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Hi I'm schrodinger's bureaucrat. I live in a constant state of superposition, simultaneously bogged down by excessive regulatory oversight yet also completely lacking in accountability or transparency until observed by an angry citizen who knows exactly "what my loving problem is"
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Mar 30, 2021 18:53
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We own a couple of small power plants (around 5MW) that run on diesel generators, and a few others that run on natural gas. Some upper management dude had the wonderful idea we should convert one of the diesel plants to natural gas. But there are no gas pipelines near the plant! Somebody said. Not a problem! He replied, we are going to build a “virtual pipeline”, a compression station in one of our natural gas plants, with a bunch of trucks hauling big rear end gas cylinders to and from the ex-diesel, now natural gas plant. They bought the compression station, the gas tanks, everything needed for the project (I think like a million USD in equipment) to find out that the compressor starting was going to make the gas pressure drop so low that the gas turbines on the power plant would trip out of service. Potential buyers only offered to buy the gas cylinders at the price of scrap steel, so they have been rotting away for the last ten years on an empty lot.
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Mar 30, 2021 19:35
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I have potential funders who are apparently desperate to fund projects in my area. But they have to follow their own rules which preclude them from funding any projects in my area. This is apparently my problem to solve so I have to thread a delicate needle involving multiple other potential funders that will take up a huge amount of my time. None of the funders are going to be particularly interested in paying for anything but the flashy boots on the ground stuff, so there's not going to be any project until I have the funding to develop the project. Of course it's our fault we can't secure funding from funders who don't want to fund our efforts to get funding. It's incredibly stupid. e: v lol Outrail fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Mar 30, 2021 |
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Mar 30, 2021 19:38
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Lookin for desperate funders in YOUR area? These funders are down to meet TONIGHT!
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Mar 30, 2021 20:03
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We have a new rule that each person can only own one task at a time, and only two tasks can be in the review stage across the whole team at any time. What are you supposed to do while you’re waiting to get in the review pool and you can’t pick up a new task? I don’t know, but I think it rhymes with gideo vames
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Mar 31, 2021 10:00
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:We have a new rule that each person can only own one task at a time, and only two tasks can be in the review stage across the whole team at any time. What are you supposed to do while you’re waiting to get in the review pool and you can’t pick up a new task? I don’t know, but I think it rhymes with gideo vames Sorry but how loving stupid does management need to be before they swallow their own tongues?
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Mar 31, 2021 10:12
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Bit late on the replies for some of these: At my current place, a few weeks ago, we had an all-hands meeting where the Board finally revealed that not everyone in the company is paid equally. They didn't go as far as revealing what people actually get paid, but acknowledged there is a discrepancy between employees with the same experience and/or in the same roles. To address this, any raises this year will be to balance that out. Even on hearing that some of their colleagues are underpaid there were still people who moaned about not getting their usual raise. Other than that my current job is pretty great, but my last place? Hoo boy
I have a bunch of other horror stories from this place, like the client they bribed to keep on support or the time a client found the Glassdoor review describing it as a sweatshop, but I think that's enough for now.
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Mar 31, 2021 11:40
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nexus6 posted:or the time a client found the Glassdoor review describing it as a sweatshop, but I think that's enough for now. this sounds like it could be funny
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Mar 31, 2021 11:48
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I would blow Dane Cook posted:this sounds like it could be funny Well, there's not a lot more to it than that really. The company provides web services to clients and while in initial talks with a new one they brought it up. I guess they'd done some research. The company played it off as a disgruntled former employee and has since added plenty of positive reviews to try and drown it out. I've no idea if the client who found that actually contracted them or not. I'm pretty sure the company hasn't actually improved though, since I still know some people there and ran in to them at a conference before the pandemic.
