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rufius posted:We’re on our 3rd layoff in a year with the startup I’m at. While it’s not really corporate, the incompetence and tone-deaf approach to them definitely rings heavily of corporate. time for everyone to be told they gotta be "all in" on the company
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Apr 22, 2024 16:29
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Renegret posted:You all feel that???? That's the feeling of all those terrible morale issues just melt away. About 10 years ago at a former job, the higher-ups decided that the cure to morale issues was to buy 2 arcade machines and install them in the cafeteria. People used them for the first couple weeks, but then some things started getting whispered through the grapevine that a couple execs thought anyone using them was slacking, so the machines started to collect dust. Then, they got moved to a hallway a few months later due to a remodel of the cafeteria. The people near that hallway complained about the noise, so they were unplugged. I was there for a couple more years and never saw them plugged back in.
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Apr 22, 2024 16:42
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FAUXTON posted:time for everyone to be told they gotta be "all in" on the company I remember that speech, after 20% were let go after the winter break. Another 75% were let go a week later, and they sold off the parts to some PE firm that didn't make a single change to the website but rip out all the info about people there before. Long-standing errors were still present. Oh well!
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Apr 22, 2024 16:48
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Good-Natured Filth posted:About 10 years ago at a former job, the higher-ups decided that the cure to morale issues was to buy 2 arcade machines and install them in the cafeteria. People used them for the first couple weeks, but then some things started getting whispered through the grapevine that a couple execs thought anyone using them was slacking, so the machines started to collect dust. Sounds like they should've just bought you all pizza instead!!!!!! My first job had a foosball table with a similar story. It sat in the break room and was widely viewed as a trap. I worked there for 3 years and it went completely untouched the entire time.
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Apr 22, 2024 16:57
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Someone started recently and sits near me maybe 10ish ft away. Ever since they started working there I've felt generally terrible like I had allergy attacks constantly. My nose sniffles and my eyes are watery and my nose/eyes feel super dry. At first I thought it was just pollen or new sunscreen but I can stand outdoors without feeling like poo poo and I wore the sunscreen at home all weekend and was fine. Today I was working in the office from 7-10 and felt fine, but around 10 the new person came in and it all started acting up and I just connected the dots. I'm guessing this person just has like super strong lotion or perfume or something that bothers me. Now I'm on my way home to work from home because it's just really bad. Any advice on how to handle/deal with this? I don't know the new person and I don't wanna just single them out but I'm 100% convinced they're the source of this problem.
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Apr 22, 2024 16:59
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FAUXTON posted:time for everyone to be told they gotta be "all in" on the company I always found this so weird about startups, especially when the only person/people with actual skin in the game are the founders. C'mon team, I'm trying to get rich off your hard work!
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Apr 22, 2024 17:04
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rufius posted:I need to find a new loving job. Literally true and correct, since your employer is about to run out of money.
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Apr 22, 2024 17:12
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"In the interest of showing our commitment to improving quality systems, we are knowingly rolling out these quality system changes too quickly for anyone to absorb." I love seeing a slide that basically reads like that in a training deck. The only thing I love more than that is the group of trainees at today's training who discovered, during the training, that they were expected to cascade the training in a 4+ hour session tomorrow. Nobody told most of the attendees today that it was a "train the trainer" session and that they now had training responsibilities as part of their jobs.  E: Also, we've defined "Quality Incident" as an event which has no impact to product quality. Top notch. Sundae fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Apr 22, 2024 |
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Apr 22, 2024 19:54
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Not really corporate exactly, but it affects my corporate life. I’m on a board of directors for a local charity and we’ve got a big consulting firm in doing pro bono strategy work for us. I used to work at said firm, am still friends with lots of people there, and interact occasionally with them in my current job (with a competitor). I was brought into the board partly because of my experience doing strategy work given that a new strategic plan is a big agenda item for this year. I actually helped develop the org’s last strategic plan when I still worked at the big firm. The work we are getting is not meeting expectations, and I’ve been struggling a bit on how to share my thoughts on it. Really trying to balance directness with an understanding of the situation (pro bono work, my personal relationship side of things, my maybe overly high expectations).
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Apr 22, 2024 20:26
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That's really just up for you to decide whether your relationship with the charity or with your former (and maybe future) co-workers is more important to keep well maintained, one or the other is going to have to suffer. lovely spot to be in, but that's the decision you have to make. As you observe and clearly understand, pro bono inevitably means low priority.
