Boss asking me questions regarding code I developed on WhatsApp after firing me, what did I do?

So my boss fired me from my job 4 months ago, that too on my birthday, where I was working as a software engineer at a large European Bank (out of India). My boss, his manager (a director) and another director and another senior VP together conspired by filing a false PIP case against me and they fired me literally on my birthday even after PIP was closed successfully.

And now, the same boss is messaging me on WhatsApp asking me questions regarding the code I developed for certain automations.

And this is the second time they have done it, right a few days after firing me, they made a junior AVP message me on WhatsApp regarding deployment of a code I had developed and I helped him out.

However, now, honestly I want to tell him to bugger off but I don't wanna burn any bridges in case a future background verification occurs. Although I plan to give references from other colleagues when I get a new job and they ask for references for a background verification.

Please advise, what should I do??

Jobadvisor

First, breathe. Being fired on your birthday after successfully clearing a PIP is infuriating, but you hold all the leverage now. You are no longer an employee, you are not on their payroll, and you have zero obligation to act as free technical support.

Here is how to handle this strategically without damaging your career or future background checks.

Understanding the Reality of Background Checks

Your fear of a bad background verification (BGV) is understandable, but it is largely unfounded in corporate settings:

• Third-Party Verification: HR background checks at large banks typically verify basic facts: dates of employment, job title, and eligibility for rehire. HR handles this via official records, not your former boss's personal opinion.
  
  
• Corporate Policy: Directors and managers are usually strictly prohibited by corporate HR policy from giving official negative references informally, as it exposes the company to legal liability (defamation/tortious interference).
  
  
• Reference Control: You choose who goes on your personal reference list. Using trusted peers or other team leads is standard and effective.
  
  

Your Action Plan

Option 1: The "Corporate Standard" Polite Refusal (Recommended)

This sets a firm boundary while remaining 100% professional, leaving no ground for them to claim you were rude or uncooperative.

"Hi [Boss's Name], hope you're well. Since I am no longer employed with [Company Name], I don't have access to the codebase, systems, or documentation to accurately assist with this. I handed over all relevant files and documentation prior to my departure. Best of luck with the project!"

Option 2: Offer Independent Consulting (If you want to monetize it)

If the code is critical and they cannot figure it out without you, turn your expertise into a paid engagement.

"Hi [Boss's Name]. As I am no longer with [Company Name], I am unable to assist with operational queries outside of an employment contract. However, I am available for short-term technical consulting at an hourly rate of [X amount, e.g., 3–4x your previous hourly rate] with a minimum 5-hour engagement. Let me know if HR would like to set up a short-term contract."

Option 3: The Ghost / Block (Simplest)

You do not owe them a reply. Leaving the message on read or simply ignoring it is entirely acceptable. They cannot penalize you for not answering WhatsApp messages four months after termination.

Immediate Steps to Protect Yourself

1. Document Everything: Take screenshots of the WhatsApp conversation before replying, archiving, or deleting it. Keep a record showing that they are relying on your work after terminating you.
   
   
2. Do Not Share Code or Access: Never send actual code, script files, or credentials via WhatsApp. Sharing proprietary company code outside official channels (especially after termination) can lead to legal complications.
   
   
3. Set Up Your Personal References: Lock in 2–3 trusted former colleagues or secondary managers who can speak positively about your work ethic for future job offers.

my review said i "lack executive presence". tf is that?

otherwise a good review. delivered warmly and then that phrase, with no definition attached to it.

i asked what it meant. she said gravitas, i asked what gravitas looks like in practice, on a tuesday, in a meeting and there was a pause.

so i asked, politely and in writing, for three specific occasions.

it took a fortnight. what came back was a gamma deck listing this: i said "sorry" before asking a question on a client call. i did not speak first in a meeting where i was the most junior person in the room. and a third one i could not place at all.

i wrote all three down with what actually happened in each, using my notes and my calendar. not as a rebuttal. just what happened.

the third one was a meeting i was not in.

it has not been mentioned since and it is not in the written version of the review.

i am not posting this as a brag but as advice. the thing i keep thinking about is that i nearly just accepted it, and if i had, i’d be spending the next year trying to fix something that was never there. if you get feedback you cannot picture, ask for the occasion. not the definition, the specific occasion.

