Stock options. I was working in a startup and got hit with the downsizing axe. Luckily, I thought, I had had been there just long enough to vest in the options. So I bought them on my way out the door, spent like $100 on 200,000 options: they were worthless at the time but if the company ever did go public that small investment would quickly turn into a fortune. Lucky.

Two weeks later I got the legal notice that they reissued options so all non-founder options were cancelled.

One job that told me I’d get a beginning hourly wage, and then a raise after passing a training and evaluation at the end of my second week. Didn’t get that raise after working there for 4 months.

Another job that hired me part-time as an educational assistant, and then fired the educator I was assisting and the website/server maintainer, then told me I’d fill both of their roles while also designing new courses and building demo robots. They strung me along for months, offering me a full-time position, all the while having me log my 60-hour timesheets internally, but signing off on falsified 20-hour timesheets. Finally, I was told to write the job description for a new full-time position that was tailored for me, so they could “quickly” fit me into that position. Then, they immediately hired someone else without even interviewing me. Through a number of monumental fuck-ups on their end, I was able to make a strong case to the Texas Workforce Commission stating that I was wrongfully terminated and in a hostile work environment, for which the employer had to pay me every single unpaid hour.

I got hired to do “research”. I maintain legacy crud web apps and file movers.

Better question: has any job ever not bait and switched me? No.

Hired by a company that was circling the drain, with a promise of a huge investment ready to be signed. My department was to double in size and I was brought on board to make that happen. This is a startup where that big investment could have been true. But it wasn’t. Management kept believing and trying to sign that investor. They’re still hoping, while the company crumbles beneath them. Here I am, higher management of burnt out employees waiting for retirement, while all the capable and motivated employees left. There’s no way out of that hole without serious cash

Not really bait and switched, but ghosted several times. You know, that thing HR people keep complaining about being done to them? Haha.

I think it was like a mlm scheme of selling stuff. Not really a bait and switch but when I figured out anyone can get hired it didn’t feel so great.

i havnt because most of them just ghost you, i have heard that happen commonly on indeed forums.

I got hired as a Linux Technical Analyst by a company that was re-writing all their old mainframe code for modern servers, three weeks later they told me they were moving me to Site Reliability Engineering.

I do not have the attention span for reliability engineering. They fired me six months ago for not being good at a job my ADHD makes it impossible for me to be good at.

Not exactly bait and switch, but a long time ago I was looking for a job, had an interview that I aced, I can’t overestimate how much I aced it:

• There was a “coding challenge” that was supposed to take half an hour and I finished in 10 min
• They asked a question and my answer was so complete that I could see them turning pages and skipping the next follow up questions
• One of the few times they got to ask me a follow up question which was very related to the work I would be doing the answer was "I would just do the same I’m doing for my master thesis, and proceeded to explain how I have solved that problem on my thesis and later I found out it was roughly the same way they had solved it on their use case.

Then they told me “our initial salary is X, but that’s for Juniors, which you clearly aren’t, we’ll finish this round of interviews and contact you”. They contacted me a week later and offered me a Junior role paying X. I can’t really said they baited and switched since they didn’t change the offer, and what the other person told me was more informal. Since I needed a job and they have accepted me part time while I finished my masters I accepted thinking that once I went full time I would get a raise. Nope, they said they only did reviews and raises annually, and I had started right after that. I worked my ass off for that year, proving to them that I was worth the raise. Got to my annual review and was told everything is excellent, we’re bumping you to Junior 2 with a whooping 5% increase in salary…

That’s when I decided fuck them. They want a Junior, they’ll get a Junior. I started to listen to podcasts and YouTube videos during my work and dragging my feet, taking weeks to do what I would have done in less than a day before, and still outperforming all other juniors. I quit before the next year for unrelated reasons, and went through training a replacement who, let’s just say, was really a Junior.

Not as bad as people here, but I was hired as sysadmin/data analyst. Fast forward a year and a half and get asked to develop a secret spyware to continously screenshot anybody in the company 24/7 (which I’m convinced is illegal, but idk). Refuse to do so for 3 weeks, and just resigned today :)

They had the audacity to announce the rest of the team they fired me as I told them at the last minute that I was unwilling to participate. Fucking clowns.

