An Indian software development engineer (SDE) has drawn attention on social media after sharing his experience working for a company that required employees to pay for artificial intelligence (AI) tools for office work without compensation. In a now-viral Reddit post titled “I can feel the AI burn in my workplace in a weird way,” the employee questioned whether the company’s actions amounted to “employee blackmail.”
What happened at the workplace?
The SDE explained: “I work as an SDE at a product-based startup. They recently learned about the Cursor IDE and have been bugging us for a while to write unit tests on our codebase. They figured developers could quickly use Cursor to write test cases and achieve 80% coverage.”
Initially, developers were asked to pay $20 per month for two months out of pocket, with the promise that the company would reimburse them later. However, when the employees asked for repayment, management changed its stance.
“When people started making reimbursement requests to the accounting team, management suddenly stops it and adds a condition, each developer must provide a report on how they used Cursor and how many unit tests they wrote and what their contribution was to the coverage number, reimbursement will not happen for individuals who do not submit data or if they are unable to justify their use,” said the employee.
“So we’re basically forced to buy subscriptions out of our own pockets, use them for corporate work, ask for reimbursement for something they’ve asked us to spend.”
How did social networks react?
The post quickly gained traction, with users expressing empathy and offering suggestions.
“I honestly feel sorry for you. It amazes me how easy founders/employers get away with these things,” wrote one user. Another added: “What kind of company is this? It’s really weird to ask employees to buy something that the company requires out of pocket and then make them beg for reimbursement.”
Some users also offered practical solutions. “This is obviously wrong. But I can help you. Try using the Gemini CLI, it’s an AI agent tool that runs in the terminal, reads and writes your project files, and its free quota should be enough,” suggested one. Another advised: “If they can’t pay the claim, take sick leave for 1 or 2 days to rest and relax. Find ways to reduce your productivity so you can get your time back instead of focusing on lost money.”
Another wrote: “Unmask them.”
