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Vulture Culture posted:I'm remote and my job denied my request for a $45 pair of headphones and ordered me a $250 pair instead. It's the little things. That's cool and nice and thoughtful!
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Jan 26, 2017 02:58
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Marketings ok, just try to make friends with them. Just gotta go out and get drinks with them first though.
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Jan 26, 2017 03:02
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ratbert90 posted:I deal with marketing maybe 10 times out of the year. Those 10 times are absolutely awful but the other 99% of the time I love my job, coworkers, and bosses. Oh, it's an automatic reaction I've started having reading in this thread, usually it works out pretty well.
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Jan 26, 2017 03:50
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Vulture Culture posted:I thought this was a good read on the frontend activities before stuff ends up in the backlog, and how this process is hosed in a lot of orgs. This was a really good article - it also lead me to this: https://less.works/less/principles/queueing_theory.html
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Jan 26, 2017 06:54
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Pollyanna posted:Sorry to multipost, but how much information are JIRA stories and subtasks expected to hold? I'm regularly assigned tasks now that have nothing but a title and a parent story with often outdated use cases, and I have to ask around in order to get the details. The tickets aren't individual units of work that hold everything a developer needs in order to complete the task, and I expected that to be standard across JIRA boards. A current huge feature we're working on has very detailed specs and wireframes + styled prototypes on Invision and I will let people go back to the old way of doing things after hell freezes over
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Jan 26, 2017 15:27
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Ugh, goddamnit. If you're charged with mentoring a junior engineer, you need to actually be responsive to questions and and requests and be dedicated to that role. Simply sticking a couple junior devs on a project and telling them to direct questions to the overworked team lead is not loving mentorship. There needs to be buy-in to the senior mentorship concept or it just loving falls flat. How come everyone talks big about "oh we do mentorship and pair programming lots" but never actually follows through?Monkey Fury posted:A current huge feature we're working on has very detailed specs and wireframes + styled prototypes on Invision and I will let people go back to the old way of doing things after hell freezes over We have Invision pages, but the wireframes are outdated, the actual styles and design haven't been determined yet (but for some reason we're still putting the thing together), the required inputs and outputs are on a neglected Confluence page, and the API we're working with constantly changes its signature anyway.  I envy you.
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Jan 26, 2017 16:32
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Pollyanna posted:We have Invision pages, but the wireframes are outdated, the actual styles and design haven't been determined yet (but for some reason we're still putting the thing together), the required inputs and outputs are on a neglected Confluence page, and the API we're working with constantly changes its signature anyway. The last place I worked at wouldn't pay for ~anything~ except for laptops -- software licenses, monitors, literally anything -- and had zero project management to speak of (which isn't as great as some of you may think!) so I think I earned this one. Actually, spending time grappling with the idea that it might not get better than this, ever, is uncomfortable in its own right.
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Jan 26, 2017 17:32
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This week I had the blissful realization that I work in a development shop that is Unironic Agilefall, and that management is so afraid of introducing change into the system that they are talking about just going back to the 20 year old RPG app we were moving away from, instead of continuing to push forward with the Java app. And then my boss sent me and the other developer on the team a strongly worded email for not dealing with a serious production issue that had been around for 10 days that I only heard about Tuesday.
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Jan 26, 2017 18:25
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Another tale from the crypt. A couple months ago, the only two devs who maintain JobAutomator left the company. JobAutomator has a pretty good user base, so I piped up and offered to keep it on life support. Basically just doing debug and admin, no new development. As it turns out, a guy who I will call Flip wrote 50% of JobAutomator and still works here in some department or another. I came into work about 2 weeks ago to find Flip, among others who I didn't know, had been in the JobAutomator server installing patches and rebooting and stuff. Not sure what is going on, I casually IM him: "Are they done doing maintenance?" "Dude there is no 'THEY'. This is your project, you are the only one working on it." Okay, fine. I just ignore him. This week, Flip asks me to come to his desk so he can show me "something." That "something" turns out to be "how to put untested code in production". To the surprise of no one, jobs in JobAutomator begin stalling and croaking. Users start complaining. I could have said "I told you so" but there's little point. Instead I am working to get another team transitioned to maintaining JobAutomator, and letting them deal with Flip. Flip's reputation precedes him, so it was not hard to get my managers to agree.
