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General question for the thread: I assume a bunch of people here have made the leap from "poorly paid for work that is way beyond the job description / your theoretical experience level" to "appropriately paid for a job that is appropriate for your experience level". Basically, "big fish tiny pond" to "mediocre fish huge pond". Any advice on how to do so gracefully? I'm used to being exploited and abused but also more-or-less untouchable, but now I'll be appropriately paid with an appropriate workload, but very much replaceable. What are some key habits to change, so I can avoid being the stupid poo poo someone else sees at work?
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Jun 13, 2021 08:21
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Atopian posted:General question for the thread: You may be replaceable but it's such a pain in the rear end the business will fight against it unless you gently caress up something major or piss off the right people. Unless you have temperamental management I wouldn't care too much about the replaceable part.
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Jun 13, 2021 08:29
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Atopian posted:General question for the thread: Ask people for advice when unsure how to do something, get on well with your coworkers, don't rock the boat too much and ask for feedback early from your managers is what I did. People like being asked for advice and a good relationship with coworkers let's you avoid silly office drama, which you should never, ever be involved in actively or passively. Managers usually like being in control so if you show them that you value their management and ask them for advice they'll love you and will try to keep you around. (You of course can then safely ignore whatever bs they're telling you and just do your job the way you're supposed to) If they're treating you badly gently caress all of the above though, never let any job exploit you, don't stick with a job just because you feel fortunate for getting paid well. Congrats to your new job though, going from poo poo to average is great 
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Jun 13, 2021 08:40
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I'm pretty sure by the nature of capitalism, every single human is intentionally given more tasks than they can handle and are capable of not to get all CAPITALISM BAD on ya or whatever so don't feel bad if you feel like you're the village idiot or whatever, just get really good at one thing or something
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Jun 13, 2021 08:40
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loving up is a valuable part of learning how to do your job. If anyone gives you poo poo for it, tell them that. I never learned anything about how to do my job from the times it went right.
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Jun 13, 2021 08:56
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Local Weather posted:Oh god yeah when I left my job in 2014 it was after years of the company getting more and more customer and business with us getting no raises. The owner and his wife were really upset and kind of baffled that I was leaving. The wife asked my why and I told her I was getting a $30,000 raise by leaving and she was dumbstruck and actually had the nerve to say "wait this is about money?" Business owners not understanding that people work stupid bullshit jobs for money never fails to infuriate me. The sheer egoism of assuming people's lives are less important and they care less about their time and energy! When I was young and applying to my first non-kitchen job to make some money while studying in college, I went to an interview for some office assistant job. The salary wasn't listed on the job application (another pet peeve of mine), so naturally when they asked if I had any questions, I asked what the pay was. I have never forgotten the sour, condescending look on the guy's face when he said "well I'd like to think that people want to work here for more than just money" as if I'd just done something horribly offensive. He didn't actually answer beyond that. Now I know what a huge red flag that is (and luckily didn't get that job but instead one at a chill office that let me be flexible around classes), but at the time it was my first formal job interview and I was really ashamed of my apparent gaffe. After the interview, I asked people if it was somehow wrong to ask about salary in an interview because it just seemed really obvious to me that it was something I'd want to know about the job, so if it wasn't listed surely people would ask about it? I hadn't yet learned that below a certain level, you're expected to pretend that the paycheck isn't the main reason you're doing some menial job. Eventually you can reach a level of career or status where you're allowed to overtly care about and directly address compensation, but lowly peons have to act like they do the most tedious jobs because they really have nothing they'd rather be doing.
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Jun 13, 2021 12:25
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Spatial posted:It's so dysfunctional I could post in this thread 24/7 lol   Murderion posted:drat, I'm so glad I got our head of HR fired for stealing oxycodone. You too
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Jun 13, 2021 19:40
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Ugly In The Morning posted:loving up is a valuable part of learning how to do your job. If anyone gives you poo poo for it, tell them that. I never learned anything about how to do my job from the times it went right. Also, if you're competent at a thing they'll come to expect you to do that thing often. So strategic incompetence can make your life a lot easier.
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Jun 13, 2021 23:07
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Also resist "cross-training" with anyone whose job you wouldn't want to end up doing full-time alongside what you're currently doing for no extra money (because you will). If you can do someone else's job when they leave, they will give it to you, and then if you can almost barely keep up with it -- no matter the cost to yourself -- they will let you until you leave, too. Soon you will even start getting in trouble for not keeping up with what used to be an "extra" duty you took on to be helpful!