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Apr 22, 2024 20:37
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Eric the Mauve posted:As you observe and clearly understand, pro bono inevitably means low priority. I think it affects the client more than the person delivering the services. It lowers the standards of quality you expect or accept. Anyway, very annoying. It is making me reflect on my own value though. I find it really easy to discount the value of my advice / approach to strategic decision making, but then I see it not being done well and it’s like - oh yeah, done properly this is actually worth something, and there are lots of people who don’t do it properly.
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Apr 22, 2024 20:44
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It's hard to really criticize work being done for free. Maybe if the people involved are junior level, you could frame it as a training opportunity, something along the lines of "I noticed Bob seems to have a hard time with X." Otherwise, assuming they aren't doing regulated work in a field like law or accounting, your best option seems to be to thank them for their time but tell them their services are no longer needed.
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Apr 22, 2024 20:51
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Boris Galerkin posted:Any advice on how to handle/deal with this? I don't know the new person and I don't wanna just single them out but I'm 100% convinced they're the source of this problem. Solves nothing at work except you know why now.
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Apr 23, 2024 00:41
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Yet another surreal interviewing situation happened to me today. I had an interview today with a tech healthcare company that asked me "What do you consider as a personal failure within your current role?" Which caught me off guard for them to phrase it that way, so I just said certain projects went over budget due to factors out of my control such as turnover, etc. But I've grown from the experience, so I can learn to manage it better should I encounter another similar situation. The two interviewers then kept diving into the question and said "but how is that a personal failure, it seems like it was out of your control, what's a personal failure you've had" I then clarified, "can you please explain what a personal failure is?" and they're like "Well, personal failure is ownership of the things that fail. So a time where things went wrong, and it was completely your fault and you own it. If you can say that turnover wasn't your fault, than its not a personal failure." I then started about minor mistakes I've made on workpapers that I promptly fixed, but then they wanted it on a larger scope and not just individual workpapers. From there I paused and then stated, well, if its on a larger scope, then it would involve many factors out of my control, which would then not meet your definition of a personal failure. This went on for a bit until we stared at each other in bewilderment for 30 seconds before one of the douchebags changed the question. He wanted me to tell a story about a time I set the house on fire or something, but in a company with controls, one person can't just ruin everything. And if they were, then it was a terrible situation that will lead to poo poo talking about previous or current employers. Is this some new way of mentally challenged gen Z interviewing that I'm unaware of? Or is it to filter out people who have a backbone? I don't get it. Smif-N-Wessun fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Apr 23, 2024 |
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Apr 23, 2024 00:57
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Smif-N-Wessun posted:Or is it to filter out people who have a backbone? Sounds like you get it just fine.
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Apr 23, 2024 01:00
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Eh, I've been asked similar and talk about the time I had a major fuckup a few jobs back when I overlooked something and then went and fixed it. Single client issue though, so I dunno if that'd qualify as "major" for your interrogator.
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Apr 23, 2024 01:05
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Turned in my notice with my current “startup”, felt real sad because my boss asked right when I walked in if I was resigning, to which I said yea of course. Told him I was offered a lot more money, and he said I’m loving him. Asked a little while to put a counter together. And not to sweat the cockblocking founder president that torpedoed a promotion for a (smart and good) colleague a couple months ago. Just so the thread can remind me, it’s bad to take a counter offer 99% of the time, right? And cockblocker won’t be going anywhere, just a continual dismantling of his power which I’m sure he’s thrilled with, and thrilled with me for actively working towards that goal. Why do I feel bad, quitting was supposed to feel good 
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Apr 23, 2024 01:12
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If your industry isn't built around it, never take the counter. I'm in (fedgov) consulting. We jump around and put a knife to each other's throats all the time for more money. It's just business.
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Apr 23, 2024 01:17
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Tnuctip posted:Turned in my notice with my current “startup”, felt real sad because my boss asked right when I walked in if I was resigning, to which I said yea of course. Told him I was offered a lot more money, and he said I’m loving him. Asked a little while to put a counter together. And not to sweat the cockblocking founder president that torpedoed a promotion for a (smart and good) colleague a couple months ago. Who is more important to the acquiring company, you or him? Him or your boss? If the answer is not him, what has changed in the last months since the last time he hosed a colleague?
