I am feeling like a piece of shit right now. I just screwed a friend of mine, someone I’ve been close to for over 13 years. Granted I did not intentionally set out to screw him, but that is the end result none the less. I used to work at the company where my friend is now. When I left that company, I went to their biggest competitor. There was a Programmer there who I would have liked to hire at my new job, but I didn’t since I knew it would screw my friend.

Recently though, I was led to believe that this programmer was no longer reporting to my friend. I decided that if that was the case, then I had no reason not to pursue him. It wasn’t until I finished negotiations with this person, that he stated that my friend would be very pissed off when he told him. Evidently my friend was still responsible for the area in which this programmer worked. I was surprised and dismayed when I heard this. Needless to say my friend called me this morning to tell me what a low thing I did. I couldn’t argue with him. I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t speak to me again.

One of the things that were going through my mind when I decided to go after this programmer was how it would reflect badly on the manager to whom I thought he was reporting. I felt that my friend was somehow put in a lesser position by not directly managing the team the team that this programmer was a part of and by taking the programmer it would show what would happen by not trusting in my friend’s ability to run this team. Basically, to get the programmer, I had to make an offer that he would be foolish to turn down. Otherwise I don’t think there would have been any way in hell that he would have come over to me. My friend is a great manager, extremely competent, hard working and one of the best people you could ever know. I am deeply saddened to know that I may have ruined this friendship or somehow this will reflect badly on him.