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Omne posted:"In order to manage costs, we will be backfilling positions at lower levels. We are also freezing promotions. We are doing this in order to re-stock our teams with young talent." I have never heard this policy being so blatantly communicated before. You should capture this moment, like a beautiful sunrise, to put in the background of your eventual resignation letter.
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Mar 21, 2014 23:23
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rolleyes posted:Uh, that's not "a little circular", that's mathematically impossible. You do know that right? Assuming you do, make sure your boss and all of your coworkers do too. The best time to stop (or at least discredit) an impossible metric is before it starts being used. Oh, yes, I know, I just tend to be nicer with my words. Right now, though, I'm just a lowly contractor on the bottom of the totem pole, and have barely been here a month; so I really don't have the political sway to call out management's bullshit. That and because of cubicle shortages, I'm literally parked on the opposite side of the building from 90% of my team. My main goal is to get hired on permanently, so I really can't be rocking the boat at the moment. Maybe if I get enough clout to be kept on after the spring rush dies, I'll be able to point out the fallacies and explain averages, mean, mode, and median to my boss. But, my boss is also pretty laissez faire in her command, and hasn't said she would discipline anyone for being below average. Still, yes, that's a pretty silly thing to say that the entire team needs to be above average. Nocheez posted:Do you work at Lake Wobegon or what? I work at a financial institution that can unlock doors for people 
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Mar 21, 2014 23:54
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YF19pilot posted:I work at a financial institution that can unlock doors for people You work for GM financing? They're the ones with OnStar, right?
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Mar 22, 2014 00:36
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Volmarias posted:You work for GM financing? They're the ones with OnStar, right? Ha, GMAC would probably be worse than where I'm at now.
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Mar 22, 2014 00:50
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Listening to a recording of this week's update call from one of our C-levels. Dude sounds like a cross between the Godfather and a preacher. His intonation doesn't go down at the end of sentences, and there's just a hint of a New Jersey accent.
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Mar 22, 2014 16:43
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PurpleButterfly posted:Listening to a recording of this week's update call from one of our C-levels. Dude sounds like a cross between the Godfather and a preacher. His intonation doesn't go down at the end of sentences, and there's just a hint of a New Jersey accent. That reminds me, I listened into our company's Q4/Year End investment/media call, and it was loving hilarious. After all the bullshit charts and whatnot they open the call to questions from the media. Second question was from the local major paper asking the CEO point blank why he expected his unionized employees to ditch their pensions "due to cost concerns" when he has a pension worth north of a quarter million per month. He stammered a bit and then said, "we're not currently prepared to discuss this issue". Note that the cost savings were worth the revenue generated from 5 days worth of work from a single one of our major production lines, according to outside analysts.
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Mar 22, 2014 20:07
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CEOs have pensions? What the gently caress for? fake edit: Apparently this is a common thing, but between bonuses, stock, and regular compensation, you'd think they'd already have enough loving money to retire on.
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Mar 23, 2014 02:45
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Xandu posted:CEOs have pensions? What the gently caress for? Yeah, it's pretty special. quote:[Aviation-industry analyst Richard Aboulafia] said Boeing’s strategy of forcing major labor concessions on the Machinist union in exchange for building the 777X in Washington “reeks of some sort of psychological exercise rather than an economically driven process.”
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Mar 23, 2014 03:07
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Xandu posted:CEOs have pensions? What the gently caress for? Well, you see, you need to provide compensation appropriate to the amount of risk they're taking on. If they steer their companies into a coral reef because of short-sighted cost-cutting measures pumping up short-term profits at the expense of long-term gains, they have to take their golden parachutes and go on the job hunt to find other companies to ruin. That can be a really stressful thing. It's a hard life and you should really feel some empathy for these poor, underappreciated CEOs.
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Mar 23, 2014 03:57
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Kreeblah posted:Well, you see, you need to provide compensation appropriate to the amount of risk they're taking on. If they steer their companies into a coral reef because of short-sighted cost-cutting measures pumping up short-term profits at the expense of long-term gains, they have to take their golden parachutes and go on the job hunt to find other companies to ruin. That can be a really stressful thing. There you go. In other news, I just started my corporate-ish job. I knew what to expect, but man. Three weeks in and I've learned that what is a "proactive hard worker" in non-profit world is "annoying goody-goody" in the corporate world.