Imagined fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jun 13, 2021 |
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Jun 13, 2021 23:12
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I wouldn't worry too much about being replaceable, it just feels weird when you are used to being the absolutely vital employee who would dare their boss to fire them. If you are in a new company just get used to not caring. If you are switching gears with people who expect you to be that extra-hard worker, yeah it's gonna awkward. I know what you mean though. I was the trying too hard clown for a long time. Earned two promotions and was passed on a 3rd promotion and that's when I knew I'd hit the ceiling. I had to train my new boss for the position I was promised and holy hell did I stop caring. Goofing off and working less felt weird, but I was doing what they paid me to do.  Always ask "Is this my problem?" Go on a personal work-to-rule strike. The hard part for me was all the stuff I know needs doing that also isn't my job. There's something unsafe, I can't ignore it. If I report it my boss will 100% ask me to fix it. So I'd report it, make my boss ask me to fix it. Then I got into this silly back-and-forth where my boss wants me to do extra stuff constantly (stuff I used to do) but also wants me to personally ensure I have time to complete my regular duties. Like I'm supposed to supervise myself and delegate my time because between breakdowns and preventative maintenance. I started to leave on-time with unfinished jobs every day. My boss turned passive aggressive, started pencil whipping stuff that was out of compliance, got caught by FAA auditors, and had to start getting his hands dirty after that. That dude hated me because he knew I could run the shop but just wasn't willing to. They gave him that job title. My boss hated me because I didn't do his job for him. Some great advice a co-worker gave me: Think of yourself like a contractor. None of the company's problems are your problems. You're there to do what they hired you to do. That's it.
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Jun 13, 2021 23:15
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Enfys posted:Business owners not understanding that people work stupid bullshit jobs for money never fails to infuriate me. The sheer egoism of assuming people's lives are less important and they care less about their time and energy! Dang that's no fun. I was asked if I was fluent in Chinese, affirmed I was not, followed by a condescending "and why is that?" The job was for $15 an hour and I later learned the interviewer was also monolingual.
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Jun 14, 2021 15:13
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Imagined posted:Also resist "cross-training" with anyone whose job you wouldn't want to end up doing full-time alongside what you're currently doing for no extra money (because you will). If you can do someone else's job when they leave, they will give it to you, and then if you can almost barely keep up with it -- no matter the cost to yourself -- they will let you until you leave, too. Soon you will even start getting in trouble for not keeping up with what used to be an "extra" duty you took on to be helpful! The upside of learning new things is that you make yourself more valuable. If your boss likes that and you're in the right culture that can lead to a promotion. But if they do what the post I quoted says then hey, that new skill made you more marketable and it'll probably be easier to leave for (hopefully) greener pastures, or at least a bigger paycheck.
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Jun 14, 2021 15:50
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Elephant Ambush posted:The upside of learning new things is that you make yourself more valuable. And as far as I'm concerned, being cross-trained doesn't mean you're getting more time out of me. If the primary is out and I have to pitch in for a few hours, that doesn't mean I'm under any obligation to put in extra few hours to make up my primary work.
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Jun 14, 2021 15:55
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Cheesus posted:Agreed. Bingo. It's setting hard time limits (ie, not being salary) that makes cross training work out well. I've been cross trained for essentially our entire staff-accessible back end (IT has things I can't touch, as I've lamented at length) and nobody else right now has the same degree of gap-filling available. Especially since I'm now the backup for terminally-overworked salary who previously had no backup. In this case it's a better safety net.
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Jun 14, 2021 16:01
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Cheesus posted:Agreed. Yeah you have to balance learning with not being exploited. If it's obvious that someone is asking you to learn something so they can make you work extra then gently caress that.
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Jun 14, 2021 16:23
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They literally rewrote my annual performance evaluation so that instead of getting kudos for doing more than I was originally hired to do, I could instead be disciplined if I failed to do so. So it went from "Thanks for being a hero and picking all that extra work up, Imagined." to "Why aren't you getting both of these jobs done, Imagined?" over the span of a few months.
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Jun 14, 2021 16:26
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"Can I use you to do this extra work for no good reason?" "Only if I can I use you for a reference on job applications?" Has anyone actually used this line and how did it work out?