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Jan 26, 2017 20:39
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Greatbacon posted:This week I had the blissful realization that I work in a development shop that is Unironic Agilefall, and that management is so afraid of introducing change into the system that they are talking about just going back to the 20 year old RPG app we were moving away from, instead of continuing to push forward with the Java app. Update: My boss rejected 3 weeks of PTO for a biking trip in Spain, so I put in my two weeks 
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Jan 26, 2017 20:48
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Greatbacon posted:Update: My boss rejected 3 weeks of PTO for a biking trip in Spain, so I put in my two weeks I didn't even have time to tell you to find a new job, good job buddy!
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Jan 26, 2017 20:56
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Greatbacon posted:Update: My boss rejected 3 weeks of PTO for a biking trip in Spain, so I put in my two weeks I've been denied short term disability for a total of seven work days for recovery from a medically necessary surgery. Companies can be really poo poo about this sort of thing. Although, isn't it harder to get a job when you don't have one as opposed to having one? I was always told to secure a job before leaving one. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Jan 26, 2017 |
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Jan 26, 2017 22:27
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Pollyanna posted:Ugh, goddamnit. If you're charged with mentoring a junior engineer, you need to actually be responsive to questions and and requests and be dedicated to that role. Simply sticking a couple junior devs on a project and telling them to direct questions to the overworked team lead is not loving mentorship. My favourite juniors are the "heat and light" kind that are grinders but refuse to actually think about what they are doing or learn lessons. But they sure work hard for the 10-15% of each task they can do on their own!
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Jan 26, 2017 22:58
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Pollyanna posted:I've been denied short term disability for a total of seven work days for recovery from a medically necessary surgery. Companies can be really poo poo about this sort of thing. Huh? You don't have 7 days of vacation to schedule?
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Jan 26, 2017 23:41
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sarehu posted:Huh? You don't have 7 days of vacation to schedule? You shouldn't have to burn vacation for surgery recovery. That's literally what short-term disability is for.
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Jan 26, 2017 23:43
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a foolish pianist posted:You shouldn't have to burn vacation for surgery recovery. That's literally what short-term disability is for. If you paid for short-term disability insurance. But if you haven't, then you should have to burn vacation.
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Jan 26, 2017 23:57
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It also depends on the short-term insurance waiting period, if any. I think my plan, for instance, only kicks in after a week or so. I believe the assumption is that you burn vacation/sick days until then.
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Jan 27, 2017 00:07
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Pollyanna posted:I've been denied short term disability for a total of seven work days for recovery from a medically necessary surgery. Companies can be really poo poo about this sort of thing. Companies can also be really good about that kind of thing. My employer gave me 2 months off with pay last year without me having to do anything other than say, "Hey, my mother is dying, I'll be back when that's over". We didn't discuss it beyond that. I wasn't even expecting them to keep paying me after my vacation ran out, but they did.
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Jan 27, 2017 03:03
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sarehu posted:If you paid for short-term disability insurance. But if you haven't, then you should have to burn vacation. I guess I've been spoiled by a startup and then a European company, but this sounds insane.
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Jan 27, 2017 03:51
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a foolish pianist posted:I guess I've been spoiled by a startup and then a European company, but this sounds insane. Why should the company paying your salary give you free money? Why not the company next door, or your neighbor? Short term disability insurance is a common employment benefit, and (*googles*) it's mandatory in some states.
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Jan 27, 2017 04:13
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sarehu posted:Why should the company paying your salary give you free money? Why not the company next door, or your neighbor? If you like to see it this way : because onboarding new hire and getting them up to speed at a good productivity level cost the company more than 2 months salary. So if the sick employee is a good one it's a better financial choice.
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Jan 27, 2017 04:36
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AskYourself posted:If you like to see it this way : because onboarding new hire and getting them up to speed at a good productivity level cost the company more than 2 months salary. So if the sick employee is a good one it's a better financial choice. That's a good reason to have short term disability insurance for your developers as a benefit. And also a good idea in New Yorp's case. And if you didn't, and an employee asked for extra days off... that's the same as if they're asking for a raise. And the reason to give them a raise is subject to questions like, are they a good employee, and how easily can they leave.