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Apr 23, 2024 01:18
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Tnuctip posted:Turned in my notice with my current “startup”, felt real sad because my boss asked right when I walked in if I was resigning, to which I said yea of course. Told him I was offered a lot more money, and he said I’m loving him. Asked a little while to put a counter together. And not to sweat the cockblocking founder president that torpedoed a promotion for a (smart and good) colleague a couple months ago. Don't do it. Especially in start ups because they're at risk to fail and you'll be the one with the target on your back when they have to make cuts. Fortune 500s, it'll end your career mobility there most of the time, and the vast majority of truly established companies have so much talent they won't even consider counters in my experience. Counters are for mid sized companies, start ups, etc. And even then its a bad idea.
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Apr 23, 2024 01:23
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They're asking you about a personal failure because they want to see if someone can say "I made this mistake" or if they will waffle and try to blame others, etc. It sounds like they might have been really aggressive but I'd also advise to take a look at how you answered that and think about how to best respond to a similar question. No one is going to reject someone over a story about how they messed up a client pitch or fumbled a deliverable, but we've all worked with the kinds of people who can never fail and only be failed and that isn't what most people want. I don't know what kind of things you offered but everyone with any kind of work history should be able to talk about a personal failure bigger than "a minor mistake on a workpaper" and if you're not able to to come up with anything its probably worth it to give some thought to that. Like, for me I'd probably talk about pulling in a monitoring vendor that didn't work out for us and we spent like $60k or whatever for little return. I had good reasons to think they'd be a good fit but they weren't and there are some good learnings on that. Or I'd talk about when I shifted a hiring strategy and we pulled in a couple of bad hired while we calibrated. Again, I had good reasons to do what I did but it was a failure that we went live with what we did and it resulted in two bad hires which is a pretty bad headwind on a smallish team. I suspect they were looking for things of that nature.
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Apr 23, 2024 01:29
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Tnuctip posted:Turned in my notice with my current “startup”, felt real sad because my boss asked right when I walked in if I was resigning, to which I said yea of course. Told him I was offered a lot more money, and he said I’m loving him. Asked a little while to put a counter together. And not to sweat the cockblocking founder president that torpedoed a promotion for a (smart and good) colleague a couple months ago. In your specific situation, with an acquisition being involved, accepting a counter would be a spectacularly bad move. You're not loving your boss, his boss and upward are, and he should perfectly goddamn well understand that. If he doesn't than he can go gently caress himself with a chainsaw. And/or follow your excellent example and go get himself a better job with a better company. They had their chance. Amply. Go work for the company that actually wants you there at the higher salary. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Apr 23, 2024 |
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Apr 23, 2024 01:30
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Yeah honestly it sounds like those guys asked the question badly, but if you can’t think of a single scenario where you’ve made mistakes, you’re either not being honest with yourself or you’re not pushing hard enough at your job. Failure is fine, as long as you own it and learn from it.
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Apr 23, 2024 01:35
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Lockback posted:everyone with any kind of work history should be able to talk about a personal failure bigger than "a minor mistake on a workpaper" and if you're not able to to come up with anything its probably worth it to give some thought to that. I'm humble and I don't have an ego on an internet forum, I mean it when I say this was a scene out of office space. I was paraphrasing in my original post. I'm an accountant, I told them another example of when my team rolled forward entries that were wrong, and I as the lead should have caught it, but we ended up causing a material variance which I promptly reached out to the director, told them, and corrected it once I noticed it. This led to them saying, yes this is your staff's fault, but its not a personal failure if they did it. I said its a personal failure because I should've caught it sooner. And they essentially retorted "yeah a mistake, but by you" (I'm paraphrasing a really drawn out convo) I'm the lead. I review. I didn't catch it. It's my fault... and I told you that I told everyone immediately and fixed it... It was the strangest exercise where these guys kept sticking to the "personal failure" line. I truly didn't get it.
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Apr 23, 2024 01:36
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Quite aside from matters of being the fucker or fuckee, get out of the uncertain/risky situation (made more risky by you starting the resignation process) and into the (presumably) safer one. Alea iacta est, and all that.
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Apr 23, 2024 01:42
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Atopian posted:Quite aside from matters of being the fucker or fuckee, get out of the uncertain/risky situation (made more risky by you starting the resignation process) and into the (presumably) safer one. Alea iacta est, and all that. That's the fundamental human misunderstanding about counter-offers: Your hindbrain, hardwired by evolution to instinctively feel that change = danger, believes that jumping is the risky move and staying is the safe move, and that's exactly wrong. Accept a counter-offer if you absolutely must, but do so in full comprehension that staying is the risky move, jumping is the safe move.
