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Comment by onli | Hacker News Reader

Me neither. I can't even believe it is true. It is too obvious that the manager is wrong, no one in his right mind could think to be in the right after such behaviour, especially not after the introspective necessary to writing it up. Add in the caveat of the switch for concert tickets, that's just ridiculous.

I don't know the site this is on. Is it a reliable one? If not, I bet this is a marketing stunt.

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I absolutely believe it. I've seen managers do similar things, even crossing the lines into illegal areas. Managers that grew up with the company, starting when it was small, maybe even owning parts of it sometimes think that the company is family and that everybody needs to be as emotionally attached to the company as they are. Unlimited unpaid overtime, working for month without a single day of are just normal and obvious to them, it's all family. Leaving the company is a personal insult - since we're all family. You don't leave the family, do you?

Either marketing, a troll, or the employee that quit looking for pats on the back by writing their version of the story from the perspective of the manager.

As a semi-regular reader, I would say that the site author is absolutely reliable and writes pretty good columns both there and for other sites, but there have definitely been troll/joke letters in the past which have been gone up (a couple of borderline believable letters revealed by over-the-top follow-ups, etc).

I'm not 100% sure that this is one, though - there are some red flags but I've definitely had managers I could imagine doing this. And I can see the point in printing the letter even if you think it's not real but that someone out there might do the same thing for real.

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