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Jan 27, 2017 05:04
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AskYourself posted:If you like to see it this way : because onboarding new hire and getting them up to speed at a good productivity level cost the company more than 2 months salary. So if the sick employee is a good one it's a better financial choice. The other thing is that if you want top programming talent what you need to offer is literally "all of the perks." Granted various types of disability insurance generally come bundled with medical insurance in the states already. Like was said it's mandatory in some states but even where it isn't you can probably get it, often just as a consequence of getting a job. The simple fact is that people get sick. Granted lovely companies will just plain not authorize it sometimes but those companies are poo poo and you want to work for less poo poo companies.
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Jan 27, 2017 06:04
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sarehu posted:That's a good reason to have short term disability insurance for your developers as a benefit. And also a good idea in New Yorp's case. And if you didn't, and an employee asked for extra days off... that's the same as if they're asking for a raise. And the reason to give them a raise is subject to questions like, are they a good employee, and how easily can they leave.
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Jan 27, 2017 06:10
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How exactly does paid time off work in US based software companies? I mean, I have a general understanding that US labor laws don't really aim to protect/help average citizens, but surely software companies need to step up and offer good conditions in order to keep their devs happy? Seeing how there's always a shortage of developers. Just as a point of reference, I just finished planning my vacation schedule for this year. I get 55 days of paid vacation, because: 1) Everybody in my country gets 28 days by default 2) I work for the government, all government employees (including teachers, police, etc) get an extra week 3) I'm in my last year of uni, and all university students get 20 extra days of paid vacation every year (basically it's meant as time for focusing on school). In addition to all that, I can get unlimited paid time off for medical reasons every year. My expectation has always been that if I some day decided to work for a US based company, I could still get similar conditions, but based on the previous posts here, I'm starting to doubt this. Can anyone clear it up for me?
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Jan 27, 2017 12:20
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Short term disability is equal to the company giving the employee free money, you heard it here first, folks.
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Jan 27, 2017 12:28
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sunaurus posted:My expectation has always been that if I some day decided to work for a US based company, I could still get similar conditions, but based on the previous posts here, I'm starting to doubt this. Can anyone clear it up for me? I don't work in the US as well, but from what I understand from these forums is that for the average employee it sucks pretty hard. You can get boons like porp, but afaik he is pretty senior in his corp.
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Jan 27, 2017 12:34
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sunaurus posted:My expectation has always been that if I some day decided to work for a US based company, I could still get similar conditions, but based on the previous posts here, I'm starting to doubt this. Can anyone clear it up for me? From any decent US company, I would expect 15-20 days of vacation and another 10-12 days of holidays (Christmas etc.) So yes, less than Europe.
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Jan 27, 2017 13:36
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sunaurus posted:How exactly does paid time off work in US based software companies? I mean, I have a general understanding that US labor laws don't really aim to protect/help average citizens, but surely software companies need to step up and offer good conditions in order to keep their devs happy? Seeing how there's always a shortage of developers. You will probably not see those levels of PTO. Where I work, there's a maximum of 40 days of PTO, 10 days sick leave, bereavement as needed. That's for people with a decade of service, new hires typically start with 20 days PTO and go up to 30 days at the one year mark. This is the most generous plan I've ever personally seen with guaranteed PTO.
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Jan 27, 2017 13:41
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sunaurus posted:How exactly does paid time off work in US based software companies? I mean, I have a general understanding that US labor laws don't really aim to protect/help average citizens, but surely software companies need to step up and offer good conditions in order to keep their devs happy? Seeing how there's always a shortage of developers. Hahahahahahahaha. After years at a place with good policies, promotions, and negotiating I had 4 weeks off (20 days). Starting, you usually have 2 weeks or less. There's usually 10-12 set holiday days you get off. Sick-time varies. Some places make you take vacation first. Some places have a set number of days. Good places just tell you not to come in if you're too sick and don't worry.
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Jan 27, 2017 13:59
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The whole concept of having a fixed budget of sick time is so alien to me. How can companies get away with that??
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Jan 27, 2017 14:23
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Gounads posted:Hahahahahahahaha. Please note, this is considered VERY good in the USA. quote:Starting, you usually have 2 weeks or less.  quote:Sick-time varies. Some places make you take vacation first. Some places have a set number of days. Good places just tell you not to come in if you're too sick and don't worry. BabyFur Denny posted:The whole concept of having a fixed budget of sick time is so alien to me. How can companies get away with that?? To be fair, a fixed budget of sick times is *usually* reserved for terrible positions or terrible companies. Every company I have worked for as an engineer never ever had a sick time budget. My current companies policy is "If you are sick we will yell at you to go home if you come in, and if you refuse to we will fire you."
