Developer embarrasses new boss and gets foolish "no overtime" policy overturned by adhering strictly to it: 'Well, it's 4:30. That's my 8 hours. I'll see you tomorrow'

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Oct 3, 2024 12:00 PM EDT

Sometimes you can't just tell people things—they won't listen. It takes actually experiencing the negative result that you were warning them about for them to admit they were wrong. Predictably, this happens all the time with unreasonable egotistical bosses who are eager to prove themselves…

This developer, working for a financial services company, developed various tools and scripts to compensate for the company's other shortcomings, sometimes inadequate customer solutions. This saw them working consistent overtime in order to keep up with the critical tasks that were essentially keeping the company afloat.

This went on for some time, and after a year or so of doing this, a new boss arrived on the scene with swagger. As is tradition, without waiting to assess the situation at play, the new boss declared that overtime was banned, imposing a strict ruling that all but prohibited it.

As luck would have it, a critical system failure occurred right at the end of the developer's normal hours. They adhered to the new policy and left promptly, despite knowing that they would have normally been able to solve the problem. This left the organization without data backups overnight.

The next day the policy was predictably and rightfully reversed.