
Months later they go ransonmwared and apparently had no usable backsups from after I left. 🤷♀️
Geno0wl@reddit
There are also likely a lot of stuff that wouldn't come up in a short 1-2 crash course because it had only happened a few times before so it wasn't front of mind during the crash course
sleepyjohn00@reddit
Learning how to run the scripts doesn’t bestow the problem-solving skills to fix things that break that can only come with experience.
RikiWardOG@reddit
yeah getting the cliff notes of something someone has specialized in for a decade generally doesn't go well lol, unless you have some talent that is super eager to prove themselves at the beginning of their career, it's just going to be pain.
Impossible_IT@reddit
Technically it is technologically, technically.
bobsmith1010@reddit
Yea don't feed him. If your not valuable to the company then anything you know isn't to. You just need to be careful as you don't want to be actively giving them ammo to fire you but you need to push back in a way that makes it seem your giving assistance to your boss without actually.
itishowitisanditbad@reddit
For a betrayal to happen, you'd need to believe there is loyalty at play.
There is not. There almost never is.
'Loyalty', as a concept, is pushed and promoted to abuse your labour. It was never for you.
Sorry. I think you know whats happening though from what you said.
AnotherCableGuy@reddit
True, he was basically asked to choose between himself or the OP.
Anlarb@reddit
Pretty sure that scenario was contrived, as a mercy to op, the decision has already been made, the water is boiling, the frog must jump.
music2myear@reddit
This is the redditest of perspectives. It is true in many cases, likely even in OPs. But there are places where loyalty does exist as more than a tool of control. Lots of places. I've worked a few of them, even been let go from some of them, but they showed their loyalty by not just cutting us loose when they had to downsize, but spending significant capital to give us the best chance of getting into a good new position quickly.
All that said, OP should be polishing their resume as of yesterday. Bad boss and clear writing on the wall? OP knows what's happening and needs to focus their efforts in the direction they already know is best.
itishowitisanditbad@reddit
Let go multiple times and still preaching how loyal they were.
Got you well trained.
Ur-Best-Friend@reddit
Maybe I'm just lucky, but in my experience that's definitely not the case. You need to stick together with your direct colleagues at work, have each others' backs, especially when it comes to situations like these. You're working IT for a non-IT company anyways, management doesn't really know shit about what you do or how much time it takes you.
hasthisusernamegone@reddit
But that doesn't protect you in a situation where the company decides that for financial reasons one of you has to go.
One of you WILL go. Chances are your boss has a family and mortgage to worry about. If asked, of course they're going to choose themselves first.
Ur-Best-Friend@reddit
Nah, I'd tell them "We absolutely need two people to do the work and keep our environment secure", and any coworker I've ever liked would have (and in a few cases had) done the same.
Just because they decided one of them has to go, doesn't mean they can't still change their minds. This is just a numbers game, if they think they can save more, they will try, if they think they can't, they might not. And if they commit, hey, make them roll the dice, I sure as hell ain't helping them fire me or a teammate.
Plus, this way if it turns out 1 person is in fact not enough to handle all the work, whoever's left gets to tell them "told you so."
Vegetable-Clock-4488@reddit (OP)
That’s what I think too. As I said, he’s not around most of the time, so if he says yes, productivity will drop, they’ll probably ask him how i was supposedly managing everything by myself without complaining.
But still, even if he can’t defend me, he could at least give me a heads-up. We’ve been working here together for 3 years. but i think i get what you guys are saying
Centimane@reddit
That would be a weird thing to ask - that's just "working".
Ok-Shower6174@reddit
Stop being his personal Wiki immediately. If he asks a technical question, point him to the existing documentation (or lack thereof). If it's not documented, tell him you're too busy handling the actual user tickets to give a tutorial. You aren't being 'difficult'; you're prioritizing the work they are still paying you to do. If he told leadership productivity won't drop, let him prove it by figuring out the 'how' on his own.
amang_admin@reddit
confront him.
OregonTechHead@reddit
Why? What's the point?
Nothing changes, and now all you have is added stress, tensions, and toxicity.
Just do your job and go home until you get laid off, or find a new one.
amang_admin@reddit
And here you are doing rants.
1z1z2x2x3c3c4v4v@reddit
Leave. ASAP. You are on a sinking ship.
CantaloupeCamper@reddit
Maybe true, but the idea that you would believe whatever rumor and not talk to your boss sounds like you should be applying anyway….
Master-IT-All@reddit
This looks like a job for:
Malicious Compliance Man!!!
vogelke@reddit
Try the Wally Reflector.
We have a service running on a Linux VM, using open source software. It works. Got a request from the marketing department to migrate the service to a paid hosted version that they used at a previous job. OK. No problem. After you create the account with the paid service you're going to want to add my team as admin users so we can support it. You're also going to want to add the accounting department as billing users so they can set up the payment portion, otherwise you're going to have to submit an expense every month.
Their response? "We'll just keep using the one you built us."
VeryRareHuman@reddit
I would wait till lay you off, then take two weeks off. Search for dwindling jobs for next two years.
