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Going to repost something I said on linkedin here: I absolutely hate offices that add slides and poo poo to make it seem more fun(!) to work there. Here's the mini-rant "Say what you will about making offices more "worker friendly", but these examples of forced addition of whimsy to corporate space makes me feel less inclined to work at these otherwise stellar companies. It may be limiting my future growth to say this, but companies that focus on employee engagement and work-life balance will always be more attractive than places that have ballpits and nap pods, but a standard 60 hour work week." 2 things set me off on this: 1.) http://www.topmanagementdegrees.com/spectacular-office-slides/ (lovely MBA farm site) 2.) http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/ (thanks to Xibanya for posting it originally) I mean, gently caress this new faux-cushy office culture. I know this is the bitch about corporate jobs thread, but I'll take my soulless Insurance Company over Google or Apple any loving day of the week. Fat Midwestern grandmas and all. I got in this mood after dealing with a draining and exhausting recruiting call from a mega-tech corporation out in Seattle. Beyond the asinine lines of questions ("What's your favorite fish"), over-casual style ("Yeah we're just tossing around the KOOSH ball. It's just so... KOOSHY"), and other saccharine attempts at being inviting and hip the blatant cover just irked me. Companies like this are horrible for their work life balance, and they just flail at any and every creature comfort to try to bridge the gap in sensibility for working in their lovely app farms. This isn't just in their IT Hives, but in corporate too. I know they offer great compensation for the work put in, but I felt angry when they asked me if I'd be willing to answer conference calls after 7pm, and to basically put all aspects of my life on hold to simply go in and interview in person. I don't care about 6 figures, I care about getting to work 6-430 Monday through Thursday and have Friday off, even if I have to pay off my loans. I get sad when I watch the similarly aged Deloitte juniors' hands shake because they haven't slept in 3 days and are running on red bull and nerves. I look forward to starting my day because I know that in the end, the corporate structure at my job means that we follow a profitable business model that doesn't lead to huge turn-overs and the employees can feel safe after their 90 day vetting period. I don't want to hate my coworkers any more than is necessary, I'd like to be normal and have them over for barbeques so that I can act like a bronze age chieftain and enforce my social standing through gifts of roasted meats and fermented grain. In fact, I'd like to like my coworkers and not worry about them using my career as leverage for their own advancement! I know that compared to most of your jobs I have it real good and I'm an rear end for bitching about this, but the fact that talent recruiting in the US has gotten to this point just shows how far the devaluation of the individual worker has come. gently caress, if this is what the high-level ace recruiters are doing, I would hate to see what the temp or contractor folks resort to. Sorry, I just thought there's an audience for this in here.
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Jun 18, 2014 22:30
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Kreeblah posted:God drat it. I agreed to offload all my folks for a while so I could focus on process management for a while (which we badly need) and today I'm told that they need my office for somebody else who just became a manager. Never mind that I went for almost two years trying to find empty conference rooms for one-on-ones. And God knows when I'll get another one when I get folks back under me. One of our VPs caught wind of this and stepped in. Looks like I'm not losing my office after all!
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Jun 18, 2014 23:29
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Immanentized posted:gently caress, if this is what the high-level ace recruiters are doing, I would hate to see what the temp or contractor folks resort to. If they're actually high-skill, high demand sorts of folks, contractors make bank. Most aren't really in that high of demand, though, and they get hosed over hard instead. They get hit with every illegal trick in the book and know that their contracts will be terminated instantly (and possibly with penalties) if they put up any fuss at all about it.
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Jun 19, 2014 00:15
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Immanentized posted:Going to repost something I said on linkedin here: So, I work for Google, and it might just be my team but they're actually really good about work life balance. I work 9-5, and my boss is fine with it. It's more about what gets done than when I spend doing it. I'm actually working from home this week and last week because I'm waiting for my new child to decide that it's time to bust free of my wife, and my commute is 2 hours each way. My boss was totally supportive of this and even encouraged it, having previously suggested that I work from home part of the time before. The thing is, I actually enjoy working at my job, and would spend more time there than I do. The main reason that I don't is because of the commute, which puts a limit on when I should come in and when I should leave due to train schedules. Ball pits and nap pods aren't gimmicks to make you think that the company is cool. They're there because someone made the argument that they're actually cost effective to have. I get free lunches! It's not because the recruiters want a way to differentiate the company and trick people to join, it's because the free lunches are actually cost effective when you figure in team cohesion, work life balance, and time spent going out to get lunch vs time spent going to a different floor to get lunch. I will say that I'm sorry that you had to take a phone call with Microsoft (I'm guessing). The things I've heard about them make me not interested in then at all. Volmarias fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 19, 2014 03:55
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Microsoft sounds like a ring in hell. I decided to explore my options and look for a new job. Browsing craigslist to get ideas I come across one of the most pretentious advertisements ever (quoted from memory). quote:We do interviewing different around here. We look for drive, passion, and energy. That can't be determined on a resume. We have to interview A LOT of candidates. Your first interview will be a five minutes at our office. After this grueling affair, we start to whittle it down to the people we need. 
