Early in my career I worked as a programmer at a company that sold custom software systems. The kind of place where the sales team would close deals before anyone checked if the thing they sold could actually be built.
We were supposed to work nine to five. Nobody ever said otherwise. Nobody ever mentioned overtime. And overtime was certainly not paid. But the projects were always late. Not because of us. Because someone had promised a client a finished product that didn’t exist yet. They’d walk into our room and announce we had two weeks to deliver. Sometimes less.
So we stayed late. Nine PM some nights. Later on others. Hardware integrations with no documentation. Features that had been sold as if they were already working. We’d sit there and figure it out because that’s what you do when you’re young and you want to prove yourself.
There was no remote work back then. The office was at least thirty minutes from home. Leaving at nine meant getting home at nine thirty if you were lucky. By the time you ate something and wound down, half the night was gone.
Nobody asked us to stay. That’s the thing. Our managers never said the words. But they were there at nine PM too. Burning the midnight oil right next to us. When your boss is still at their desk, you don’t leave. Not when you’re twenty-something and trying to show you belong. The pressure was implicit. Which made it worse, in a way. You couldn’t point to a policy. You couldn’t push back against a direct request. It was just the air you breathed.
The way we compensated was by coming in late. I was supposed to start at nine. Some days I’d show up at ten. After a particularly long night, maybe eleven. It felt fair. I gave you four extra hours yesterday, I’m taking two back this morning. Nobody said anything about it. For a while.
One morning I walked in around eleven. My boss saw me at the door. They asked if everything was alright. I said yes, everything is fine. They pressed further. Why so late?
I snapped.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. But something shifted inside me. Here was a person who had watched me work until nine the night before. Who benefited from every unpaid hour I put in. And the thing they noticed — the thing that concerned them — was that I came in at eleven.
That was the moment I understood something. They wanted both. The late nights and the early mornings. The overtime and the punctuality. The flexibility when it served them and the rigidity when it didn’t.
From that day, I made it my mission to leave at five sharp. And arrive at nine sharp. Every single day. No exceptions. It became almost an obsession. I wanted them to see what nine-to-five actually looked like. I wanted them to feel the difference when the projects were still late — because they were always going to be late — and there was nobody staying until nine to patch things together.
Then came the project that changed things.
A hardware integration for a high-visibility customer. There was a public event tied to the deadline — two, maybe three weeks out. The kind of deadline that does not move. This was a big bet for the company. Everyone knew it.
Nobody told me to pull all-nighters. Nobody had to. I knew what it would take. I slept in the office some of those nights. I worked through weekends. I made it happen.
The project was a success.
And after that, the bosses never touched on me starting my days late again.
That’s the thing about these situations. They didn’t thank me. They just stopped complaining about the one thing that bothered them — because they finally needed me badly enough to look the other way.
I stayed at that company for eight years. That’s not something you do at a place you hate. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. For the most part, it was a great job. I learned more there than I could have anywhere else. The impossible deadlines, the undocumented hardware, the figuring-it-out-at-midnight — all of it hardened me for everything that came after.
I know we paint our past with nostalgic colors. We forget the bad parts. But even accounting for that, I mostly had positive experiences. It was a few quirks. A few blind spots. Not a bad place.
As an employer, you can’t have it all, though. You can’t have the all-nighters and the early mornings. The unpaid overtime and the sharp nine AM arrivals. The flexibility when it serves you and the rigidity when it doesn’t. At some point, something gives. I learned a lot there, and hopefully they also learned one small thing from me. 🙂
Here’s what I am doing
At Workbrew, I help our customers succeed, while working on docs, fixing bugs, and developing internal tools. At Amignosis, I pour my heart and skill into crafting slowly brewed software, one thoughtful line at a time. I am craftsman in a world of complexity and low-quality solutions. I am a shoemaker. I take the time to create simple, timeless software built to last. Check what I am doing now and talk to me.