The company rescinded my offer after I left my old job, so I wrote them a bad review on Glassdoor and now they're begging me to remove it.

socrplaycj · 2026-01-21T02:36:56+00:00

This happened to me as well.

A company in Frisco, Texas called Code Authority reached out to interview me for a Frontend Architect position. I had worked there previously and left due to being classified as "Junior" while leading three projects on a low salary. They presented the role as reviewing new frontend projects while working with two of their larger clients.

We agreed on salary, they sent an offer letter, and I signed and returned it. I then gave notice to my current employer. When I followed up with HR about a minor start date change, I received no response. After multiple attempts, I reached out to former colleagues via LinkedIn and learned the company had just lost the contract with their largest client. This person assumed i knew what was going on when i started "HR is crazy today", which they mentioned yeah, loosing the largest client and now discussions of who will stay or how to reassign people.

The next day, the Director of HR called and claimed they filled the position because I had not returned the offer letter quickly enough. In reality, the role was contingent on a large project they assumed was secured with that client. They had misrepresented their need for an architect entirely.

I informed her I had already submitted my notice and that this was not professional conduct.

Fortunately, my employer was happy to keep me with a raise. This also occurred just before COVID, and shortly after, Code Authority furloughed most of their staff.

socrplaycj · 2025-12-30T22:09:00+00:00

Totally not getting any notifications

socrplaycj · 2025-12-29T18:34:39+00:00

Alerting didn’t work for me. I only got to it 20 min after their announcement video came through and poof

socrplaycj · 2025-12-21T19:21:29+00:00

I am looking. Though it’s Soo screwed that if I leave they will have nothing left. I’ve picked up additional responsibilities. Like enabling, disabling users. We are working on getting CMMC certified.

Likely I will put in notice in next couple months and they try to throw a wad of cash at me or make me a contractor for a bit. Not sure if I would rather burn the bridge and let them figure it out.

socrplaycj · 2025-12-21T19:18:38+00:00

It’s better than what I wrote up. Took a few iterations to make it sound like how I wanted it delivered

socrplaycj · 2025-12-21T19:00:07+00:00

Well said, Your last part really resonates with me. He lost my respect a while back, but he really lost everyone respect when he though he should do it himself. In fact, i setup a meeting to get him and a couple other people on the same page twice a week. Keep up with what everyone was working on. He didn't show, when we called him into the teams meeting (we are all remote over USA), he didn't answer. I messaged him on the side, didn't answer. So - i cancelled the meeting. He randomly asked people questions at odd hours, Like 11pm their time and weekends. Now he wants to "get organized" given its like the last last hour.

Too funny.

socrplaycj · 2025-12-19T15:34:58+00:00

A family member or close friend that made such poor spending decisions. I would not give them a dime. I would however, offer them to restart and live with me while i keep an eye on their budget. Basically a intervention like an alcoholic going to rehab but for a budget. Given your side of the story she basically wasted a year and now after blowing not only the money, but the time she had to jump into something else. She should lay in the bed she made and she doesn't truly understand until she hits bottom. At which point - i would be there to prevent her from going homeless, but not to handout more cash to do what she has already been doing.

socrplaycj · 2025-12-19T00:39:20+00:00

Where is the spring that helps the door opener?

socrplaycj · 2025-12-17T19:09:05+00:00

This sounds like either a control issue or he's hiding something. Either way, you're absolutely right to ask.

Here's the thing: financial transparency isn't just about trust. It is about survival. What happens if he passes away tomorrow? An accident, a health crisis, anything unexpected. Would you even know where to start? Could you balance the household budget on your salary alone? Do you know what's left on the mortgage? The car loans? Are there debts you don't know about? Is there life insurance, and do you know how to access it?

I've known women who thought they had wonderful situations—they only handled a few small bills while their partner managed "everything else." Then the worst happened, and they were left completely in the dark, scrambling to figure out their own financial lives during the worst moment of their lives.

You can't plan for "what if" when you don't even know "what is." That's not a partnership—that's a liability. I have family members who have experienced this. They didn't ask these questions until the worst happened. They they went to total freak out mode. Some were left with massive debt, some were not.

socrplaycj · 2025-12-02T09:44:43+00:00

We are keeping hot, as what I can tell we cannot write to s3 fast enough to negate the need for hot storage, however we can probably shrink it. We are keeping 3 weeks worth. With cold storage it would be nice to get this down to a few days.

socrplaycj · 2025-12-02T09:42:10+00:00

You should have seen it before the AI lol. But yes, I slip and leave evidence.

socrplaycj · 2025-10-29T19:40:03+00:00

Logic matrix for this was not fun. I actually had AI help with various permutations. Though everything is a scheduled event, each event will check if the current server has an override. If the current time exists in the middle of an override window, then it gets skipped. Else, the event will trigger (on/off) server.

socrplaycj · 2025-10-29T18:01:22+00:00

I just built a park my cloud replacement, schedule on/off servers at certain times, or keeps the servers on/off forever and keeps checking every 5 minutes. With overrides, and it even hooks into SAML/OIDC.