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Mar 31, 2021 11:56
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nexus6 posted:Bit late on the replies for some of these: They have every reason to be upset, increased pay to equalize wages should absolutely be separate from raises in general. They’re taking bonuses away to comply with the law. That’s bullshit, why weren’t they complying to begin with? Why are they punishing the higher paid folks with no raises and the lower paid folks with no back pay and a hard limit to their earnings? They’re also inadvertently pitting the two groups against each other instead of accepting responsibility for their own unethical behavior. Solkanar512 fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Mar 31, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 12:01
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nexus6 posted:Well, there's not a lot more to it than that really. The company provides web services to clients and while in initial talks with a new one they brought it up. I guess they'd done some research. The company played it off as a disgruntled former employee and has since added plenty of positive reviews to try and drown it out. I've no idea if the client who found that actually contracted them or not. Year ago I worked for a small businessman and at one point he paid for a web listing via some service and later called them and complained that they hadn't created enough fake positive reviews for his liking. He was too lazy/self important to write them himself. I suspect he would have told me to do it except we'd already had several talks about how I had an issue with flat out lying to customers (which he was NOT happy about) and he didn't want to revisit the issue
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Mar 31, 2021 12:05
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Solkanar512 posted:They have every reason to be upset, increased pay to equalize wages should absolutely be separate from raises in general. They’re taking bonuses away to comply with the law. That’s bullshit, why weren’t they complying to begin with? Why are they punishing the higher paid folks with no raises and the lower paid folks with no back pay and a hard limit to their earnings? Inadvertently lmao
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Mar 31, 2021 12:28
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:We have a new rule that each person can only own one task at a time, and only two tasks can be in the review stage across the whole team at any time. What are you supposed to do while you’re waiting to get in the review pool and you can’t pick up a new task? I don’t know, but I think it rhymes with gideo vames Those cycle times your team probably has would make my head explode.
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Mar 31, 2021 12:30
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:We have a new rule that each person can only own one task at a time, and only two tasks can be in the review stage across the whole team at any time. What are you supposed to do while you’re waiting to get in the review pool and you can’t pick up a new task? I don’t know, but I think it rhymes with gideo vames A long time I had a developer job where the main development team was in another country where the first language is not English. If you had work that needed to be merged into production you could only do it on a Tuesday or a Thursday. If you submitted something to be merged on a Tuesday but had a typo you could fix in a few seconds, tough. You had to wait until Thursday to re-submit. This place also changed their version control from SVN to Git over a random weekend and nobody got any training on the new system.
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Mar 31, 2021 12:44
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The official answer seems to be that we’re meant to help the current tickets get through review. I can hear everyone reaching for their copy of The Mythical Man Month right now.
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Mar 31, 2021 13:09
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nexus6 posted:I have a bunch of other horror stories from this place, like the client they bribed to keep on support or the time a client found the Glassdoor review describing it as a sweatshop, but I think that's enough for now. I once was headhunted for a job at this biotech company. The job looked and sounded sweet, but the company had little public profile, so I went to their Glassdoor page. Have never seen anything like it. Pages of scathing reviews, employees saying they were desperately looking for other jobs, one listing the sole 'pro' point of the job as "management is clueless and everyone hates them, so this will allow you to bond with your fellow workers fast", talk of shouting matches and bosses openly insulting employees. On the plus side, they obviously hadn't whitewashed their Glassdoor profile.
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Mar 31, 2021 13:11
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greazeball posted:Inadvertently lmao Fair point!
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Mar 31, 2021 13:17
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nonathlon posted:I once was headhunted for a job at this biotech company. The job looked and sounded sweet, but the company had little public profile, so I went to their Glassdoor page. I always enjoy when a company is going through some major clusterfuck and tries to stem the tide of negative Glassdoor reviews by throwing in some bland "Great place to work with no cons" amid the dozens of "management beat me with a bar of soap in a sock for pointing out the kitchen was out of milk"
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Mar 31, 2021 14:25
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Solkanar512 posted:They have every reason to be upset, increased pay to equalize wages should absolutely be separate from raises in general. They’re taking bonuses away to comply with the law. That’s bullshit, why weren’t they complying to begin with? Why are they punishing the higher paid folks with no raises and the lower paid folks with no back pay and a hard limit to their earnings? I was gonna post this, but you beat me to it  Though I guess I'm somewhat confused by the concept of employees making the same amount; I worked for a huge company and while they had salary bands that each role was assigned to, the bands were HUGE and had a fair amount of overlap. That, and I mean, isn't that why we're all job-hopping anyway, because you can't ever get a raise worth a drat internally?
