This story is about a Malaysian who learned that loyalty without leverage leads nowhere in the corporate world.After years of being underpaid and overlooked, he used planning, upskilling, and boundaries to reclaim his value.
The Corporate Rat Race
I worked as an oil and gas engineer with a company where the raises were a laughable 3% a year, and promotion took years. Six years, and I was a de facto team lead with all the responsibilities and none of the benefits. I sacrificed nights and weekends, missed holidays because I was at conferences and on oil rigs in the North Sea. When it came to the annual performance reviews and appraisals, my team and I scored 10/10. Our evaluation metrics were perfect. We were looking forward to bonuses, raises and hopefully promotions all round. We got the standard 3% raise. Nothing else.
Quiet Quitting and Upskilling
When I asked my boss why, he said, “I didn’t agree with this. Just try harder next year.” That was it. No more unpaid overtime. I refused additional travel assignments. I took leave whenever I wanted, and even maxed out my MC guilt-free.
I quiet-quit at that point. I carefully planned my departure. I started taking full advantage of the company’s education budget. Courses in Technical Equipment Maintenance, Platform and Facility Maintenance, Petroleum GeoSciences with Applied Machine Learning and Data Analytics. One year later, with new certifications and in-demand skills.
I found a position at a rival company that tripled my salary, paid overtime and had expanded benefits.
One. Last. Chance.
I don’t hate my former company, but my boss’ “tidak-apa” attitude did make me hate him at least. I asked for a raise, argued that I’d led my team well, I’d taken initiative to upskill and do even better. My boss told me “Take it or leave it.”
I gave notice to HR immediately.
When my boss found out, he looked like he choked on his durian. His protest was that the company had just paid for all the training. I countered that I had used what was allocated by contract and was also giving notice, following my contract.
I served out my notice period, did a clean handover and left.
A Holiday Cut Short.
I had a month off before starting my new job and I was one week into my holiday when I got a call from my former employer. Despite handover documentation, they realized that documents didn’t cover day-to-day operational or institutional knowledge.
I told them that I was starting a holiday with my family and only had one week free. I would only work one as a consultant for a frankly ridiculous amount of money: One month’s salary at my new job in the high five figures. They agreed immediately.
A Week’s Consultancy, a Month’s Salary.
I knew they were in trouble when they were asking the same questions on day 4 that they had asked on day 1 of my consultancy. I even amended my handover reports and documents, adding the answers to every question asked.
Even my former boss was asking questions because he had realized how little he knew about operations. I took great delight in answering every question with, “Well, before I tendered my resignation…”
The look on his face? Priceless.
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