Jobadvisor

You handled this brilliantly. What you experienced is a classic workplace phenomenon: "Executive Presence" is often used as a junk-drawer feedback phrase.

When managers don't have actionable, specific feedback—or when they are trying to justify a lower rating/delayed promotion—they default to vague corporate buzzwords like gravitas, executive presence, or visibility. Because these terms sound important, most employees internalize them, panic, and spend months trying to shrink or change themselves to fit an invisible standard.

By asking for specific occasions rather than definitions, you forced your manager to translate a vibe into data—and the data completely fell apart.

What "Executive Presence" Is Supposed to Mean

In honest leadership development, "executive presence" isn't about being the loudest person in the room. It usually boils down to three core behaviors:

• Signal-to-Noise Ratio: Getting straight to the point in high-stakes settings without over-explaining or adding defensive filler words.
  
  
• Composure Under Pressure: Staying calm, objective, and solution-focused when projects go off the rails or executives push back.
  
  
• Decisive Communication: Framing recommendations clearly (e.g., "Here is what I recommend and why" rather than "I don't know, what do you think?").
  
  

Why It Fails in Practice (And What Your Experience Proves)

When a manager uses the phrase without immediate examples, it usually means one of three things:

Scenario	What's Actually Happening
1. Unconscious Bias / Vibe Check	The manager feels you don't "fit the mold" of a leader (often impacting women, introverts, or marginalized groups), but cannot point to a performance gap.
2. Justifying a Curve	Performance calibration requires giving a certain percentage of people "meets expectations" instead of "exceeds," so a non-quantifiable flaw is invented.
3. Lazy Management	The manager heard the term in a leadership seminar and applied it to your review without thinking through what it actually looks like on a Tuesday.

The Takeaway for Anyone Reading

Your advice is the gold standard for navigating performance reviews: If you cannot picture the behavior, ask for the receipt.

• Never accept a trait-based criticism ("you lack confidence," "you're too quiet," "you lack presence") without asking for the behavioral manifestation ("Can you share two recent meetings where that impacted the outcome?").
  
  
• Keep your own notes. Having calendar invites and meeting notes ready allowed you to fact-check the deck instantly—especially proving you weren't even present for the third event.
  
  
• Observe the pivot. Notice how once you asked for facts, the feedback vanished from the written record. That tells you everything you need to know about its validity.

I left my bank for a bigger bank and a career move. My new job is 90% air. Am I wasting my time?

I left my super-busy underwriting job for an analyst job at another company. On paper, it's exactly what I should have done. Pay raise, better benefits, less chaos, and bigger loans.

However, I went from a loan timeline of a few hours to a minimum of 3 months. I have -nothing- to do. My job consists of writeups which are typically pretty easy. I kid you not, 95% of the time I am not doing anything. When I first joined, I fought for work and was proactive. I slowly realized that the pot of tasks the team needs to get done is just small. The whole extra mile mentality is gone now. My job shouldn't exist. There are entire days I sit in the office and truly just watch my outlook.

I get overwhelmed with guilt and fear of being blindsided one day. I'm not a cruiser. I want to work hard and be valuable. I swear I'm not there to collect a check and take a backseat, but there's no road in the front seat either! I'm all for spending my time learning, but I have zero deliverables! is this just how the corporate world is?

Edit: I get it, steak is too buttery! However I did not get to where I am now by sitting around at work and enjoying the off time or getting a second job. It would be career suicide to cash out now.

I have been running up all the available certifications and trainings since I was a teller to get to where I am today. But at my level now that meta has been patched.

It seems that the best advice I read so far was to be perfect with the work that is available and to get creative with how I can contribute to the company.