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Jun 19, 2014 05:10
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I really don't understand why you would post something like that to linkedin.
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Jun 19, 2014 14:09
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In an interview once I had some guy say he wasn't looking for someone that just wanted to put his 10 hours in and leave.
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Jun 19, 2014 14:32
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Volmarias posted:So, I work for Google, and it might just be my team but they're actually really good about work life balance. I work 9-5, and my boss is fine with it. It's more about what gets done than when I spend doing it. My impression from people who work there is that somewhere like Google is actually a good place to work, in part because it seems like almost all their employees (like you) are selected to be people who actually love what they are doing and would likely be doing the same thing for fun. The problem, I think, is that a number of other companies basically cargo-cult Google's image, and decide that if they add some beanbag chairs to the break room, they are now a hip and happening company and they can expect their employees to put in voluntary extra hours. It doesn't work because they aren't actually a good place to work, and rather than being in love with their work most people are just trying to pay their bills without actively hating their life.
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Jun 19, 2014 14:44
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Volmarias posted:I will say that I'm sorry that you had to take a phone call with Microsoft (I'm guessing). The things I've heard about them make me not interested in then at all. Maybe he was interviewed by Penny Arcade. I hear they're looking for new IT staff after they burned out the last guy.
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Jun 19, 2014 15:06
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Harry posted:In an interview once I had some guy say he wasn't looking for someone that just wanted to put his 10 hours in and leave. I hope you strangled him with his own tie. My two favorites: "We're looking for a candidate who isn't motivated by money--one for whom the research is its own reward." -Interview for a lab manager position at Harvard back in 2007, shortly before they offered me salaried $22K and no benefits and no right to individual research projects. Yes, tell me more about how you're looking for someone who can live on no money in Boston, and who wants to do research you won't let them do. Sounds like a real winner. "This is an energetic, high-engagement environment with all the excitement of grad school, and the hours to go with it!" -A start-up in Woburn MA whose salary offer didn't even match my grad school stipend. When I think of great weekly schedules and good work-life balance, the first thing I think of is grad school. Gee, I wish I had my grad school work schedule again, said no-one ever. The real kicker was that they were a government contractor and yet somehow paid less than my stipend. I made more money and had better benefits by staying in grad school than by working for them.  poo poo like that is why I ended up in godawful pharma. Startups and academic labs offered salaries that didn't even cover my student loan payments at the time, and then along comes PFE with over double my second-best offer and downright phenomenal benefits. The field may suck, but at least they pay me for it. Sundae fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 19, 2014 15:12
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Sundae posted:"This is an energetic, high-engagement environment with all the excitement of grad school, and the hours to go with it!" I wish I could have the hours back from when I was getting my Bachelors. My Steam Backlog has been steadily growing and I don't think I'll ever catch up 
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Jun 19, 2014 15:17
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Uncle Jam posted:I really don't understand why you would post something like that to linkedin. . What I ended up posting was to my local grad-school's group and was later heavily edited. You're right to point out the short sightedness of a post like that, but I think I phrased it in a way that invited discussion rather than derision. [quote="Volmarias" post="431208012"] Thanks for that (congrats on the child btw), I actually really appreciate your perspective on that. Most of my burn out is coming from the recruiting side of things. As someone with a degree from a really well regarded tech school I've been getting hit by a frustrating amount of linkedin leads despite constant requests to not be contacted. I won't say what company it is, but it's considered a follower with all these trends. I know there is legitimate value add of a lot of these things, but I guess what frustrated me so much was the "Me too"-ism of it all. There seems to be a fetishism related to the HR practices of places like Apple, (and Google)that is being practiced by companies with nowhere near the dynamicism of those giants and it just strikes me as hollow. Edit: Basically what Ashcan said. Cargo-cults are lame, and trying to wow someone in my field with that stuff really shows they don't invest in any candidate research or whatever. Immanentized fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Jun 19, 2014 |
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Jun 19, 2014 15:20
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Renegret posted:I wish I could have the hours back from when I was getting my Bachelors. My Steam Backlog has been steadily growing and I don't think I'll ever catch up Wow, even in my lovely 60-80 hour weeks now, I have more free time than I ever had during undergrad. There was a semester where I changed my answering machine (god I sound so old  ) to say "Hi, I'm in biochem. Please leave a message after the beep" because I was in class / lab for nearly 40 hours a week for that one class alone.People are like, "Oh, college is the best four years of your life" and I really wonder where the hell they went to school.