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Jun 14, 2021 16:45
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Imagined posted:Also resist "cross-training" with anyone whose job you wouldn't want to end up doing full-time alongside what you're currently doing for no extra money (because you will). If you can do someone else's job when they leave, they will give it to you, and then if you can almost barely keep up with it -- no matter the cost to yourself -- they will let you until you leave, too. Soon you will even start getting in trouble for not keeping up with what used to be an "extra" duty you took on to be helpful! Yeah in teaching don’t get certified to teach things you don’t want to teach. Trying to get certified in multiple things “to make yourself more marketable” just means you will get stuck forever teaching the the high stakes treating classes and the classes no one wants while someone who is only certified in one subject will likely get to sit in that job until they get a job somewhere else (you will be passed over for replacing them. They will hire someone outside the school to fill that position). I’ve seen it happen every time. Principals say the love flexibility because it makes it way easier for them fill positions. They don’t give a drat about your career.
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Jun 14, 2021 16:53
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Profits? up several hundred million. Productivity? up over 100%, not including our contracted engineers. No, there are no raises. No, you cant work from home going forward.
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Jun 14, 2021 16:54
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I like to tell managers, "that sounds like a (company name) staffing problem, not a problem MY team can solve. " when they ask my team to work free O/T because they are chronically understaffed
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Jun 14, 2021 17:25
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Samuel L. Hacksaw posted:I like to tell managers, "that sounds like a (company name) staffing problem, not a problem MY team can solve. " when they ask my team to work free O/T because they are chronically understaffed Sounds like you're not a team player, you might not be getting that promotion/raise you've been asking for*. * you were never going to get the promotion/raise you were looking for.
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Jun 14, 2021 17:27
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Elephant Ambush posted:The upside of learning new things is that you make yourself more valuable. If your boss likes that and you're in the right culture that can lead to a promotion. Yeah, assuming it's a skill that's actually something you want. At one of my old jobs they basically forced me to take a product line/system that was hot garbage and required 24/7 support, without providing any sort of documentation or assistance. On top of that it was for a niche service that I would never encounter again in my career. It was part of what got me out the door from that place.
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Jun 14, 2021 17:45
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Sanctum posted:Some great advice a co-worker gave me: This is one of the best bits of advice in this entire thread. Note that it doesn't mean you can't take on something extra if you feel like it and otherwise exceed responsibilities in a quest for promotions or whatever--it just means that you need to make that a very conscious choice (and also make it clear that's what's happening to those above you, and feel no guilt whatsoever if you decide "nah, gently caress it" and go back to only doing what they hired you to do if your plate is full). Me learning to tell myself "[X] is hosed up, folks know it, and it's not my responsibility to fix it" and ignore that poo poo entirely to concentrate on what actually IS my responsibility is one of the hardest things I've had to learn over the years.
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Jun 14, 2021 18:02
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Samuel L. Hacksaw posted:I like to tell managers, "that sounds like a (company name) staffing problem, not a problem MY team can solve. " when they ask my team to work free O/T because they are chronically understaffed lolling at free overtime what are these people smoking
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Jun 14, 2021 18:19
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Local Weather posted:Oh god yeah when I left my job in 2014 it was after years of the company getting more and more customer and business with us getting no raises. The owner and his wife were really upset and kind of baffled that I was leaving. The wife asked my why and I told her I was getting a $30,000 raise by leaving and she was dumbstruck and actually had the nerve to say "wait this is about money?" I left an MSP for the same reason back in 2017 - terrible management, more work/clients than our guys could handle, always on call & I was making around $42k (salaried, no OT) when I left while routinely working 50-60 hour weeks. I took another IT contract job that started me at $52k with hourly OT, got hired on permanently within 6 months & now I make double what I did at the MSP less than 4 years later. Funny part was I got a call from a recruiter a few months ago who said my former MSP job was looking for people & asked if I would be interested in coming back. I laughed & told her what I was making & what my terms would be if they really wanted me back that bad...never heard back, not even for a negotiation 
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Jun 14, 2021 18:20
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Enfys posted:Now I know what a huge red flag that is (and luckily didn't get that job but instead one at a chill office that let me be flexible around classes), but at the time it was my first formal job interview and I was really ashamed of my apparent gaffe. After the interview, I asked people if it was somehow wrong to ask about salary in an interview because it just seemed really obvious to me that it was something I'd want to know about the job, so if it wasn't listed surely people would ask about it? A bill was just signed in my state to make it so employers have to provide a salary range for positions and also makes it illegal for companies to punish/prohibit employees for sharing salary information. What the range has to be and where in the process it has to be disclosed is a little nebulous, but it's a good first step to making sure we can force discussions on payments. Outrail posted:"Can I use you to do this extra work for no good reason?" I've jumped between companies every 3ish years through my career and I have never once actually had a potential employer call or even ask for contacts with my current employer. What you do is just put that extra experiences on your resume and keep using references from peers from two jobs ago.