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Jan 27, 2017 14:53
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ratbert90 posted:To be fair, a fixed budget of sick times is *usually* reserved for terrible positions or terrible companies. Every company I have worked for as an engineer never ever had a sick time budget. My current companies policy is "If you are sick we will yell at you to go home if you come in, and if you refuse to we will fire you." Nah, truly terrible companies do the poo poo where you get one big PTO pool for vacation/sick/personal. So you're literally incentivized to come in sick and underperform while infecting everyone else too. Otherwise you're directly cutting time off that trip you had planned to Hawaii, or family time at Christmas, or whatever. Having sick time in its own bucket is leagues better than that. Fixed sick pool doesn't bother me as long as it's reasonably big, and the company is cool with working from home if you're sick-but-not-dead. In practice these days I only use my sick time for days my kid is too sick to go to daycare. When I'm watching her, I can't do any work at all, and I have no problem "burning" a sick day in return. If you think that's "a truly terrible company" then hoo boy have you been lucky.
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Jan 27, 2017 15:35
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I've never been sick more than ten days in a year, but if I needed to be for some surgery or debilitating illness or something, I've never worked for an employer that would have a problem making an exemption to the policy. Like almost everything else in America, it comes down to liability in the court system. Under a wrongful termination suit, you need to be able to document that a continual sick-faker is actually violating a policy.
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Jan 27, 2017 16:00
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Everyone else has already posted pretty well, but I'd like to also point out that in the US, there's no laws giving mandatory time off. There are national holidays, but those rules only affect non-exempt workers (so basically no computer people). If you're salary exempt, your company could theoretically demand that you work every single day, weekends included, with no time off whatsoever. A national outrage right now is that the salary exempt (exempt from labor laws due to "high" wages) laws mean that you can make someone a "manager", tell them to work 60-80 hours a week, and basically pay them minimum wage without any benefits, and they should be glad because at least they have a job. Last year, Obama doubled that salary level required to be exempt, but a federal judge in Texas ruled that the DOL does not actually have federal jurisdiction over this (?!?!) which halted that rule change. Trump's election all but kills any possibility of this ruling being challenged.
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Jan 27, 2017 16:23
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Docjowles posted:Nah, truly terrible companies do the poo poo where you get one big PTO pool for vacation/sick/personal. So you're literally incentivized to come in sick and underperform while infecting everyone else too. Otherwise you're directly cutting time off that trip you had planned to Hawaii, or family time at Christmas, or whatever. Having sick time in its own bucket is leagues better than that. Ah yeah; I forgot about one PTO pool. The only job I worked that had that policy was a call center gig I did for Verizon. It was great when somebody would come in with the flu and infect half the floor; then the managers would yell at us because the queue would go through the roof.
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Jan 27, 2017 16:38
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Gounads posted:There's usually 10-12 set holiday days you get off. I don't think I've ever had more than 8? Also never had separate sick days :\ Munkeymon fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Jan 27, 2017 |
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Jan 27, 2017 16:45
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My company just got bought by Nokia, and their policy is 22 vacation days on top of about 5 national holidays. Sick leave isn't limited, but after about 5 days sick, they want people to do short-term disability.
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Jan 27, 2017 16:51
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Vulture Culture posted:I had a well-reasoned reply half typed but I think it's more appropriate to just respond with "stop posting" In other words "I have opinions but they're religious and I can't articulate them on a rational basis."
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Jan 27, 2017 17:56
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Volmarias posted:Everyone else has already posted pretty well, but I'd like to also point out that in the US, there's no laws giving mandatory time off. There are national holidays, but those rules only affect non-exempt workers (so basically no computer people). If you're salary exempt, your company could theoretically demand that you work every single day, weekends included, with no time off whatsoever. McDonald's was notorious for that. We're talking $25,000 a year with awful benefits to work 90 hours a week. The food service world had that poo poo utterly rampant. Your job was your whole life at that point. You'd see managers on the end making less than the hourly minimum wage because lol gently caress you. For every person who got sick of it and quit there were a horde of people with kids to feed happy to get the bump up in yearly pay. Of course it was Texas that challenged the change. Labor laws in the U.S. are pretty bad.
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Jan 27, 2017 17:59
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