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Mar 23, 2014 08:42
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Nearly 75% of my department was was given the option relocating from CA to loving New Jersey or being let go. Of course, no one took the relocation offer because they have homes, family, and life here. Now, as one of the leads who was not affected by this relocation, one of my goals for 2014 is to train new staff in NJ, including team leads.  I guess I'll be training my replacement this year.
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Mar 23, 2014 16:24
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My understanding is that CEOs are pretty well documented to score higher on tests for psychopathy. Example.detectivemonkey posted:In other news, I just started my corporate-ish job. I knew what to expect, but man. Three weeks in and I've learned that what is a "proactive hard worker" in non-profit world is "annoying goody-goody" in the corporate world. Welcome back to grade school. You will be wanting to select a clique and watching out for smiling backstabbers from now on. Which reminds me, how many goddamn resources do we have to pour into internal politics? It's a big problem where I work. You can't just do your job without dealing with an insane time sinking obstacle course of CYA. I mean, ensuring proper documentation and going through proper channels is pretty normal. But lately it seems that 50% of every day is spent dealing with some sort of internal investigation or alleviating some butthurt rear end in a top hat who decided they wanted to stick their nose into something that not only doesn't apply to them but doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things. Which results in all this time wasted which could have been spent, I dunno, caring for the residents of our facility instead.
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Mar 23, 2014 20:09
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Ottoman posted:My understanding is that CEOs are pretty well documented to score higher on tests for psychopathy. Example. I really wish I paid more attention to drama when I was in High School, because I thought when I grew up and entered the big boy world the drama would end. Nope, it's only gotten loving worse. As for CYA, I think my job title should be changed to reflect the high and mighty CYA since that's all I do. A major portion of my job is to send notifications to upper management if poo poo's broken. I realized one day while writing up a particular hairy one that I would be forced to take personal responsibility for an issue that I had no control over caused by another department. If I never sent that notification...nothing would've happened. Management never would've found out, nothing bad would've happened to me or any parties involved. The issue was already fixed, and sending it out would not have facilitated any meaningful action taken by others. Instead I was risking getting yelled at for the failure of another department that I have no control over. In fact, it was for a department I'm not even permitted to talk to, yet I'm still forced to take personal responsibility for them. My job existed at that moment for me to cover my own rear end, and nothing more.
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Mar 23, 2014 21:16
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Renegret posted:In fact, it was for a department I'm not even permitted to talk to, yet I'm still forced to take personal responsibility for them. That sucks. I have a lot of respect for people who take responsibility for their own mistakes and always try to do the same myself, but drat, getting the blame and/or yelled at for something you have no control over is an incredibly uncomfortable and frustrating experience. It takes a lot of control to sit there and accept it in the full knowledge that you will never be able to right that wrong, and any attempt to do so will only make your situation worse.
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Mar 23, 2014 21:55
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Ottoman posted:Welcome back to grade school. You will be wanting to select a clique and watching out for smiling backstabbers from now on. It's actually funny that you say that, because this reminds me exactly of when I went from a small private school to a huge public school and felt the exact same way. My previous school was very individualized and I did everything at my own pace and took pride in my work because if it wasn't good, I didn't get to move to the next thing. My previous job was like that -- I was the only person there who did what I did so I had complete responsibility for its quality. Now, if I hear the phrases "good enough" or "that would be great, but there's not enough time" again I might scream. If you've been talking about a project for a year and a half, at least try your hardest. Nonprofit to corporate: 50% raise for 25% of the work.