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Jun 14, 2021 19:23
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Dariusz2k posted:Giving my work to other people then having it to come back to me as urgent when poo poo didn't get done right. Asking for help on with an issue by making a ticket for the people who actually have access to that system, the ticket I made ended up back in my queue because they couldn't figure it out, so now I have more tickets than I started with, both are getting old and ending up on people's ticket reports. I'd probably close more tickets in a day if I didn't have to spend 4 hours a day playing hide and seek with WOWs in nursing units to check and validate and test some new thing engineering or network is pushing out, and certainly if I got help when I ask for it. But no, your tickets are old why are they old 
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Jun 14, 2021 21:46
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I've seen cross-training work out okay in certain circumstances, like in the University department I worked at. There, most of the people whose offices were near the reception desk all got trained on the phone system and how to run the front desk, including people who were program managers and otherwise high-ranking. It was recognized as a vital task, so we made sure we had sufficient depth of coverage. It wasn't abused, and was a net benefit for everyone.
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Jun 14, 2021 22:19
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Potemkin meetings A few projects back we gained the worst kind of customer: a company with a team of talented people with good communication skills and high quality standards actively supported by their management. I really liked working with them, but the company hated them because they required things to actually work and would point out in exact detail why and how they didn't. This caused a lot of hilarious problems. When I joined the project it doubled the number of people working on it. Meanwhile the customer was being told that an entire development team of almost 20 people were on it. "Our best people". In reality it was me and one other guy, part time, and the other guy was acting as customer contact and project manager and tester. Just a complete joke scenario. One day, the customer announces they'll be paying us a visit in the very near future. Management panics when they hear this because this level of lying is surely legally actionable. The day comes and I arrive in the meeting room. To my amazement there are about 25 people present, and none of them have touched the project in years so they have no idea what is going on. Just sitting there sweating hoping they won't be asked anything, filling space to support the blatant lie that we're actually supporting them. They got away with it too.
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Jun 14, 2021 22:40
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Scapegoat racism When I joined that project, part of the product was not working as expected and one of the customer's contractors had been working on it for over six months trying to get it into shape. It was a very simple communication interface that typically would take a few hours to get working perfectly in any competitor's product. However because of the insanely bad design used in ours it was almost impossible to make it work reliably, which it had to, because it was being used in a medical device. The shortcomings of the design were obvious, and I reported them all saying the design should change because it's unacceptable trash, complete garbage, an embarassment, pathetic, worthless, etc. I'll spare you the technical details. One day as we're discussing things on a call with the contractor, the manager mutes the call and says "I can't understand a word this guy is saying. It's all like ching chong bing bong. This guy is useless. He has no idea what he's doing." He was actually good and spoke perfect English. Immediately I know the problems are never going to be fixed and what the narrative is going to be. It's all the useless contractor's fault because they are simply a drat moron and are to blame for all the delays. This is an ideal narrative because it saves management from embarrassment and is much cheaper and less frightening than acknowledging reality. So I overhear this several times over the next weeks as it becomes the dominant explanation among management. Yeesh.
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Jun 14, 2021 22:59
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Reuse, Reuse, Recycle That simple device which didn't work properly caused several months of delays and potentially tens to hundreds of millions in lost revenue. How did this happen? The company strongly encourages reusing designs and parts. This is perfectly sensible because it saves time and money and makes everyone's lives easier. It's great to have a library of reliable, well designed components to draw from, proven in existing products. For this to work you have to mantain them. Well that costs money. So nobody is responsible for their maintenance or development. The designs are taken and modified for each new project, then put back, accumulating stupid design flaws and bizarre behaviours as they go. Nobody understands the designs. Nobody is given time to thoroughly test or fix anything because after all, why would you need to if you're just reusing a part from another project? It worked fine there didn't it? (It didn't, it caused huge delays again and nobody could use it) These rotting designs get reused in dozens of projects and they cause problems all the time. The product usability is incredibly bad. Sometimes not even we can use the product. The creeping realisation that if we can't use the product we made, customers might not be able to either, never quite reaches to management level.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:13
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Have you considered compiling a dossier and sending it to the shareholders/internet?
