I’m a sr software developer at a consultancy firm where I now build software for different companies. It’s a pretty sweet gig, good pay, company has been full time remote since the late 90’s. Not the most exciting work in the world but it’s work.

My previous position I was a director of engineering of a tech startup. I was actually in line to become CTO. I was employee number 1 on this company and had been there for 7 years. I got removed from my position due to being a good communist and being betrayed by one of my workers.

While running my team I noticed a lot of inefficiencies in the way our team operated. There was a major bottleneck in people needing my help my approval my guidance. Except I had my own work to be doing as well. I started looking into alternatives and how we could fix it when I came across something called Mob programming. Basically instead of everyone working on their own tasks everyone works on one task together. We all sit on a zoom call and take turns typing while everyone else discusses the problem and provides solutions. Every 15 minutes we switch positions and every hour we take a 15 minute break. By elevating the problem from your mind to the collectives mind we are able to make continuous progress on problems quickly. Some people were looking for bugs or optimizations while others took a first pass at solving the problem so our code we were writing was optimized and written to best practices as best as possible. I did this on a two week trial without permission of my company and it worked amazingly we never were so productive. So I told my bosses about it and got the ok to keep doing this.

What I didn’t tell my company is that this was extremely draining and tiring to do. And if I find an efficiency for the workers under me I’m not going to pass the benefit to the company I’m going to be a good communist and pass it to the workers. I instituted 6 hour days for my team. We did this for a year and my team loved it. We put in a solid work and got done early and felt true team cohesion because while we were working we were also chatting and joking and laughing. Work was fun. We called it The Dream and it was fucking good.

Until C came along. C was a sr developer who joined my team who was originally very cool and a great addition to the team and a natural leader. I had told C that when I become CTO I’d tap him to become Director of Engineering. C was a black man and so this was something I was proud of, because not only was he the most qualified but it would put a POC in one of the highest positions in the company. It honestly stings how excited and how much hope I had in C because he betrayed me hard.

My boss gave me a deadline to accomplish a task in 3 months. Realistically we would have needed 5 but I calculated that if everyone pushed hard and we temporarily changed from the 6 hour day to the 8 hour day and if I gave up all of my nights and weekends (me not my team I never once asked for overtime from my guys) I could do it. In return for making the deadline my boss said we could run a trial of a 4 day work week (as in work 32 hours instead of 40) with no pay cut.

I told the team about this and there was hesitation for sure. It was hard but I explained how I’d shoulder the overtime and that we’d just need 2 more hours a day, the original 8 we were supposed to work. Most people accepted this. But not C. He went off on me and really scared the rest of the team off from feeling like we could do it. Saying oh we are being set up to fail etc etc. I told him that next time I need him to come to me with those concerns instead of upsetting the team like that. A few days later it happened again he was telling everyone how unsafe it was to be working this hard (8 hour days of grueling… Web development?? It’s hard but unsafe? Yeah no) so once again I told him to come to me with this stuff instead of fear mongering the team.

Motherfucker reported me to the federal government saying I was union busting and stopping him from discussing working conditions with his co-workers. An investigation from the labor board was launched and now I had to come clean to my bosses about everything. The 6 hour days included.

The company removed me from leadership immediately and threatened to not offer legal resources should the labor investigation turn into a lawsuit and would leave me out to dry. Luckily that didn’t happen and I was able to move to my new position without any issue.

It really hurt a lot because A.) I put everything I had into this company for 7 years. Nights weekends and holidays. My wife missed out on so much of my time and attention. Missed and cancelled date nights because something came up. And I was left to dry. And B.) Everything I did I did to protect my workers and make their lives easier. I only took the position because the last leader (the #2 employee) was so incompetent he got himself fired and it was either I step up or someone is brought it from outside the company. I had no desire to be a manager. I’m an anarchist for gods sake. But I took to position because I knew that me as a leader would look out for my guys better than any capitalist would. Most of my team saw and appreciated that and we had a great relationship where I never had to order anyone. We worked together. I consulted their opinions and we came to agreements. I tried to run my team as egalitarian as possible. I acted more as a spokesperson than a boss. I tried to be the best boss I could since not having a boss wasn’t possible. And to have one of my guys backstab me like that and burn everything to the ground fucking hurt like hell. I almost gave up on leftism and embraced the khaki and puff vest world of startup bros. That’s why I went for my current job. I clock in I clock out. I’m not in charge of anyone.

I do miss start ups though. In my spare time I’m starting to work on various startups that can more or less run themselves once set up and would only require bug fixes and occasionally new features since B2B. The goal here is to earn enough money to switch from senior dev work to junior dev work since I can knock that out in like 2-3 hours and reclaim the rest of my day. Ideally I can make enough to survive off of those SaaS apps enough to not have to work anywhere else at all. Most ideal would be to grow large enough that I require starting a cooperative to maintain it all.