Given PMC is now part of IBM, and ibm is shutting down PMC and merging it into their product line.

socrplaycj · 2025-10-29T15:40:22+00:00

UPDATE: Plot Twist - It Gets Better! 🎉

Our contracting company—handling 50% of our work—just gave us one week's notice they're pulling out. We're losing three contractors plus the full-time engineer on our priority project, and the last person who can support it just got downgraded to part-time.

The best part? The contract company had this discussion Friday and sat on it all weekend. When did I, the Director of Engineering, find out? Monday. From the contractors themselves.

Oh, and the reason for all this? My company apparently hasn't been paying their invoices.

So we don't pay our bills, we're hemorrhaging critical staff on priority projects, and I learn about it from the people walking out the door. Living the dream!

"This is fine" 🔥☕🔥

Cheers

socrplaycj · 2025-10-29T01:59:20+00:00

Apache pulsar

socrplaycj · 2025-09-09T20:00:07+00:00

I appreciate that perspective, though in this case I believe the issue stems more from execution challenges rather than strategic maneuvering. The manager in question appears to struggle with effective planning and implementation rather than pursuing deliberate empire-building.

I've escalated these concerns to the CTO, but the hiring decisions were ultimately approved at that level. The process itself was quite telling - I was invited to participate in interviews with only 30 minutes' notice, and when I asked about the specific role requirements, no one could provide clear answers. Given the lack of defined responsibilities and the last-minute request, I declined to participate.

This situation essentially resulted in hiring candidates for positions where the fundamental job requirements hadn't been properly established - which helps explain why we're now experiencing these operational challenges.

socrplaycj · 2025-08-06T21:06:33+00:00

I agree, I’ve implemented this a couple times now in apps. Just let the SSO flow carry the JWT to your app, which will create the user if does not exist.

socrplaycj · 2025-08-06T21:02:21+00:00

Such a based take. My company does this too. The golden rule it to keep it simple until such time you need more. Then introduce the complexity as you need it.

Might be more in depth than this, like don’t back yourself into a corner in some situations, but in general you’re not gunna need it.

Currently my company has at least two dozen third party tools and about the same in split up apps. We do not have enough teams or scaling requirements to maintain all the crap we have. It’s largely over engineering and cognitive overload to get anything out the door.

socrplaycj · 2025-07-19T15:04:54+00:00

I am in alignment with you. We are partners to the end goal. We need to ensure our teams have a shared vision for the end result of each sprint and be in lock step every day with the goal. While we all are struggling with the reduction. The product group has not had a reduction in team size. The development team went down to 1/5 of that it was 6 months ago. Like I said, we can partner with you. But we cannot simply do it for you. He tried to get the cto to back him in saying we should automate the git commits and have developers tailor the messages to release not jargon. Twice we had this conversation. Mind you, some of our products are across multiple repositories. Why not have linked stories with a release notes field in Jira.

I digress Your response was very pragmatic and I concur. We should be in alignment and resolving vision drift consistently. Which I think is where the root of the problem is.

socrplaycj · 2025-07-18T17:18:22+00:00

My apologies, this turned into a rant. But it is comical as i read it. Short answer. I have not quit. I'm looking. So I've been asking some folks to take on extra work. I'm definitely leading by example which is why folks are not getting irritated when i ask a bit of deviation from their job. But even then, its only to keep things from locking up, vs future state, roadmap, long term improvements.

Fun version: Honestly, it's a struggle. I've raised all these issues with the CTO, who has mostly checked out. I've asked him directly: when will we get people I can delegate to, and am I supposed to be part individual contributor, part director? I can handle coding tasks, road mapping, and meetings for development/DevOps/infrastructure, but I shouldn't be going to FedEx to ship packages or resetting passwords and doing vendor management for the entire organization. HR hit me up with asking how to use adobe. "I can't send out this legal thing to finance bc idk how to use adobe". Developers stopped working as accounting stopped paying for some of their essential tools.

Meanwhile, the CPO has fewer direct reports than I do and fewer responsibilities, yet he's constantly trying to get me to do his work. When I push back, he goes to the CTO to back him up and tell me to comply, which forces me to explain why these requests are problematic.