Dude! Brush up resume and search jobs now. You should be doing that past two months.
AutomaticGrape9263@reddit
Dust off that ol' resume and leave asap.
Familiar_While2900@reddit
The asshole that I am, I might give false answers…. Maybe take a copy of the key manager and accidentally ‘fix’ a couple of the passwords in the production version
hasthisusernamegone@reddit
Yeah, don't do that. Ever.
BadSausageFactory@reddit
I wouldn't change anything because that's willfully malicious
but if I happen to give you a wrong answer for something or forget to explain the concept fully... well that was just a mistake
hasthisusernamegone@reddit
Whatever happened to professionalism?
BadSausageFactory@reddit
Professionalism goes out the door when your boss tries to sneakfuck your skillset.
hasthisusernamegone@reddit
And that's when a redundancy process turns into a gross misconduct dismissal. One has a payout at the end, one doesn't.
BadSausageFactory@reddit
did you even read the post? this person is describing exactly the situation where you might want to consider the difference between documentation and training skillsets. Do you need the admin login for our MDM or do I need to teach you the basic concepts of device management?
you can argue this from the point of an ethical white knight but I think your high horse just shat on the rug
Ape_Escape_Economy@reddit
That’s doesn’t make you an asshole, it makes you unemployable.
OregonTechHead@reddit
Who would've been part of those conversations and also dumb enough to gossip?
Same advice I would've given you 4 months ago. Find a new job.
Inn0centSinner@reddit
How many employee company is this? The better question for your manager by whoever asked it is, "If he leaves, can you maintain the infrastructure, and fix things that break?"
I'm in the same boat as you. Just me and an IT Manager. The difference is my company is months away from closing its doors and I might either be gone before my Manager goes or we both go together when the doors finally close at the bitter end.
mdervin@reddit
OP, I'm going to be real with you.
First off, the Tech is literally the easiest part of our jobs.
In addition, they will keep the IT team a bit removed from layoffs because there's nothing more dangerous than a sole IT guy. If you go on Vacation and the internet goes out? There's nobody who can even think about fixing it.
In most downsizing companies, the IT leadership is the first to go out of the door. Out goes the CIO/CTO/DirOfIT/IT Manager and the Sysadmins & Helpdesk people start answering to either Operations/Administration/Finance depending on who's losing the coinflip.
There are two reasons why they would let you go over your manager:
1) Your manager is doing some things that you don't know how to do (networking, ecomm, reporting, servers, cloud, Business Apps).
2) You need to do some serious self-reflection about how your co-workers and management see you. If you have a manager who "most of the time is not around", "not that good" and you are the one that actually works with the users. Why are they choosing him over you? You cost less than him. It's not about money. If you want a successful career in tech, you need to answer that question.
justaguyonthebus@reddit
Take a couple of weeks off to remind them how important you are.
SevaraB@reddit
He’s not technically wrong, but the “correct” answer would have been to reframe the question, which is the wrong one to ask. Your presence does not add to productivity, it is a guard rail against productivity dropping. A better answer would have been “not until it does drop. And when it does drop due to technical difficulties, it will drop more, or it will stay dropped for longer, or both.”
I wouldn’t take it personally. When managers ask ea h other questions like this, it usually means the business is dangerously unhealthy, possibly close to a death spiral. When critical support personnel start getting laid off, it’s less “will you get laid off,” and more “when will you get laid off”- better to walk away on your own terms as long as you’ve got enough savings to not need to bank on unemployment. If you don’t have 6 months of your salary banked up, or if it’s less than 6 months cost of living, just ride it out til the layoff and ride out the unemployment.
mahsab@reddit
How do you know? You made a story about OPs importance without any details at all.
SevaraB@reddit
Did I? Or did I just describe the bare minimum value prop of having someone dedicated to technical support? I wrote a job description, not a performance review.
mahsab@reddit
Well, yeah, but the boss' question was whether OP can be fired and you would answer with a job description.
turudd@reddit
You can refuse to train your replacement when the writing is on the wall. I’ve done it: “really when you hire someone they should have the capacity to learn a new environment and workflows”. Like what are they gonna do? Fire you?
In this case the boss is your replacement. Just say “I’d love to help you out, but I’m swamped right now with priority issues” or something like “I’m actually working on a document that explains that specific issue and the fixes”(then hopefully be let go before you actually write anything)
If you know you’re being fired, best thing to do is just absolutely sandbag your last few weeks. Get paid for doing as little as possible.
When I get tired of a job I do this as well, find a new job and then instead of quitting the old one just let it fizzle out, get put on a PIP. Collect an extra pay until they fire me. Only really works for remote jobs tho
NovaRyen@reddit
Tell him to check the documentation :)
vCentered@reddit
I think you're worried about the wrong thing. Maybe he's a dick. What does it matter? It sounds like the company is sinking anyway.
Even if you survived this round, would you survive the next?
GnarlyCharlie88@reddit
If you do get let go, block homeboy's number when he inevitably starts to blow up your phone for help. Let the ship sink.
