Escaping Limbo: Why My Remote Work Sucks
When I made the decision to leave my job, I felt like I wouldn’t be a good PF blogger if I didn’t monetize my departure somehow. Just plain old quitting is for suckers! Financial Samurai espouses, “Negotiate your severance” and for $85 I’ll tell you how! I had multiple people tell me similar things, “you should ask for a remote work assignment, so and so just got one!” “You should ask for severance, you never know if you don’t ask…” Company policy is that I have too few years to be entitled to anything. No severance, no partial bonus next cycle for this year, no LTI payouts (long term incentive – the stocks), nothing. I’d already looked it up. If I went to negotiate a severance, what leverage did I have?
To be honest, I didn’t give a shit. I was already leaving over $150k of stock incentives on the table, we already have “enough” money, and personally, I didn’t want to be immediately tied to a computer when I left. However, to be a “good” PF blogger, I split Sam’s book with a colleague that was also wanting a change and we wanted to see if it could help. I started reading it and I couldn’t get past Chapter 4. I just didn’t give a shit. My family was moving, I wasn’t going to “not move” just to stick around trying to monetize my departure by making my company decide between firing me or continuing to pay an unproductive employee… That seemed shadier than just ghosting work, plus, that’s just not my style. I kept asking myself, what’s the point of acting poorly towards them just to get more money, when we already have enough money?
And then it happened… My boss came to me asking about working remotely for a month to “ease the transition.” I said, “Sure. Maybe for a month, but 2 at max.” When it was all said and done, I signed a contract for 3 months of remote work. A month in, it feels like the longest, most drawn out, tediously earned severance package ever. Here’s why I wish I hadn’t agreed to this dumb shit assignment…