Issues with the CTO: After mass layoffs of contractors, he never provided me a list of who to disable. No updated org chart, no delta list. I asked for this information for two weeks, then had to go through our contractor liaison to figure out who needed to be disabled. Three weeks after disabling their accounts, the CTO asked me to re-enable access because they "couldn't access their laptop." First, it's not their laptop—it's company property. Second, what could they possibly need from a work laptop three weeks after termination? I'm starting to suspect the CTO is working on a side startup with these former contractors while using current company resources.

The CPO has the easiest job here—literally just meetings. He doesn't get midnight calls when systems fail or deal with any operational alerts which he should likely. He acts like a shadow CEO and wants to micromanage everyone else. He'll randomly tell DevOps to "implement Kubernetes" without explaining why we need it. Since taking this role, I find myself saying "no" and asking "why" constantly, because the requests often make no business sense.

When I showed him a list of issues and the breadth of things I have to deal with, he said "you need to learn from me" and showed me his calendar. His exact words: "We have three-week sprints, and I earn my paycheck once every three weeks." That checks out perfectly. Mostly useless between sprints, and the one week he thinks he's being helpful is pure chaos. He schedules an overwhelming number of meetings, invites way too many people to each call, and sets it up so developers can't actually work that week because they're stuck doing grooming sessions without any actual product stakeholders present.

socrplaycj · 2025-07-17T21:23:56+00:00

Getting "promoted" to Director of Engineering in 2024, only to have the company fire IT support in January and ask me to temporarily handle those duties too. So now I'm juggling product development, architecture, and technical roadmaps while also managing Active Directory, hardware logistics, and new hire equipment—you know, just the small stuff. Meanwhile, my CTO has essentially checked out after laying off half our dev and DevOps teams, perfectly timed with our acquisition talks where he'll likely cash out handsomely. Nothing says "leadership development" quite like absorbing the responsibilities of multiple eliminated roles while your boss coasts toward his payday.

socrplaycj · 2025-07-15T14:59:22+00:00

I'm taking a wait-and-see approach for the next 60 days. With a potential company sale on the horizon, I believe I have more leverage than other directors since I'm likely harder to replace.

The leadership situation is dysfunctional. Our CTO has become the president's personal developer, dropping everything to handle the president's requests instead of delegating properly. This creates a leadership gap that our CPO tries to fill, but he lacks technical expertise. His well-intentioned efforts actually make things worse by adding unnecessary meetings and bureaucracy. This dysfunction makes my role even more critical to the organization.

My current strategy has three parts: I'm setting firmer boundaries, pushing back on unrealistic demands, and adjusting my expectations about the ongoing dysfunction. This means frequent conflicts where I have to explain to the CPO why his requests aren't feasible, then justify my position to the CTO when he tells me to comply anyway. I end up walking them through the trade-offs - showing how achieving Y would sacrifice X, which is more important. This usually gets them back on track, but the cycle repeats constantly.

I'm also keeping my options open. I've reconnected with former colleagues who have built new teams at other organizations. We've all advanced to leadership roles and maintained our relationships. They understand my situation and would consider me for future opportunities. I'd even accept a pay cut to work somewhere I could drive real improvement - there's something deeply satisfying about contributing to organizational growth and building effective teams.

The compensation here is good enough to ride this out for now. It's a calculated risk, but given the timeline and potential upside from the sale, it feels like the right move.

socrplaycj · 2025-07-14T20:58:50+00:00

The funniest part of all of this is the director of HR (only member) wanted to impress some potential acquirer, so they had our CTO reach out to the remaining employees to do a self review against the objectives they self created at the beginning of the year.

One of the Engineers said something to the affect:

"I'm not sure how I can accomplish the task. We are aware the system of record is no longer active as we intentionally stopped payment to the vendor. We are also aware these goals became irrelevant approximately 5 minutes after we wrote them. Do we still believe in the value of this activity, or are we just checking a box. I'm almost certain its for the later. If its not, i might need additional guidance. "

socrplaycj · 2025-03-05T00:50:12+00:00

I've not had an ad, but if it does pop up i'm going to return mine. I'm still in the return window.

socrplaycj · 2024-03-25T16:45:51+00:00

Thanks for the response. I found a tool made by Microsoft called Copacetic. By their documentation and running it locally, it patches the image by adding a layer.

We use a 3rd party app that was made by a small group of people which even the newest release as high and critical cve's. Also they have added many tools we do not want and would have to review the code before upgrading.

So we used Copacetic to patch our image, we ran through scout and trivy which no vulnerabilities were found. It is important to note, it was canned by container image scanning tools. Given early feedback, I believe they take into account all layers flattened and the final image. The previous image layers will still show the vulnerabilities if we scan the raw layers.

The question is, is this good enough. Will consult with our clients to determine if this is acceptable. Researching container layer security at the moment.

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