Yeah, Ubisoft. I applied as a Sr Engineer. Did the interviews, including a “Sr programmer” HR interview.

I got the offer, Sr engineer, signed the papers. Started. Not even 3 days into starting they said they made a mistake I wasn’t supposed to be a Sr role, redacted the title, but didn’t touch my pay.

I still tell people I was a Sr there. I don’t care, lol. Apparently they did the same to my boss, he was supposed to be a VP. Dropped to a TD

One place sold itself as a managed hell helpdesk. Customers would call in for help, you would do level 1 troubleshooting and escalate if you can’t fix it. Which it was for the first week.

What it turned into after the first week: cold call residents and sell desktop AV

Oh boy. I had a crazy experience as a coop student (software engineering). Written on mobile, so may have some typos/styling quirks, sorry.

Term X: I worked for company Y, it went well, they wanted me back.

Term X+1: I get the automated message from the university job system saying I have an offer from company Y for the upcoming term, do I accept? I do. 3 months later, urgont email from university’s coop office. The offer was glitched in the system. Company Y got a rejection from me, hired someone else. I have about a week to land a job from the dregs that nobody else accepted.

There’s no CS related jobs left, but luckily I can speak french at about a B2ish level, so I look at a few french-english translator postings. Get a job doing translations for a mobile app. It’ll probably suck a bit, but at least its something.

Fast forward to first day on the job. They say “we saw on your resume that you can code, one project you made was an android app. Here’s our competitor’s suite of 7 android apps (SAP). We want you to ‘translate’ them and make us our own versions. Here’s a link to our API document.” So I guess I got a CS job anyways. I’m put in a cubicle with Mr Doe. My supervisor, Mr Smith says Mr Doe will show me the ropes.

Mr Doe tells me “its a pretty casual place, no real fixed hours, just try to get your work done, no big deal.” he then pulls out his lunch and starts eating at his desk saying “I’ll just be here if you need anything” I ask about the dev team. He says “we’re an HR consulting firm, we don’t have a dev team” So I guess I’m on my own. 7 apps in 4 months isn’t really feasible, but I’ll try to make at least a quality MVP for one or two of them that they can use as a starting point.

Fast forward again, 2.5 months into the 4 month term. Mr Smith barges into Mr Doe and my cubicle. He yells at Mr Doe saying we run a tight ship here, I told you before our hours are 8 to 4 and you keep coming in at 10. Plus our corporate policy is clear about taking your lunch at your desk. You are fired. Mr Doe protests a bit, but ultimately ends up being let go. Mr Smith says he noticed that I’ve been late and eating at my desk too and he’s going to send a letter to the university that I am violating company policy and am now on probation. I tell him this is the first I’ve heard of this, but he insists it was in the employee manual. I never got any manual. He insists that Mr Doe must have given me one, but relents and gives me a ‘new’ one.

Next he asks to see how the apps are coming along. I tell him one is almost ready to test as a minimum viable product and show him it, also show a second work in progress and demonstrate that it can make writes to the database (I started with the easiest app that only needed read access).

He is furious. Saying I should have at least 3 full apps done, not 1 partially complete app and 1 completely broken one. I told him that without a dev team or even a senior dev that was unreasonable. He says “they’re just mobile apps its not like we’re asking you to make full programs or anything, just copy the ones SAP made” I tell him that a mobile app is still a full program, and they really should hire a full dev team for it, but he’s not having it.

Anyways, I finish the term the best I can. When I get back I of course get called in to the coop office and the dean of my program is there. They got a letter of complaint saying I couldn’t speak french, I was always late, I was a slob, etc. The university has a reputation to maintain, I was representing them and made them look bad…

Luckily when I told them the whole story, plus showed proof (which I was documenting extensibly ever since Mr Doe was fired), they took my side, unlisted that company, and gave me a free pass on my next coop term (so a 4 month vacation).

That HR consulting firm took 3 years to send me my tax forms btw… Yeah, they’re out of business now. Good riddance.

“unlimited PTO”

*looks inside

”4 weeks of PTO unless you have VP approval except you’ll never get it”