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Apr 23, 2024 01:50
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Tnuctip posted:Turned in my notice with my current “startup”, felt real sad because my boss asked right when I walked in if I was resigning, to which I said yea of course. Told him I was offered a lot more money, and he said I’m loving him. Asked a little while to put a counter together. And not to sweat the cockblocking founder president that torpedoed a promotion for a (smart and good) colleague a couple months ago. Here's some things to consider to help take the edge off of you being a decent person with empathy: 1. Your boss taking it personally - sounds like an entitled brat to me and someone that'd be miserable to work with. More so if you took a counter offer and had to continue working there knowing that he's got resentment for you trying to betray him (you didn't but he's already making it about him) 2. If he can find the money now, he could have when you asked. He wasn't interested in making an effort to retain you until the threat of you leaving had become real. You're not loving him now, he was loving you until this point, and he doesn't deserve you feeling bad about this. 3. None of the other non-monetary reasons you're leaving, including the one you mentioned here, would change AT ALL if you took a counter offer.
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Apr 23, 2024 01:53
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I was always under the impression that accepting a counter offer is bad because it informs the company that you are super serious about leaving so the raise is just a bone they throw at you to afford them more time to hire and train a replacement at their own time of choosing.
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Apr 23, 2024 01:53
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Smif-N-Wessun posted:I'm humble and I don't have an ego on an internet forum, I mean it when I say this was a scene out of office space. Ok, then that does sound like they were asking a question they didn't really understand how someone would answer. Che Delilas posted:3. None of the other non-monetary reasons you're leaving, including the one you mentioned here, would change AT ALL if you took a counter offer. This is a huge one, imo. Boris Galerkin posted:I was always under the impression that accepting a counter offer is bad because it informs the company that you are super serious about leaving so the raise is just a bone they throw at you to afford them more time to hire and train a replacement at their own time of choosing. Not really, your boss doesn't actually care how much you make and most companies make it a pain in the rear end to fire someone outside of lay-off type actions. Unless your way WAY out of whack it's probably going to cost them more to get rid of you and go through the entire hiring process than it would be to just keep you at the higher price. If it's a counter that just gets you to team parity then the money doesn't matter, if its putting you way off scale from everyone else it's not good because you're likely going to get stuck there but its unlikely they're playing a long game replacing you.
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Apr 23, 2024 02:00
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As always, I think you've been very fortunate in your career and don't realize how the game is all too often played, Lockback. This in particular:Lockback posted:Not really, your boss doesn't actually care how much you make and most companies make it a pain in the rear end to fire someone outside of lay-off type actions. Unless your way WAY out of whack it's probably going to cost them more to get rid of you and go through the entire hiring process than it would be to just keep you at the higher price. The entire reason the counter is made is to buy time to do exactly that: go through the hiring and/or knowledge transfer process to replace you, then do so at a time of their choosing when they're ready. I have seen this exact thing happen to people I know over the years. I know we've bickered about this like an old couple for a long time, but I gotta say my piece when you say yours and vice versa, for the sake of the readers out there. Anyway, Tnuc is working at a startup going through an acquisition, which is a Chinese army parade of red flags. Just 
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Apr 23, 2024 02:06
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Eric the Mauve posted:In your specific situation, with an acquisition being involved, accepting a counter would be a spectacularly bad move. I mentally understand that I’m not loving my boss, in fact I actually work pretty hard at uncomfortable things to support him. It’s not a good sign about pay at your company when your (ie my) boss complains how’s he’s underpaid to all within earshot, and that his boss was being cheap by hiring one guy to do two jobs (accurate on all accounts probably). Boss’ counter was akin to telling me he’ll make me head of scissor engineering for the chain of barber shops, in the future. But right now it’s a non-franchised sports clips where the head barber (founder) won’t even let me sweep up hair. And my job has been to document the awesome hairstyling abilities of the founder, whom has it all in his head and is not a people person. Even if my boss is telling me the truth, you can’t just force out someone at that level. Not in the timeframe I need to actually advance in my career. I’d love an example of a time this happened cleanly.
