'Dude straight up presented my entire deck at the meeting': Manager steals employee's presentation word-for-word and passes it off as his own, gets his comeuppance when VP finds out

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JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor
Nov 10, 2025 10:00 AM EST
A group of people watch a boss's presentation.

His boss passed his work off as his own. But the grift didn't last for long.

Stealing is never okay, especially in a work setting. Your work is all you have in that space, so nobody should try to take it away from you. If someone takes credit for your work, what is your recourse? You'd hate to throw someone under the bus, but sometimes you have to be assertive when it comes to protecting your job. You hope, more than anything, that you're never put in that position. 

But sometimes folks will have moments of weakness where they will do anything to get ahead, including taking credit for something that isn't their own. Didn't we all get enough fear struck into us as schoolchildren about plagiarism? Didn't we all learn that using something without a proper citation would lead to a fate worse than… anything? Apparently not. When you leave school, the rules get a little more fast and loose, leaving plenty of room for people to take advantage of others. That's what happened to this employee who found out the hard way that he couldn't trust his manager. But revenge was coming quicker than he could expect. 

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  • A group of people at work listen to a boss's presentation.
    via Unsplash+ (Yunus Tuğ)

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • When this employee put together a presentation for his company, he assumed that he would get credit for his work. But when he showed up to a meeting, he learned that this was unfortunately not the case. Read on to see what happened in this story and decide what you would have done. 

  • My boss stole my work and I let him get roasted for it...

    so this happened a few months ago. i work in product for a mid sized tech company, nothing fancy. i was leading a small internal project that basically fixed a mess that'd been costing us $$ every month. spent weeks working late, cleaning up data, building reports, the whole deal.
    via u/Fantastic-Nerve7068
  • the day before the all-hands, my manager (let's call him steve) suddenly asks me to "send over a quick summary" of what i did. cool, i think he's just reviewing. turns out dude straight up presented my entire deck at the meeting.... same slides, same words, didn't even change the file name.
    via u/Fantastic-Nerve7068
  • the kicker? he said "my team helped a bit." bro. helped a bit? i am the team. i didn't say anything right then, but a few weeks later our VP asked me for some follow up numbers. steve was on vacation, so i sent her the updated dashboard and casually mentioned "oh yeah, here's the model i built from that analysis i shared earlier." she goes "wait, you built that?"
    via u/Fantastic-Nerve7068
  • long story short, VP wasn't thrilled. next review cycle, guess who didn't get credit for "strategic contributions"? not me, not this time. what ive learnt is that document everything, keep receipts, and let management (like steve) hang themselves with their own powerpoint
    via u/Fantastic-Nerve7068

  • Commenters chimed in with their takes.

    chaosmetroid · 10h ago Everything I built, even code. I hide my name somewhere. Heck I even have disclaimer within everything what I have built and done. Even if is hidden. That way when someone say something. I can point out the proof of it.
    via u/chaosmetroid
  • I ain't no dev/software engineer, but I make sure it's my work, my code if I made something.
    via u/chaosmetroid
  • SarcasticServal 9h ago . ohh I had one of those bosses. She left her questions in the comments on the slides and forgot to delete/hide them when presenting,
    via u/SarcasticServal
  • Pseudothink • 10h ago Steve sounds more like a "Rob" to me.
    via u/Pseudothink
  • Procctor 10h ago I just made a presentation that looked okay on the surface but when you really dug into it, it was just Al slop and many parts made no sense at all. Won't steal my work again
    via u/Procctor
  • Hondo_Bogart • 9h ago As a manager I make sure that everyone's contribution is fully recognised. Though as a manager he has the right to say his team built it, but poor form if he made out that he did it himself.
    via u/Hondo_Bogart
  • Killathulu. 9h ago so, steve did nothing but steal your work for several months, whilst collecting a manager's salary, and didn't get fired? guy is a genius, I hope you took notes
    via u/Killathulu
  • Department_Silver • 9h ago God your vp sounds like my old "boss" (Ipo iykyk) in the navy, all the work we would do he would run to the higher ups (chief) and tell him "yeah so I just did this and this) WITH US NEXT TO HIM he never did fucking anything, dude was a complete clown dick rider.
    via u/Department_Silver
  • Beneficial-Date2025 2h ago . I had a manager like this early in my career (he was also a nepo hire) and I learned very early to password lock my detailed files so he would try to get by presenting an unlocked summary but our board would ask to see the details and he'd have to call
    via u/Beneficial-Date2025
  • me into the meeting to unlock the file. First time, I said "whoops didn't realized I didn't unlock my file for you before you presented". Second time they all looked at me realizing I knew what I was doing. Got a promotion shortly after that
    via u/Beneficial-Date2025
  • TurnkeyLurker · 8h ago • long story short, VP wasn't thrilled. next review cycle, guess who didn't get credit for "strategic contributions"? not me, not this time. So...you didn't get credit, but the boss somehow got roasted? I don't get how that works to your advantage.
    via u/TurnkeyLurker
  • whatjusthappenedt... 4h ago The classic 'borrowed credit' move! Good thing you kept receipts, though. Sounds like Steve might have accidentally set himself up for that roast. Lesson learned: document everything, and make sure you own your work next time.
    via u/whatjusthappenedtous
  • . Lazy EyeMcfly • 19m ago Almost had the same thing happen to me. My company uses a well known virtual assistant. We upgraded from a simple setup to a LLM intergraded system that needed lots of custom code. I wrote hundreds of lines of code over the course of a few weeks and had it all organized with detailed notes in the code for what does what.
    via u/LazyEyeMcfly
  • My director wanted to present it and asked me to do so. Last minute he said he was gonna do it and I just knew he was gonna take credit for it. So I went in and removed ALL the comments and cleaned it up to look nice. Then gave him a high level overview of the code in a word doc that unless you wrote the code you would not be able to read a part then go to the section it talked about.
    via u/LazyEyeMcfly
  • He fumbled the meeting hard, I got called in the next day to give the presentation and surprise, all my notes were back in the code and I breezed through it right in front of him. Hahahahaha he now manages a much less important team with less impact on the business.
    via u/LazyEyeMcfly
  • YoungCashRegister... . 5h ago At least the VP caught on eventually, even if it took your review cycle to do it. Documenting everything is solid advice. Also worth keeping a "wins" folder with timestamps and emails showing your work. Makes it way harder for people like Steve to pull this off twice.
    via u/YoungCashRegister69
  • Weird-Nothingness 4h ago . I had my fair share with toxic management this year. We were a situation where she wanted to take credit for all my work and I was accused for any fallbacks.
    via u/Weird-Nothingness
  • This was driving me nuts. because she wasn't even allowing me to present my freaking reports that were based on the data model that I had developed on my own initiative.
    via u/Weird-Nothingness
  • As you said, I let her hung with her own rope. A new upper management took over and I just gave her space for bootlicking and flexing. After she was done then I presented my work like nothing happened.
    via u/Weird-Nothingness
  • We have to learn how to play the internal politics games. Unfortunately most people in tech functions are typically very bad with politics because we are introverts (and have actual work to deliver). Either way, she was fired last month and I got a raise.
    via u/Weird-Nothingness
  • Mistaamewmew 2h ago You lucked out that your boss cared. Most of the time they don't care because they pull the same stunt with their underlings.
    via u/Mistaamewmew
  • A group of people at work listen to a boss's presentation.
    via Unsplash+ (Yunus Tuğ)

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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boss antiwork workplace-stories toxic-workplace stealing job bosses work coworkers plagiarism working reddit story toxic-boss workplace reddit thread bad bosses Reddit toxic-work-environment
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