ExceptionEX@reddit
I tent to like a good nice long vacation in situations like this.
views_from_the_van@reddit
Been thru that I was the sole IT person, they held onto me for a year after they started lay offs & I was tipped off when checking my "boss" the controller's calendar. Luckily I started sending my resume out a couple months before. I was with this company 16 years. The company had many legal issues and went under but ownership reached out to me a year after I was let go asking if I wanted to help out as an hourly employee. My loyalty was long gone I had a new role I loved and I heard they stiffed other companies payments so was smart enough to not trust they would pay me for helping them out. Get that resume together and out and move on. I wish I had done it sooner.
Thecardinal74@reddit
My advice is start seeking interviews while continuing to give 100%.
If nothing happens at this job and you get a better offer, great.
If something does happen then you are ahead of the game in getting something new.
But don’t blow your good reputation over bitterness
6SpeedBlues@reddit
Pro tip: Always go through life with your eyes open. Always be looking at the job market and the only way to respond to someone asking if you're looking for a new opportunity is "I'm always open to having a conversation... What did you want to discuss?"
Change can be hard, but your number one advocate who will ALWAYS look out for you is you yourself.
First_Slide3870@reddit
Get off reddit and start looking for your next job dude, business is business and we are all just numbers on a spreadsheet. Its corporate man, we all gotta play the game. If someone had to throw someone else under the bus to keep their job, I would bet 9/10 people would.
zipline3496@reddit
Firstly, you haven’t been betrayed because there is no loyalty. A company wouldn’t so much as piss on you if you were on fire.
Second, your boss is making career moves to ensure he stays regardless if you do or not. It’s up to you how you take that. Personally, I’m brushing up the resume and avoiding any and all training for that person.
It’s not your responsibility to fall on this sword and ensure the continuity of IT at this company. Focus on you now.
fingermeal@reddit
at least you might be able to get unemployment if you get let go. I would aim for that, take a few months off work while searching for a new job. Well, i would still get started on that right now. But I would take unemployment as a much needed vacation while searching for a better job.
Flaky_Key3363@reddit
All the advice about prepping your resume/LinkedIn profile/escape path is on target. I would add one more thing.
Act as if you've been laid off, meaning spend as much time as possible tracking down your next job. This will mean reducing your level of effort at work so you can put that energy into the job hunt.
Need to do something related to the job hunt during business hours, bring your own laptop into the office. I'm sure you already know this because you probably have a policy against it, but don't use any company resources for your job hunt.
Best of luck, I hope you find something soon.
LibtardsAreFunny@reddit
i can't believe you don't already have resumes out there or already left. The writing is on the wall in a major way. F that manager. He's looking out for his own ass and you are in between him and possible unemployment as well.
RansomStark78@reddit
Yeah, dont teach
Gunny2862@reddit
From experience, never be the last person left standing when layoffs start. You'll eventually get cut after you've been overworked to death.
ferryboi17@reddit
If they ask you tech questions baffle them
With science, bend the truth a lot.
Bright_Arm8782@reddit
"Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."
My advice is "Fly, you fool!", loyalty is all well and good but if your manager is put in a place of him or me surviving then you can't blame him too much for making sure he survives.
cmack@reddit
Never give af about a company because they'll never give a fuck about you. You were not betrayed. You've been used from the very start.
poro_8015@reddit
start updating the resume now
achristian103@reddit
You're gonna be let go.
Start looking ASAP
djgizmo@reddit
be too busy to train anyone.
Appropriate-Fish2374@reddit
Read between the lines and start looking.
The fact that he's not that good doesn't help you.
He's not interested in being good, and he probably knows that he isn't very good, but he'll keep his job until he becomes good enough or a real problem, which will take months in either case.
WhoThenDevised@reddit
Leave. Shape your own future, don't wait for them to do it. It's just work. There are no friends in the workplace, only people you do or don't get along with for a while. I've been in this situation twice in my career. The people who swear they got your back are the first to steal your office chair and claim your parking spot.
Carefu68@reddit
OP, I feel you. However, in my view, thinking from his angle, he probably has his own reasons to show that he is competent and he needs this job (that’s why the politics here).
Anyway, start looking (if u need a job). Its not easy for you everytime he looks for you to “teach him” how to do certain things. I dont have a good solution here, but act “blur” would be a good start from now on. Just tell him you not sure as well and “ask” if he would like us to “study” together or something.
After-Vacation-2146@reddit
It’s just a business decision. Work on your resume, put feelers out and start interviewing, and if you are laid off then take the severance and cut costs to make it go as long as necessary.
stxonships@reddit
A company is not your family. It is just a place where you work. Most of the time, if people leave, you will never see them again.
Just prepare your CV, and start looking for other jobs. Make it inpersonal.
DrStalker@reddit
Just respond to his questions with "I'd escalate that to my manager."
Oli_Picard@reddit
Prep your CV, turn on looking for new roles on LinkedIn for recruiters and get job hunting. No point staying around for that kind of behaviour, you’re worth more. Yes the job market is utter ass right now but just get that CV polished and start looking.