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Apr 23, 2024 02:07
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*more deets -were post acquisition, and public ally traded now. Cockblocker was president of a smaller company that was gobbled up. -despite being traded, we don’t even have an ESPP  -also had global hard of HR quit, some managers in other divisions, etc.. -tech is way less developed than is being sold as. And no it’s not software so yeah actually will take real time money and effort to fix. Edit: oh yeah and they strongly discourage us from expensing mileage traveling between sites even though it can be mid day. Buried lead I’m a bad poster 
Tnuctip fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Apr 23, 2024 |
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Apr 23, 2024 02:16
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Eric the Mauve posted:As always, I think you've been very fortunate in your career and don't realize how the game is all too often played, Lockback. This in particular: I’m curious after accepting a counter and staying, would the company usually plan on putting you on a PIP or would they do it the next time layoffs roll around? I had always thought the same, that you’ve signalled your intentions and now they know you have a foot out the door so you are the most expendable at the time of their choosing. But I never thought about the mechanics on how it would go that much. Unrelated we now enter yet another week of testing release builds and I’m sure we will be getting the final RC at 6pm on Friday. Sigh.
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Apr 23, 2024 02:30
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priznat posted:I’m curious after accepting a counter and staying, would the company usually plan on putting you on a PIP or would they do it the next time layoffs roll around? It's situational but most often couched in some flavor of reorg. It starts with "hey so you've been saying you're overworked, we hear you, so we hired someone to help you out, please train them to do what you do" and then sometime later "so we're doing some streamlining, mandate from way upstairs, hate to lose you but no choice, so sorry, please clean out your desk." Obviously it works best if it's genuinely part of an actual layoff, but a company won't always wait for that. Sometimes you'll get that talk and then, if you still have friends inside the company, you find out only you were let go, or only you and like 3 other people total. Of course this is in At-Will USland so they don't actually need a reason to fire you as long as you can't prove in court it was discriminatory. I do know one person who was PIP'd 6 months after accepting a counter (and after like 5 years of strictly positive reviews) but I think that's relatively rare. I'm really not saying this is universally what always happens, you understand. But it does happen, and regularly. Your boss's promises are worth nothing (because your ongoing employment and salary prospects are not really up to your boss). Staying is risky. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Apr 23, 2024 |
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Apr 23, 2024 02:38
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Eric the Mauve posted:It starts with "hey so you've been saying you're overworked, we hear you, so we hired someone to help you out, please train them to do what you do" and then sometime later "so we're doing some streamlining, mandate from way upstairs, hate to lose you but no choice, so sorry, please clean out your desk." I've seen this happen directly at least 20 times, literally. I've had some bad luck with companies, but yeah, you're 100% correct in how it goes down.
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Apr 23, 2024 02:52
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Eric the Mauve posted:It's situational but most often couched in some flavor of reorg. It starts with "hey so you've been saying you're overworked, we hear you, so we hired someone to help you out, please train them to do what you do" and then sometime later "so we're doing some streamlining, mandate from way upstairs, hate to lose you but no choice, so sorry, please clean out your desk." Obviously it works best if it's genuinely part of an actual layoff, but a company won't always wait for that. Sometimes you'll get that talk and then, if you still have friends inside the company, you find out only you were let go, or only you and like 3 other people total. Of course this is in At-Will USland so they don't actually need a reason to fire you as long as you can't prove in court it was discriminatory. I agree. I feel once you’ve shown your hand you’re done there. I would not even return to a place I worked within 5 years of leaving. Just always keep it close to the chest.
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Apr 23, 2024 02:55
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I accepted a counter offer a few years ago, it was 100% the right move. The counter was a promotion to a management position, also with better compensation. The external offer was also a promotion but still IC; I know several people who moved to that company and all have now left. Both of these are top 10 pharma companies. I'm still at the same company and have had a further promotion since. Anecdata but I think this is all pretty situation dependent.
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Apr 23, 2024 03:59
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Oh yeah, if the counter includes a real rear end promotion that is extremely different. That's a company actually demonstrating that they value you and want you to grow. I got and accepted that kind of counter once, too, and it worked out fine. I've been talking about a counter to stay in your current role with a pinky promise that you'll definitely probably maybe be first in line for the next promotion, this time for sure. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Apr 23, 2024 |
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Apr 23, 2024 04:15
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GODDAMMIT ERIC QUOTE IS NOT loving EDIT
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Apr 23, 2024 04:16
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Eric the Mauve posted:GODDAMMIT ERIC QUOTE IS NOT loving EDIT Now wait, let’s workshop this before we jump to conclusions. What would a minimum viable edit button look like to our ideal customer?
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Apr 23, 2024 04:54
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