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Jun 19, 2014 16:54
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Me, in an email: "I am in meetings today but can respond to you via email. I'm not at my desk." HR person: "Great, I will call you at your desk." 
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Jun 19, 2014 16:54
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Sundae posted:"Hi, I'm in biochem. Please leave a message after the beep" Well there's your problem. I was just your average huge procrastinator so I left everything for the last minute, then I'd disappear off the face of the planet the last month before finals and grind out 14 hours a day of assignments every day the last 2-3 weeks before the end of classes. The rest of that time was spent playing video games and drinking beer. What I've learned by entering the work force is that this was good practice for the way large corporations work, with the whole not planning ahead and leaving everything for the last minute thing. The only difference is that the beer comes after the work to make the bad things go away, instead of before. I was a computer science major, so most of my classes were "Here's a bigass assignment due at the end of the semester, now let's go learn stuff you need to know to do it. Don't leave it all for the last minute, you won't be able to finish it then!" Haha just watch me.
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Jun 19, 2014 18:10
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Today I had my quarterly review. I got dinged on "professionalism." Manager said "I like you Xibanya, and you are usually the most productive member of our team, but I've noticed you lose energy and slow down around 5:15. You need to have that same productivity throughout the day." gently caress you boss, I can give you 9 good hours, then I'm done. You can't squeeze more blood from this stone. So now I'm going to try to work as slowly and lackadaisically from 8 to 5 as possible so I can give my best pep from 5 to 7!
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Jun 19, 2014 18:31
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Immanentized posted:Most of my burn out is coming from the recruiting side of things. As someone with a degree from a really well regarded tech school I've been getting hit by a frustrating amount of linkedin leads despite constant requests to not be contacted. Something that I found helps is a keyword canary on your linked in profile. Write something like "Please include the word 'herpderp' in your request so that I know you read my profile. Otherwise I will mark you as spam." It actually really works very well, and a surprising number of recruiters will see it and do it. The rest of them are spammers and can eat a butt.
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Jun 19, 2014 18:35
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Ran into my first "do the needful" the other day. Can I join the club now?
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Jun 19, 2014 21:50
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Uncle Jam posted:I really don't understand why you would post something like that to linkedin. Wells Fargo has such lovely business practices that nearly all of their PR fluff on linkedin get comments from people disgusted by how they were treated by the company, which is amazing since linkedin is about as controversy free as it gets.
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Jun 19, 2014 22:50
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Peven Stan posted:Wells Fargo has such lovely business practices that nearly all of their PR fluff on linkedin get comments from people disgusted by how they were treated by the company, which is amazing since linkedin is about as controversy free as it gets. Of all the crappy jobs I've had, Wells Fargo is the worst of the worst. Suggestive sales are one thing, but they literally wanted us to have every customer open a new account every time they came into the branch.
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Jun 19, 2014 23:37
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Hey, I just got a solicitation email from Epic. I figured since there are a few IT and Big Pharma types here, I would ask what you goons thought of them.
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Jun 20, 2014 02:32
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I feel right at home in this thread yet never posted. I probably have a few gems for you guys. What happened today.... Quick backstory: I work for a multibillion dollar family owned company as a product manager. I make a good living, but my wife makes twice mine and we don't have debt. I don't have to work, but like to. I got fed up with poo poo so I walked in one Monday, gave two weeks, and went home. My demands were the owners parking spot and a corner office. I didn't get those, but Next day I got a 30k raise. Now the game is how far can I go... I honestly don't give a poo poo and it's kind of fun. Boss asked me how I felt with early morning China calls once a week, and I asked him how he'd feel about a punch in the balls and gently caress no. Last week president of sales made a lovely comment about something, and I just responded with "or I can just go home now and you can figure it out ". I am a nightmare employee, but at least I'm having fun with it. They are sending me to a free four seasons vacation for my performance. Might be quitting time again when I get back to see if I can hit six figs. FYI- there is zero hyperbole in anything above.