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Mar 31, 2021 14:43
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Mojo Jojo posted:I always enjoy when a company is going through some major clusterfuck and tries to stem the tide of negative Glassdoor reviews by throwing in some bland "Great place to work with no cons" amid the dozens of "management beat me with a bar of soap in a sock for pointing out the kitchen was out of milk" My old company did this and it was basically an open secret. It was some of the most blatantly obvious fake reviews ever. Like interspersed with reviews about poor management, lack of raises, pay decreases, kneejerk layoffs/restructuring, there'd be reviews like "This is a great job. The best I've ever worked at. It even has a game room. The only people who complain are the lazy ones!" That company also leaked the entire company's W2s on multiple occasions. Zarin posted:I was gonna post this, but you beat me to it Yeah, I almost feel like the only reason someone would think they were all paid the same as others with the role and experience is naivete. If a company hasn't explicitly spelled out that being the case, it's definitely not the case. Basically the only reason I could think of that a company would reveal the pay gaps like that was that the people on the low ends of the scale were so low they were starting to lose employees. If a person with the same level of experience is hired new into the same role as you, there is a very good chance they are making more than you, by nature of most people getting hired away from other jobs.(But also a chance they are a poor sap making way less if the company managed to pull that off) Also the people suddenly not getting raises are absolutely right to be pissed. Especially if at some point they took that job specifically because of the pay offered. It would basically feel like the company is telling you they think you're paid too much, but to be happy because they've also been being shittier to other people! Remember, the company always wants to gently caress you. They are not on your side. Even if you truly think good people run it, the company itself is an unthinking, unfeeling mass that runs on numbers. Always assume the worst unless proven otherwise.
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Mar 31, 2021 15:08
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Crustashio posted:We recently switched over to a new drawing management system (Teamcenter, the worst loving product I have ever used) and at first they refused to give me internal level access despite the fact I work from a factory office. So any designs I did required me to submit them for "review" to internal people. Who would not even look at what I did, they would just load the workflows and click approve. There was one time I realized after submitting I forgot something, so I got the reviewer to actually reject the workflow. Which then put the drawing into a loving limbo that required intervention from an administrator. Turns out in this global implementation no one actually tested the reject workflow process. That's the default TeamCenter setup, or close to it. I've used it for 10 years across three companies for different things (the reject/approve story this was in response to was TC based) and unless you customize the workflow or add the right module TC always assumes that you were assigned a thing by a supervisor and then the workflow goes you->supervisor for peer review assignment->Peer Review->Tier 2 review (if this is part of your review structure)->Supervisor Final Review. Then it goes off to the next department that needs to review it before the file can be "released" and completely locked. If you just pull a drawing number without assignment a rejection can break the workflow; when I left my last job I had accumulated something like 25 dead workflows because a designer had created one without it being assigned and their supervisor rubber stamped it to send it to our department. Other fun things you can do in Teamcenter if you feel like it: "cut" errors from individual lines in a BOM (these come up if you fail to fill in a value like a quantity or part name) which will allow you to edit the line when you should be locked out so someone won't reject your step in the review, or you can just stop the system from auto-rejecting due to missing information that way. You can right click on individual lines in the product structure viewer and unlock them while leaving the rest of the product structure locked from editing, so anyone could access and change the line without requiring them to take ownership of the workflow. The number of times I made use of this just to correct people's errors is impossible to estimate. You can create your own part numbers and use them as make from material even if they have no information behind them and so shouldn't be allowed to be used. This will somehow not generate errors at any level. My favorite was that at the last company I worked for Design was able to modify make-from material numbers at any time. There were multiple occasions when I was reviewing something and between me and the peer reviewer getting it the MF P/N was changed and threw the rest of the data I had populated out of sync. There was one where a Designer modified a Make From from a valid part to an obsolete one after our department had reviewed it. We had a two hour conference about this one because the drawing got approved and sent to the government like that. I pulled the timestamps from the approvals and the Make From file to show exactly when and who was responsible and his supervisor's response was "just because it says it was him doesn't mean it was." The implication being that someone on our team had modified the file to blame his designer. Whenever I wonder why I was miserable in that job I think to everything Teamcenter was and wish I didn't know half of what I do about it.
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Mar 31, 2021 15:23
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I'm currently in a big rear end teams meeting for my department and their talking about privacy poo poo and gently caress I'm not paying attention to this trash.
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Mar 31, 2021 15:28
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Saalkin posted:I'm currently in a big rear end teams meeting for my department and their talking about privacy poo poo and gently caress I'm not paying attention to this trash. The person presenting in my team's meeting right now has apologized because we can very clearly hear his cat attacking its scratching post/home thingy but he won't move rooms.