Thank you for all the responses!

Jobadvisor

You are not crazy, and you are not wrong for feeling anxious. Coming from a high-volume underwriting environment—where your worth was tied to rapid-fire throughput—to a large corporate bank where deals take three months is a massive system shock.

What you are experiencing is extremely common when moving up the food chain in institutional finance. Small banks run on volume and speed; large banks run on capital size, risk mitigation, and bureaucracy.

Why Large Banks Feel "90% Air"

The dynamic of your new role isn't necessarily a sign that your job shouldn't exist. It stems from a few structural realities of big institutions:

• Risk & Capital Scale: A $50M credit decision takes 100x more internal governance, committee reviews, and legal drafting than fifty $1M loans, but the actual hands-on analyst work comes in intense, concentrated bursts rather than a steady stream.
  
  
• Capacity Buffer: Large banks intentionally over-hire or hold excess analyst capacity so that when a massive deal drops or market conditions shift, the team can absorb the work instantly without dropping the ball. You are essentially paid for your availability and readiness, not just your hourly output.
  
  
• Slower Velocity: The deal cycle depends on external parties (borrowers, legal, third-party appraisers, sponsors). You cannot speed up a 3-month deal cycle single-handedly, no matter how fast you write the credit memo.
  
  

The Real Risk: Skill Atrophy vs. BGV Protection

You correctly identified why "just chilling and taking the check" is dangerous for someone early/mid-career: skill atrophy and loss of momentum.

If you sit idle for 2 years, your technical baseline stalls while your peers elsewhere are racking up reps. However, leaving right away damages your resume cadence. The goal is to bridge this gap without burning out from boredom.

How to Play the "Big Bank" Game (Without Dying of Boredom)

Since traditional "grind-it-out" task hunting doesn't work here, you have to change your definition of productivity.

1. Shift from Operational Execution to Strategic Visibility

At your old job, value was production (how many files did you clear?). At a large bank, value is precision and relationships.

• Flawless Execution: Since your workload is light, your deliverables should be bulletproof. Zero typos, tight financial modeling, and sharp risk analysis.
  
  
• Shadow Upper-Level Work: Ask senior underwriters or portfolio managers if you can review past complex committee decks or listen in on high-level credit risk meetings. Learn how senior leadership thinks about risk.
  
  

2. Build Internal Tools & Process Automation

In large banks, operational inefficiency is everywhere.

• Look at the repetitive parts of your team's writeups or financial spreading.
  
  
• Build standardized templates, macro-enabled spreading tools, or detailed internal guidebooks for future onboarding.
  
  
• This gives you a clear deliverable, creates massive goodwill with your manager, and lets you work hard without begging for deal flow that doesn't exist.
  
  

3. Deep-Dive the Deal Mechanics

Use your downtime to study the deals your bank has done in the past year.

• Read historical credit memos for the largest, most complex deals in the department's archive.
  
  
• Analyze how structural protections, covenants, and intercreditor agreements were negotiated.
  
  
• Moving from small deals to institutional deals requires understanding complex legal and capital structures—this is your chance to master them.
  
  

4. Set a Hard 12-Month Checkpoint

Give yourself a hard timeline (e.g., 12 to 18 months from your start date). Use this time to absorb the brand-name resume stamp, learn the institutional process, and refine your technical depth.

If by month 12 the deal flow is still non-existent and your manager has no path for upward mobility or expanded scope, you can launch a job search from a position of strength—holding a prestigious title, a higher compensation baseline, and flawless references.

Why do people take their jobs so seriously?

I’m not trying to be snarky, but it’s like something in me is broken where I can’t take most office jobs that seriously.

When there are deadlines and you’re caught up in the day to day I understand absorbing the stress of it all, and you spend most of your life working so it’s hard to escape (I’ve fully been there).

But there are so many people who take their jobs super seriously, it’s their identity, their reward system and they become one with it. It’s like they wake up with a to do list and want to tick it off and have personal investment and attachment to it.