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Jun 20, 2014 03:21
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YF19pilot posted:Hey, I just got a solicitation email from Epic. I figured since there are a few IT and Big Pharma types here, I would ask what you goons thought of them. I'm an Epic consultant so I'm not entirely sure what it's like within the company itself, but I've been out to their campus about a dozen times over the years for training and it is the weirdest loving place in the world. It feels like a cult to me and I could never imagine personally being a TS or programmer or even trainer there, but at the same time I also know former employees who grinded it out, got the certs, and balled out to make crazy amounts of money in the consulting world. So, it really depends on what you are looking for. And how much you like snow cause you'd be moving to Wisconsin.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:22
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YF19pilot posted:Hey, I just got a solicitation email from Epic. I figured since there are a few IT and Big Pharma types here, I would ask what you goons thought of them. At least on the dev side, their whole shtick is hiring kids right out of school and treating them like poo poo. I've never interacted with them myself, but I'm in Chicago, so there are a lot of former Epic people around here.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:32
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good jovi posted:At least on the dev side, their whole shtick is hiring kids right out of school and treating them like poo poo. I've never interacted with them myself, but I'm in Chicago, so there are a lot of former Epic people around here. The Midwest's tech world is full of former epic people, and I've yet to hear anyone glad they did it. They want people who COULD go work for Microsoft and make $100k in Seattle, but who don't know that because they're naive kids and are willing to accept $50k, no perks, and motherfucking Madison.
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Jun 20, 2014 07:49
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And on top of that, people who work there get MUMPS.
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Jun 20, 2014 08:01
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Position is for a technical writer, but we'll see. I've lived in NoDak, so location isn't an issue, more just interested in the corporate culture.Kreeblah posted:And on top of that, people who work there get MUMPS. Ugh, I'm not a programmer and I only know C (trying to teach myself SQL right now), but reading that I would rather have the mumps than work on MUMPS. That sample code on the bottom, executing operators left to right, case sensitive variables that are defined the first time you reference them. Debugging that would drive me to drink.
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Jun 20, 2014 14:01
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YF19pilot posted:Position is for a technical writer, but we'll see. I've lived in NoDak, so location isn't an issue, more just interested in the corporate culture. I'm a programmer, and I'd probably change careers rather than work with MUMPS.
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Jun 20, 2014 15:36
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YF19pilot posted:Hey, I just got a solicitation email from Epic. I figured since there are a few IT and Big Pharma types here, I would ask what you goons thought of them. Epic has a slavish dedication to making sure their product works as intended and is perceived well. To that end they hire very competent people and your co-workers will be hard-working and intelligent, because they need to compensate for customers not necessarily being up to task. For my position (Unix server/Cache management) this meant a weird halfway of having no managerial authority to tell my customers to shape up and get their poo poo together while being effectively responsible for and judged by their work output. Customer-facing roles are made or broken by who they're supporting, and when I worked there this was largely rural hospital IT departments, which do not attract especially talented people. Non-customer facing roles aren't bound to this as much, so you'll probably be working with decent people. The kool-aid/cult factor can still be a turnoff and was for me, but less so than the above. Tech writers probably don't have to touch the MUMPS poop as much, but you'll still encounter it a lot in that Epic has not-invented-here syndrome to an extreme, and writes a lot of internal software in MUMPS, including timekeeping, project management, and document management. They also had their own MUMPS-based email system for a while, but have thankfully finally gone to Exchange. On the other hand, the enterprise line-of-business software you'll find at most established firms is also poo poo, so whatever. I don't know what the industry standard for document management is, but they probably aren't using it. Pay and benefits are good for the midwest in most positions, so if you're not looking at the coasts also I wouldn't worry about that. Forums user LeftistMuslimObama works there as a tech writer (though I think he's moved to software development for the salary increase) and does not share my vehement dislike for Epic; you may want to message him.
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Jun 20, 2014 18:35
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scroogle nmaps posted:Epic has a slavish dedication to making sure their product works as intended and is perceived well. To that end they hire very competent people and your co-workers will be hard-working and intelligent, because they need to compensate for customers not necessarily being up to task. For my position (Unix server/Cache management) this meant a weird halfway of having no managerial authority to tell my customers to shape up and get their poo poo together while being effectively responsible for and judged by their work output. Customer-facing roles are made or broken by who they're supporting, and when I worked there this was largely rural hospital IT departments, which do not attract especially talented people. The treatment of customers that you describe would make me worried as a technical writer (I say this as a training professional) because you are the person in charge of making sure the customer understands the software. It may mean technical writers are treated well and their important work is valued, or it may mean technical writers are blamed for customers not understanding technology. I'd try to get a sense of that in the interview.
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Jun 20, 2014 21:13
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For the last few weeks my manager has been lending me to the IT department to assist with QA on the new build of our internal software because we're a smallish company and I am good enough with the .NET stuff to help. This has been a few hours per day typically, and I don't mind because it gets me out of loving taxes. Today my manager told me quietly that the other managers have been critical of his decision to lend me out and that I needed to work hard enough and fast enough to make up for the hours I spent with the IT team or he'll look bad. So much for saving my strength for the 5-7 stretch.
