Senior engineer’s ex-company loses 8x his salary after denying him a well-earned 15% raise: ‘They now need 8 people to do the work I was doing alone’ – FAIL Blog

His boss denied a 15% raise to match his coworker’s wages, so in retaliation, he started working on his own time and at his own pace. Upset with his amended work ethic, management fired the one man who knew how to use their operating system, resulting in a total loss of more than 8x his original salary. 

Oops!

With his severance pay on top of that, this upper management team realized the error of their ways. Penny-wise but pound-foolish, this company learned the hard way that senior expertise is well-worth a menial raise to keep the company afloat and out of the red. 

Besides, a happy employee is a hard-working employee. 

When a worker feels like their job is meaningful, for both the company and themselves, they’re naturally more inclined to go above and beyond. It’s simply psychology. Yet, management likes to toe the line between marginal financial savings and employee happiness, hoping to cut corners in their accounting departments, while conversely stretching the workforce thin. 

Alas, it seems that when a worker is aware that they’re being underpaid, they are not as motivated as they once were, especially if it’s painfully obvious that their coworkers are being paid more for the same job. Now, that just ain’t right! 

This man was once a pivotal employee at his (now ex) company. 

He was the only worker in the office with the technical knowledge, ability, and experience operating their computer program for client retention and interfacing. As technical as it was, upper management, who repeatedly struggled to convert a document to a PDF, thought that this man’s position was frivolous and easily replaceable. At least, this must have been what they were thinking, because they treated him as if he were a lowly intern grabbing coffee during lunch who had zero intimate knowledge of the business’s operations. 

Well, they realized far too late that this employee was one-in-a-million, and when he was gone, the accountants looked fondly back at a simpler time when they should have just given him a 15% raise instead of hiring 8 other inexperienced dingalings to take over his workload. 

Sometimes, that one employee is worth a dime in a dozen, and it’s up to management to recognize that before it’s too late.