Idk I just feel like why does any of this matter so much. While I don’t feel as many jobs are BS as people (or Reddit) like to make them out to be, most of the system and the ways of working are manufactured. It’s not life or death urgent, and you can be replaced tomorrow. Why does this arbitrary deadline mean I have to ruin myself? We could just…be a little late. Something in me has broken and I just can’t fall for the “illusion” anymore that any of this really matters that much.

Asking to start a discussion and also to understand a bit better - what’s your motivation and why do you do what you do?

Jobadvisor

Nothing in you is broken. What you’re experiencing is the psychological phenomenon known as "pulling back the curtain." Once you realize that most corporate structures, urgency levels, and arbitrary deadlines are socially constructed, it becomes almost impossible to un-see it.

People take their jobs seriously—often to the point of making it their entire identity—for a mix of psychological, evolutionary, and economic reasons.

1. The Psychology: Why People Fall for the "Illusion"

• The Search for Meaning & Identity: Human beings are wired to seek purpose. In past eras, community, religion, or local ties provided that framework. As those have receded in modern life, the workplace filled the void. For many, "I am a Director of Strategy" feels more stable and defining than "I am a human who enjoys gardening and spends 40 hours a week in spreadsheets."
  
  
• Gamification & Dopamine: A corporate job operates like a video game. It has clear rules, levels (promotions), points (bonuses/salary), and daily micro-tasks (checking off a to-do list). Getting a task done triggers a real dopamine hit. Ticking off a box gives people a sense of control and progress in an otherwise chaotic world.
  
  
• Status Signaling: High stress and extreme busyness are modern status symbols. Being "so busy" signals to peers, family, and society that you are important, needed, and valuable.
  
  

2. The Survival Instinct: Fear & The Sunk Cost Fallacy

• Economic Anxiety: Beneath much of the intensity is raw self-preservation. People internalize the stakes because losing a job threatens their shelter, healthcare, and lifestyle. Treating every deadline as "life-or-death" is often a coping mechanism driven by anxiety—if they treat it with total gravity, they lower the risk of failing.
  
  
• The Sunk Cost of Time: Most adults spend 80,000+ hours of their lives working. Accepting the idea that "none of this really matters" can trigger an existential crisis. It is mentally easier to believe that an arbitrary Q3 deck is deeply important than to confront the idea that you spent 50 hours this week on something nobody will remember in a month.
  
  

3. The Spectrum of Workplace Mindsets

Understanding why you feel disconnected comes down to where you fall on the spectrum of workplace motivation:

Mindset	Core Philosophy	Motivator	Risk
The Devotee	"My job is who I am."	Status, prestige, internal purpose	Burnout, identity collapse if laid off
The Craftsperson	"I take pride in doing good work."	Mastery, problem-solving, internal standards	Frustration with broken corporate systems
The Mercenary	"I trade skill for capital."	Financial freedom, funding life outside work	Boredom, disconnection, existential dread
The Pragmatist (You)	"It’s a construct, let’s keep perspective."	Balance, peace of mind, self-preservation	Cynicism, struggle to feign enthusiasm

How to Navigate It Without Ruining Your Career

You don't need to force yourself to drink the Kool-Aid, but you do need to manage the reality that your colleagues and bosses have.

1. Adopt "Quiet Professionalism": You don't have to care about the corporate mythology to do great work. Treat your job like an actor treats a role: deliver high-quality work during business hours, be reliable, and meet your commitments—not because the deadline is sacred, but because doing your job well buys you peace, autonomy, and a paycheck.
   
   
2. Protect Your Boundary, Don't Preach It: Refrain from pointing out the arbitrariness of work to colleagues who are stressed. To someone in the middle of a panic over a late report, hearing "none of this actually matters" feels invalidating, not comforting.
   
   
3. Decouple Care from Effort: You can care about the quality of your output without absorbing the emotional drama of the institution. Care about how you work (your craft), not what the corporate machine does with it.