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Mar 23, 2014 21:59
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rolleyes posted:That sucks. I have a lot of respect for people who take responsibility for their own mistakes and always try to do the same myself, but drat, getting the blame and/or yelled at for something you have no control over is an incredibly uncomfortable and frustrating experience. It takes a lot of control to sit there and accept it in the full knowledge that you will never be able to right that wrong, and any attempt to do so will only make your situation worse. The worst are a few of my supervisors who know drat well what the deal is around here and they're still the first ones to give me poo poo. My main responsibility is communication, and it's incredibly frustrating that I have to deal with a chain of techs who will flat out lie to me. And I know they're lying, and if I call them out on it they'll usually stand their ground or play dumb. So now I have to send out a notification with their faulty information, meanwhile a separate chain of information is going up on their end. It's becoming increasingly common for me to send something out, then the VP of that department to respond to my notification to say that it's completely wrong which reflects poorly on me and my department. Honestly the only thing keeping me afloat is my insistence to get everything put into a ticket or E-Mail, but the people who are putting lovely information into said tickets aren't being held accountable for the bad info. It's gotten to the point that I know the bullshit others are going to put into the ticket, and I work to prove them wrong before they even say it. It's this awful game of telephone where I call department X to ask department Y something, Y gives lovely information, X relays that information to me, I tell them that it's impossible, and they say "oh well, that's what I was given" and refuse to follow up again. Mostly when I get blamed, it's for not forcing someone to do something even though I made multiple requests, but mostly it's because I'm the messenger and what kind of corporate exec doesn't love shooting the messenger? Especially when it means they can place the blame on someone other than them.
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Mar 23, 2014 22:54
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Renegret posted:Mostly when I get blamed, it's for not forcing someone to do something even though I made multiple requests, but mostly it's because I'm the messenger and what kind of corporate exec doesn't love shooting the messenger? Especially when it means they can place the blame on someone other than them. Yep. I've been attempting to order a sample of a product for our customer. Since I'm at a huge corporate company, I can't just call up the supplier and be like "hey can I get a sample of X?" and have it show up on my desk a couple days later. I have to submit a request to our purchasing department, who then sits on it for a week or two before sending it to some subcontracted company who does our ordering for us, who sits on it for a while till they forget what it was and asks me to resubmit the paperwork, then it gets bounced back and forth and around the whole company for another few weeks collecting a forest's worth of a paper trail before it's actually ordered. And then when it finally does show up, it just sits in our warehouse for god knows how long because our receiving department isn't allowed to charge to this project. Meanwhile I have management all up my rear end about why I don't have it yet because the customer is all upset it didn't magically appear on my desk the instant they had the idea to get said sample. I've been trying to get this sample since before Thanksgiving  I'm job hunting so hard and I'm out as soon as I get my hands on a job offer. I should find out this week if I get an interview for one of the jobs I applied for, I looked it up on glassdoor and the only gripe about the position I'm applying for is that they "only" got a 4% raise this year 
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Mar 23, 2014 23:46
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A coworker put in a request for a VPN when he entered the department. He got his VPN two weeks after he got promoted to a new department and didn't need it anymore...14 months later. And that is why every desk has two computers on two different networks.
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Mar 24, 2014 00:54
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:I'm job hunting so hard and I'm out as soon as I get my hands on a job offer. I should find out this week if I get an interview for one of the jobs I applied for, I looked it up on glassdoor and the only gripe about the position I'm applying for is that they "only" got a 4% raise this year Holy poo poo. 4% is considered good these days? Where I work, if you get a 4% raise, it means you should start polishing up your resume because you're doing a terrible job. Most of the time, we give out around 6% as a base.
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Mar 24, 2014 01:57
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Every place I've always worked, you're lucky if your raise matches inflation. Most of the places had word come down from HR every year that no one was to get more than 2-3% under any circumstances.
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Mar 24, 2014 02:06
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Last year I got a 2.7 and this year I got a 1.3. Those were considered "good" and "average".
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Mar 24, 2014 02:38
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Last place I worked at never gave raises at all for years (and it wasn't a nonprofit or some mom and pop small business or something, it was a good-sized multinational corporation). The only way to get a raise was to get promoted, and those increases were capped at 10% of your current salary regardless of what position you were moving to. My current place gives annual raises, but they are usually pretty small. Got a really good review last year and I think my raise was about 4% or something. Still beats getting nothing while being paid less than half the average market rate for your position, I guess.
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Mar 24, 2014 03:16
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dennyk posted:Last place I worked at never gave raises at all for years (and it wasn't a nonprofit or some mom and pop small business or something, it was a good-sized multinational corporation). The only way to get a raise was to get promoted, and those increases were capped at 10% of your current salary regardless of what position you were moving to. Getting a new job with a new company seems to be the best way to get a raise in a lot of cases, which is a really crappy aspect of our economy given that it's really wasteful to have everyone have to learn a new environment every few years.