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Mar 31, 2021 15:30
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My MegaCorp can't recruit or retain top tech talent as competitors pay far better in the same city, and our upper management resents needing to have any tech at all and hates the idea that a new person with in-demand skills would need to be paid more than someone who has been at the company for decades. The stop gap solution has been to have a tremendous amount of expensive contractors who cost far more than paying market rates for permanent staff. Each year it's a dept priority to "reduce the number of contractors, aiming for zero!" and I have a sensible chuckle when that goal is in red text with a note "we now have 150 more contractors than at this time last year."
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Mar 31, 2021 15:44
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wilderthanmild posted:That company also leaked the entire company's W2s on multiple occasions. Like, the whole W2 with SSN and everything? Guessing you didn't get any free credit monitoring services out of it, though. Full Metal Jackass posted:The person presenting in my team's meeting right now has apologized because we can very clearly hear his cat attacking its scratching post/home thingy but he won't move rooms. Mine just yell at the phone. Luckily, I don't really do presentations. At worst, I have to apologize to a customer when they call for support.
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Mar 31, 2021 15:51
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NapalmWeasel posted:Like, the whole W2 with SSN and everything? Guessing you didn't get any free credit monitoring services out of it, though. Yes, everything. The first time they offered free credit monitoring for like a year with some company I'd never heard of, but subsequent occasions they did not.
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Mar 31, 2021 15:59
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Mojo Jojo posted:I always enjoy when a company is going through some major clusterfuck and tries to stem the tide of negative Glassdoor reviews by throwing in some bland "Great place to work with no cons" amid the dozens of "management beat me with a bar of soap in a sock for pointing out the kitchen was out of milk" There's a scuffle that went down recently with Amazon workers posting they're praise for the company on social media. Some of them are clearly take (using stock art photos for profiles) but others look like normal employees, badgered into saying "this is an awesome job! Who needs a union? And if we get injured, it's probably our fault" 
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Mar 31, 2021 16:07
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nonathlon posted:There's a scuffle that went down recently with Amazon workers posting they're praise for the company on social media. Some of them are clearly take (using stock art photos for profiles) but others look like normal employees, badgered into saying "this is an awesome job! Who needs a union? And if we get injured, it's probably our fault" Everybody's voice is for sale. What's your price?
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Mar 31, 2021 16:10
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nonathlon posted:There's a scuffle that went down recently with Amazon workers posting they're praise for the company on social media. Some of them are clearly take (using stock art photos for profiles) but others look like normal employees, badgered into saying "this is an awesome job! Who needs a union? And if we get injured, it's probably our fault" Yeah, about that... (Since Twitter automatically embeds instead of giving the actual link title I put in - overview of Amazon's social media manipulation from people on those teams.) https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1377053576565039105?s=19 The absolute gall to internally call their disinfo program Veritas is impressive honestly. Some training docs pushed on employees included. SkyeAuroline fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Mar 31, 2021 |
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Mar 31, 2021 16:13
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nonathlon posted:There's a scuffle that went down recently with Amazon workers posting they're praise for the company on social media. Some of them are clearly take (using stock art photos for profiles) but others look like normal employees, badgered into saying "this is an awesome job! Who needs a union? And if we get injured, it's probably our fault" At the company I previously mentioned they started making it part of the onboarding process that you'd be pressured into making a glassdoor review at your 90 day review. Also they weren't stock art photos, but rather machine learning generated faces if I recall, which seems a bit more insidious to me. We're not that far off of essentially being able to fake videos of entirely fictional people that look and sound very realistic. I'm sure there will still be tells, but it's probably going to be an uphill battle telling people that the tiktok videos being posted by ILOVEAMAZON2983293 are fake because some odd piece of her appearance, cadence, etc is a common trait of machine learning generated content.
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Mar 31, 2021 16:20
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I work in the public sector (college professor, not in the USA) and I quite like that we have a fixed salary scale. There's always going to be useless dickheads doing nothing and just creating a giant vortex of suck, but at least I don't have to invest any energy into making sure I'm getting paid at least as much as they are. Usually the shittiest co-workers spend all of their energy in sucking up to the boss and getting a better paycheck while the rest of us do the all the actual work. Now I just do my job and every year get about a 3% pay bump. If I do a PhD, it'll bump me up two levels and that would get me about a 10% raise. Honestly, the amount of energy I save scheming ways to get more money from my boss makes the whole thing worth it. Plus it's a very livable wage, way better than I would get teaching in the states.
