Reddit user FiletOfFish1066 from San Francisco Bay area just got fired from his programming job. The reason and circumstances will shock you! This guy, who worked at a well-known tech company for six full years did nothing except surfing, playing games, browse Reddit, and basically do whatever he felt like doing, while a software would do all the work on his behalf. And guess how much his company paid him to basically do nothing for a full six years? $95,000 per year on average.
After graduating college with a computer science degree seven years ago, FOF landed a job in the Bay Area doing Software Quality Assurance work for a tech company. And, being the savvy tech person that he is, FOF spent 8 months automating all of the programming tasks. So with all of his tasks fully automated by a computer, he was able to literally sit back and do whatever he wanted.
FOF describes in his own words what it was like to automate his own job:
“From around 6 years ago up until now, I have done nothing at work. I am not joking. For 40 hours each week I go to work, play League of Legends in my office, browse reddit, and do whatever I feel like. In the past 6 years I have maybe done 50 hours of real work. So basically nothing. And nobody really cared. The tests were all running successfully. I shit you not, I had no friends or anything at work either, so nobody ever talked to me except my boss and occasionally the devs for the software I was testing.”
If you think that FOF is smart enough to automate time-consuming job tasks is great and you want to try it, do read irony at the end of it.
It all came to a screeching halt after IT found out that FOF had been automating his job for the last six years. That’s when he was officially fired. And that’s not the end of it. The irony here is, FOF whiled away his time so much so that he even forgot how to code. Yes, he completely forgot the thing that helped him get the job and build his Autobot. Now the poor FOF possesses no marketable skills to get another well paying programmers job.
Let’s see what FOF has to say about this in his own words:
“After six years, I literally do not even know how to write good software anymore. I basically forgot everything. I just played League of Legends and did nothing else. I got fit, though, which is a plus, since I went to the gym every day during work. But I know nothing about programming or anything else. I am 28, without a job (although they are giving me three months of pay), and no skills. “
One good takeaway from his whole stint was that he managed to save up $200,000 during his 6-year long career.
“I have around $200k in my bank account since I still live with my parents and live frugally, so I won’t be starving or anything like that, and can definitely support myself.”
FOF even expressed his keen desire to get his life back together. Here is what he posted:
“Time to try and cut my League of Legends and beer addiction. I’m going to try and practice running through Cracking the Coding Interview as well as a data structures and algorithms book. I’ll also be applying to some jobs. After thinking about it for a while I think once I study everything I forgot, my motivation will come back. I always liked software dev, I just was a lazy ass.”
FiletofFish1066 now seems to have deleted his Reddit account but he left a good honest lesson for all of us.