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Mar 24, 2014 03:40
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Heck, the biggest raises I ever got were in the two years after I switched jobs *and* moved to an expensive area. Given that they couldn't give a raise of more than 10%, that left me hugely underpaid for the area I was in, so I pretty much blew the raise budget for the next couple years.
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Mar 24, 2014 04:07
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This is awesome I have two meetings to attend this week, both are organised by c level guys and attendance is mandatory. They are booked for the exact same time. Of course pleas to sanity fall on deaf ears as all attendances have been finalised (whatever that means) im expected to bend the laws of physics or face the consequences!
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Mar 24, 2014 15:33
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:This is awesome I have two meetings to attend this week, both are organised by c level guys and attendance is mandatory. They are booked for the exact same time. Of course pleas to sanity fall on deaf ears as all attendances have been finalised (whatever that means) im expected to bend the laws of physics or face the consequences! Luckily I don't have to deal with being pulled into meetings but I'm fantasizing about my most commonly used button on my phone, the conference button. Oh, you're saying your meeting is more important than this other guy's meeting? Well I just happen to have him on the other line, you guys figure it out. Every time I'm stuck in the middle of a he-said-she-said situation, I conference the two people together against their will and I get my resolution in less than 30 seconds. It's a lovely, douchey thing to do but it's really effective. e: Also it's an unspoken rule in this office that when you do this, you put them on speakerphone so everybody can listen to the fireworks.
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Mar 24, 2014 15:42
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:Yep.
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Mar 24, 2014 16:01
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I created what is essentially a calculator in Excel a while back in my old job to look at a variety of processes based on some inputs and output a number that could be measured on a scale that would then rate the various processes and allow project managers to route them to certain people/departments (based on where on the scale they landed.) I did this on my own initiative because I thought it needed to be done and I kind of like figuring stuff out. But, mind you, what I was creating was an approach, not a finished product. The variables were arbitrary, the outputs were arbitrary, and the scale was arbitrary. It was all based on my own "gut feeling" but it wasn't backed up by anything. I showed it to management, with all the warnings about the arbitrariness of it, and all they saw was "numbers go in, number comes out, compare against scale, boom done." So they fast-tracked it. I got them to slow it down and try to validate it first. At some point I left. My old manager recently emailed me asking if I could tweak a couple of things in it. I was like "Are you guys still testing this thing?" He was like "you have no idea." Basically middle management worships it like a god. It's been elevated to the point where major decisions are being made based on the outputs. The values are still pretty much what I originally put in it. Heaven help us all. (Well, not me because I'm gone...)
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Mar 24, 2014 22:58
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Sounds like a great chance for some $60/hr consulting. I spent an hour of my morning "showing my work" to a client who wanted a report in a certain format, got said report in that format, then claimed it was not the proper format. Had to set up a spreadsheet showing them their requested variable labels and the attached file labels and then a bright loving green MATCH next to each column. They did not acknowledge their mistake (or indeed, any part of my final explanation email) and instead immediately went on to ask for data revisions to files from 2 years ago. 
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Mar 24, 2014 23:04
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:Last year I got a 2.7 and this year I got a 1.3. Those were considered "good" and "average". My raise/bonus is based off profit (we made tons of money last year) and performance eval by two superiors (I was given a rating of'exceptional'). And I secured two new substantial clients last year. I am hoping for, but not expecting, 1.5% on both counts. Sadly, this is a percentage of my base salary, not what I additionally make on overtime. It's pretty damned sad that is what I am hoping for.
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Mar 24, 2014 23:16
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Pleads posted:Sounds like a great chance for some $60/hr consulting. I could tell so many stories. I also have a tendency to jump down the rabbit hole head first just out of my own curiosity so I end up involved in all sorts of zaniness. Maybe consulting is the line for me because I get to fool around with this stuff conceptually but then bounce before it gets too heavy. Consultants I've worked with seem to have fun with it without the burden of having to own it. Of course, they can only be as effective as the information they're given and I've seen some pretty messed up consulting based on them having been given some very very wrong information to start with.