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Jun 21, 2014 01:57
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Xibanya posted:For the last few weeks my manager has been lending me to the IT department to assist with QA on the new build of our internal software because we're a smallish company and I am good enough with the .NET stuff to help. This has been a few hours per day typically, and I don't mind because it gets me out of loving taxes. So, your reward for doing extra work is . . . more work?  on out of there.
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Jun 21, 2014 03:02
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quote:So, your reward for doing extra work is . . . more work? Welcome to corporate? About three weeks ago, I finished an urgent (but in reality extremely unimportant) project milestone four days early. Management's response? This is the full e-mail below, minus the 8-line signature and meaningless legal-speak about not reading it if it isn't for you: "Since you have four days of project flex, we're bumping your schedule forward five days to create the necessary sense of urgency. Keep up the work!" They literally skewed the timelines so that I was overdue because being ahead of schedule didn't make it urgent (read: stressful) enough. Also, note the lack of any sort of thanks in that. "hey, thanks for getting done early" or even "Keep up the good work." Keep up the work, and I'm back behind schedule again because now they want it sooner. That ended it for me, by the way. They will never receive a single thing ahead of schedule ever again. I laughed at someone on the phone yesterday when they requested a 40ish-page paper overnight. I wish I could say I hung up on him, but in reality, I spent the next 5 minutes repeat variants of "nope" over and over again. Calling it now: I'll be fired within 6-12 months. It'll be great. 
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Jun 21, 2014 03:15
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Sundae posted:Welcome to corporate? I want to crawl inside the head of the type of person who does this. What are they honestly thinking? How do they believe their actions will be received? It's just so beyond comprehension for me. It should be legal grounds for murder.
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Jun 21, 2014 06:00
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Sundae posted:Welcome to corporate? Yeah, no. I have some issues with the place I'm working for (a few of which I'm working on some changes to fix), but when somebody's put in a shitload of work to pull off a miracle, it's appreciated. For example, I stayed really late on Tuesday managing some folks responding to a huge emergency and just sent an e-mail to a couple of people to let them know I'd be in later on Wednesday. Not only did I not have to use any PTO, that sort of thing is expected when people stay late for poo poo like that. Even though I'm below market for what I do, I fear jumping ship and ending up in some sort of corporate dystopia that 95% of places seem to be. Being treated like a human being shouldn't have to be a perk. 
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Jun 21, 2014 06:33
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Sundae posted:Welcome to corporate? loving hell, I work for the very definition of "the man" and even that poo poo wouldn't fly here.
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Jun 21, 2014 07:17
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Kreeblah posted:Being treated like a human being shouldn't have to be a perk.
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Jun 21, 2014 12:51
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Xibanya posted:For the last few weeks my manager has been lending me to the IT department to assist with QA on the new build of our internal software because we're a smallish company and I am good enough with the .NET stuff to help. This has been a few hours per day typically, and I don't mind because it gets me out of loving taxes. You're in Austin, yes? There are tech jobs in Austin. Performed Quality Assurance on internal software (or something, Resume to Interview could say it better), is a line on a resume that could help you get a tech job, especially if you know some .NET stuff. From my experience, jobs like this are a hole you never get out of until someone, you or your company, hits the eject button. You either leave, or they lay you off because you can't perform up to their expectations, or they fire you when you are so burnt out you stop caring. In the meantime, your health and mental state sucks. In my case I had a crappy job that, even though it was hourly, had required overtime that meant for a whole winter I only saw the sun on weekends. The rest of the job sucked in the usual call center helpdesk type of way. All of this combined meant that my work life sucked everything out of me and I had no energy for a personal life and no motivation to get out. I am not sure if that applies to you, but reading your posts I think it may. What I finally did was set up spreadsheets and realized that, as a single guy with no life, I could save half my take home salary. So I did. After 3 months, I had a 3 month cushion. This was during the tech boom and I was in a tech areas, so I simply quit. It was soooo worth it to see the look on my manager's face when he asked where I was going and I told him, "I don't know." I had a job in a week. My point is, you need to get out. It is not going to get better, and it will only end when you leave or are forced out. Get an exit plan ASAP.
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Jun 21, 2014 16:31
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I'm leaving a stagnating corporation (at least the part of the business I'm in is not doing great) to go to a much smaller, rapidly growing company. So psyched. But less psyched about losing all the vacation time and PTO I have accumulated, I guess that's what I get for being a responsible employee and giving a poo poo about my job.
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Jun 21, 2014 17:27
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Shouldn't they be paying out all of that?
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Jun 21, 2014 19:26
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