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Mar 31, 2021 16:26
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Hyrax Attack! posted:My MegaCorp can't recruit or retain top tech talent as competitors pay far better in the same city, and our upper management resents needing to have any tech at all and hates the idea that a new person with in-demand skills would need to be paid more than someone who has been at the company for decades. The stop gap solution has been to have a tremendous amount of expensive contractors who cost far more than paying market rates for permanent staff. I see we've both worked for my three previous employers.
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Mar 31, 2021 16:31
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Boiled Water posted:I see we've both worked for my three previous employers. It is amusing when they spend a ton training employees to become proficient with in-demand development tools then those employees get immediately headhunted. Oddly the management running our tech dept (college degrees are uncommon, let alone CompSci credentials) doesn't seem to get offers. 
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Mar 31, 2021 16:45
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Maybe it's just my experience (or lack of) but to me it feels like people who want to continue to get raises instead of making pay fair sound like a FYGM attitude. I agree the company shouldn't punish people who are paid better, but it's not like people are getting their pay reduced - the finite amount the company has is being spread more evenly. This isn't to do with any specific law or change btw, it's an internal decision. I imagine the reason the company hasn't given any info about what jobs pay what amount is likely because the people paid the most also happen to be white males and their embarrassed to say so.
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Mar 31, 2021 16:49
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nexus6 posted:Maybe it's just my experience (or lack of) but to me it feels like people who want to continue to get raises instead of making pay fair sound like a FYGM attitude. I agree the company shouldn't punish people who are paid better, but it's not like people are getting their pay reduced - the finite amount the company has is being spread more evenly. This isn't to do with any specific law or change btw, it's an internal decision. The "finite amount" that's definitely also finite and fixed for the C-suite, yep sure
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Mar 31, 2021 16:52
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Hyrax Attack! posted:My MegaCorp can't recruit or retain top tech talent as competitors pay far better in the same city, and our upper management resents needing to have any tech at all and hates the idea that a new person with in-demand skills would need to be paid more than someone who has been at the company for decades. The stop gap solution has been to have a tremendous amount of expensive contractors who cost far more than paying market rates for permanent staff. Yes, but has your company achieved 30% EBIT by 2020? I know the place I work for certainly didn't!
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Mar 31, 2021 16:56
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If you can’t be FYGM in a capitalist workplace where you literally have no info about or control over other people’s salaries, when can you be? Gimme my money More seriously, unless you work in a cooperative, your pay should have literally nothing to do with other people’s pay. You enter into an agreement with your employer, not with your employer and all your coworkers, and certainly not into some kind of profit share agreeement. If Bob in accounting needs money for his sick kid, it’s clearly inappropriate for the company to deduct money from your paycheque to cover it. If you have an implicit understanding with your employer that you’ll get a raise/bonus every year roughly in line with industry standards, and instead they say “oh sorry you’re overpaid and we needed to bump up Bob’s salary”, it’s still inappropriate because the company appears to have paid other people by deducting money from your future salary. Obviously it’s gonna piss the employee off even if it’s not illegal or anything.
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Mar 31, 2021 17:13
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:If you can’t be FYGM in a capitalist workplace where you literally have no info about or control over other people’s salaries, when can you be? Gimme my money
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Mar 31, 2021 17:21
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wilderthanmild posted:At the company I previously mentioned they started making it part of the onboarding process that you'd be pressured into making a glassdoor review at your 90 day review. That anyone would believe any post about how great their employer is is just stupid as gently caress. Seriously what kind of brainwashed simp would do something like that? I work for a charity and really believe in the work we do and I still wouldn't post 'I love my employer so much!' unless it included a selfie on top of a mountain or me wrestling a cougar barechested. Even then it'd be 'I love my job' with no mention of the business.
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Mar 31, 2021 17:39
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question since this seems to be the kind of thread that might have suggestions for this kind of thing does anyone have project management software recommendations for a tech/web and mobile development company that handles multiple teams, clients, and cadences under one overlying product? we use JIRA for all our dev work but our overall management is extremely lacking; our PM uses multiple google Sheets with multiple pages on each to track everything in different formats all over the place. it's a god drat nightmare. i keep wanting to suggest trying out something like monday.com to handle the overview and keep all our teams in sync on projects without expecting like the Sales team to comb through JIRA and see what's going on. any particular recommendations? or just start with my gut and throw monday.com out there?
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