'[They] didn't want to pay me a fair wage': Horrifically underpaid IT guy leaves and costs the company $40 Million

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Mar 8, 2023 12:00 PM EST

This underpaid IT professional waited years for fair treatment from his bosses. The work doubled and then tripled, but the pay never reflected his efforts. He wouldn't prove how essential he was to the company until he left… and cost them $40 Million.

Redditor u/slw_motion_trainwrck shared this story on the r/antiwork subreddit. u/slw_motion_trainwrck's story centers on their experience working for a factory in the Southern United States. The factory was based in "a very small farming town of about 3,000 people," which was utterly devoid of anyone with the IT experience necessary to keep the factory ticking. The worker started on a contracted rate of 29k annually but worked so many hours that they weren't even making close to what they should have been. Meanwhile, his only other team member was being paid 3x that rate. After the coworker was promoted and not replaced, he approached the ex-worker-now-boss for a raise. The offering was laughable, so he began making plans to leave. The worker found a new job that doubled his pay "for a tiny fraction of the workload" and handed in his notice. The company realized how valuable he was when they were utterly unable to replace him.

This would set in motion the mess that would soon follow.

For more stories from r/antiwork, check out this recent story where a systems engineer found an export of every employee's salary and sought advice regarding what they should do with the information.