A story that's been making the rounds, first via Reddit, involves a well-paid engineer at "a well-known tech company in the Bay Area" who says he did virtually nothing for the last six years while pulling in a $95,000 salary, playing League of Legends, and looking at Reddit at the office every day. The Redditor posted here, to the CS Career Questions forum, with statements that have since been deleted but were picked up by Interesting Engineering and Boing Boing, and while any of us who have worked in a huge corporate environment likely suspect that one or more people in our midst actually do nothing but show up and pull a paycheck, this story seems to be hitting home.

The individual explains that in his first couple months on the job, he was able to automate all the tasks he needed to perform, and that was that. It took six years for IT to be on to him.

From around 6 years ago up until now, I have done nothing at work. I am not joking. For 40 hours each week I go to work, play League of Legends in my office, browse reddit, and do whatever I feel like. In the past 6 years I have maybe done 50 hours of real work. So basically nothing. And nobody really cared. The tests were all running successfully. I shit you not, I had no friends or anything at work either, so nobody ever talked to me except my boss and occasionally the devs for the software I was testing.

Yesterday my boss fired me. I guess IT found out after 6 years or so what I was doing and reported it to my boss. I explained I had automated my own job, but was still updating the automation tool, which was a lie. Anyway, I was fired.

And if you wanted any more reason to hate him, he says he's saved $200,000 from living at home with his mom, so he'll be fine while seeks out his next corporate boondoggle.

Sigh.

Previously: Layoffs At Tech Companies Double What They Were Last Year At This Time