Comment by locao
3 hours ago
Maybe I'm a bit childish, but I feel neglected when I am asked to sign an work anniversary card for a colleague and next week my manager doesn't even acknowledge my work anniversary. It happened for the last 4 years and, yes, it affects my productivity in the day.
Some time ago I had my 10 year anniversary forgotten once in a company (where I had written almost the entire codebase for their core product myself) and I did feel slighted. I had felt invested in the company, to me this day was a big deal and my company was completely unaware. It felt like a disorienting mismatch of unreciprocated commitment and made me feel a bit sick in the pit of my stomach. I started looking for a new job the next day.
Sounds like you are extremely valuable in the product you built.
In your experience it’s not just the manager direct report relationship that’s adversarial, it’s you against the whole company for the mismatched value they place in you.
You should use that as leverage. This comes with an mindset of looking out for yourself and not any loyalty to the company (I really wish that we could all find companies loyal and nice to their employees, in reality they are few and far between).
Something along the lines of “Hey I built our product. We’re making X in profit. I deserve Y in comp. I’ll give you a week to decide. If you reject I quit and build my own product or join another company.” Obviously add some fluff to reduce harshness.
Does your company have a culture of recognizing work anniversaries? To me it feels very arbitrary. Maybe I’m jaded by big tech.