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Mar 24, 2014 23:21
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corkskroo posted:I could tell so many stories.
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Mar 25, 2014 04:10
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corkskroo posted:I could tell so many stories. I also have a tendency to jump down the rabbit hole head first just out of my own curiosity so I end up involved in all sorts of zaniness. Maybe consulting is the line for me because I get to fool around with this stuff conceptually but then bounce before it gets too heavy. Consultants I've worked with seem to have fun with it without the burden of having to own it. Of course, they can only be as effective as the information they're given and I've seen some pretty messed up consulting based on them having been given some very very wrong information to start with. This is all true.
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Mar 25, 2014 04:38
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Golden Bee posted:Your PM box is full btw. Fixed. drat those messages went back almost ten years.
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Mar 25, 2014 07:32
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Drink and Fight posted:This is all true. Weird thing is I love being fully invested with my job though. Not saying I'd never do consulting but I really like to get deep into it and am super-psyched about what I'm doing now (and I felt that way then, too, there were just more TPS shenanigans to contend with.) But it is an interesting thought.
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Mar 25, 2014 08:10
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I'm the same way, but at least in my limited experience in my industry, the "dang I need to figure this poo poo out this is kind of neat" stuff is not the poo poo that pays the bills. If I find myself in that situation it's either because I have nothing else to do or am just trying to avoid some other lovely work with a higher margin. I have a few clients who are tremendous pains in the rear end, but the dumb poo poo they ask that they should already know is that kind of engaging stuff I don't normally get to deal with and so I use it as a distraction and they somehow interpret that as "good customer service!" so they keep coming back which is an odd sort of frustration.
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Mar 25, 2014 08:20
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Miss-Bomarc posted:Heck, the biggest raises I ever got were in the two years after I switched jobs *and* moved to an expensive area. Given that they couldn't give a raise of more than 10%, that left me hugely underpaid for the area I was in, so I pretty much blew the raise budget for the next couple years. Pleads posted:Sounds like a great chance for some $60/hr consulting.
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Mar 25, 2014 12:30
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Pleads posted:Sounds like a great chance for some $60/hr consulting. $60?  Consulting should be $150/hr minimum, preferably $200. That's still peanuts to the department budget.
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Mar 25, 2014 12:39
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Volmarias posted:$60? Quite. There was a guy over in one of the SH/SC threads last week who got a panicked call from his ex-employer (who had fired him without cause I think) because their network was down and his replacement couldn't figure it out. He knew what it was almost immediately, negotiated some sort of 4-figure fee to go in and fix it, and spent about 15 minutes on site IIRC. This isn't about screwing anyone over, this is about remembering that your time and knowledge are valuable. You're doing something outside of your normal hours and they're coming to you because you hold specialist knowledge. Consider how much it would cost the other party to resolve the issue without your help, subtract a bit to show good faith, and then set your prices accordingly. If the other party doesn't agree then they don't pay you and you get to keep your free time, no sweat there. If they do agree then you're being appropriately compensated for your efforts. Doubly-so if it's with an ex-employer who fired you. Basically, don't fall into the trap of using your normal hourly rate (or adjusted salary equivalent) as an appropriate starting point for out-of-hours special-case consultancy work. rolleyes fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Mar 25, 2014 |
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Mar 25, 2014 14:11
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rolleyes posted:Quite. There was a guy over in one of the SH/SC threads last week who got a panicked call from his ex-employer (who had fired him without cause I think) because their network was down and his replacement couldn't figure it out. He knew what it was almost immediately, negotiated some sort of 4-figure fee to go in and fix it, and spent about 15 minutes on site IIRC. The best part is that he offered to help for $1000, and his old boss countered with $100 and a pizza. So, he waited a day or two while the business was literally at a standstill, then negotiated with his old boss's boss to do it for what sounds like about $9000. His old boss STILL tried to find a way to throw him under the bus when he finished, too. I still think they got off too cheap. The point is, when offering your services to a company, don't just ask how much it's worth to you, ask how much it's worth to them too. Take the larger of these two numbers, and adjust upwards by a small amount, then bill that. If they fired you, double the number. Fixing the God Spreadsheet that the business makes all of it's decisions on is probably worth more than $60/hr.
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Mar 25, 2014 14:25
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