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Jun 14, 2021 23:18
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That talented customer team with the medical device project did some fun things which really caught management off guard. They got wise to the bullshit after a while, and they loved to arrive in a regular update meeting and present some massive showstopping issue with no forewarning, with an incredibly detailed analysis so it couldn't be denied or bullshitted around. Their measurements of our device were dramatically better than ours, and we actually made the thing and had dedicated staff to do it early on. They eventually wound up giving us their measurement setup to measure our own designs properly. How humiliating is that lmao It was really funny to see the company getting owned so hard, managers were literally dripping with sweat in the meetings sometimes. I had to contain myself from laughing out loud quite often because I love a black comedy.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:28
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goatface posted:Have you considered compiling a dossier and sending it to the shareholders/internet? 
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Jun 14, 2021 23:37
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Spatial posted:Why would I punish such great contributions to corporate absurdist comedy? This is art. Depends if you can do it similar to how Barney did it in "How I Met Your Mother".
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Jun 15, 2021 00:36
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Spatial posted:Their measurements of our device were dramatically better than ours, and we actually made the thing and had dedicated staff to do it early on. They eventually wound up giving us their measurement setup to measure our own designs properly. How humiliating is that lmao We've got a customer that's great to work with. They're basic rule is igaf so long as the important bits are where they're supposed to be and if they're not tell them and they'lll work with it if they can. They recently sent back some fixtures that had been in use for years to get reworked because they were now out of tolerance. We had just gotten our first fancy 5 axis cmm and I had to program it to repeat their inspection results. The parts were perfect as they were. We sent them back with our reports and an explanation that we'd done nothing. They shrugged and said they'd check them again and that's the last we heard. Had another customer that was the opposite. We were a subcontractor for them. 100% inspection on every part before and after plating was required. Every part had to have an individual serial number assigned to it, attached with a tag held on by string. Not engraved into it. Also they handled the coating, no option here, and every skid of parts came back from coating with a massive wad of ripped of tags on top of the parts. Or... Just no tags. After being spent multiple skids of parts we didn't make for a post coating inspection the inspections became a separate charge and we're happy to inspect as many parts as you can send us. Me: they're all scrap Them: why do you suck that's an easy tolerance Me: we didn't make those Them: yes you did Me: no we didn't Then a bunch of engineers roll through. Them: ty for catching that. Them: please reply to this email explaining how you'll implement ongoing process improvement to prevent this from happening again.
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Jun 15, 2021 00:57
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Lazyfire posted:A bill was just signed in my state to make it so employers have to provide a salary range for positions and also makes it illegal for companies to punish/prohibit employees for sharing salary information. What the range has to be and where in the process it has to be disclosed is a little nebulous, but it's a good first step to making sure we can force discussions on payments. It’s federally illegal to punish or prohibit sharing salary information. It’s often hard to enforce though I worked for a place that fired me for doing it and was dumb enough to put that in writing.
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Jun 15, 2021 01:14
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Two weeks ago, I put my notice in at the car dealership. The 30 year old GM(bears the name of the dealer) came to me saying(for the second time now) that I was too vital to lose, and that after talking with company COO, basically said, "we are working on something to keep you happy, because you're everything we need in a tech, essentially irreplaceable. The first time was over pay as well. For those not familiar, practically every major car dealer(brand franchise, not a used car lot, people often call used car lots dealerships, THERES ACTUALLY NOT MUCH DISTINCTION), repair technicians are paid "flat rate." This means you get paid per job, whatever the job pays. In short, when there is an abundance of work, you tend to slam through it, to make money, and sometimes, you can have a 15 hour day or more, and only be there 8 hours. This is happening less and less, and manufacturers are getting away with not paying technicians, and franchises don't loving pick up the slack. If there's a economical crisis or just happenstance, you could essentially be sitting at your toolbox for a day, not making any money, because there are no appointments. I had been doing this poo poo for 10 years. On top of all the morally questionable poo poo that goes with it, I merely told them I wanted a salary, and 4 weeks of PTO to use each year. Their response was, "Can we work something out, and meet in the middle, work out a deal for you to grow? Sure. But we're not going to sit down and put any effort into it and have you leave anyway. And we definitely aren't going to pay you that number." Ok, cool, buddy. You're not going to spend 30 minutes drawing up a compensation agreement, got it. Well, I already accepted the offer at Carvana, who is paying me hourly, time and a half after 40 hours, 4 weeks of vacation per year, with rollover, paying my individual insurance premium, etc. Seeya never, guy!!! To those of you that have higher end cars such as BMW, Audi, VW, Mercedes Benz, god help you if you bought a Jaguar or Land Rover, covered under a new vehicle warranty, you're in for real trouble at the dealerships. Techs are FLEEING dealerships, and going to companies that are switching to a quality of life model, and when your car breaks, its gonna be broken for MONTHS. I may not be going to an environment thats always challenging me, but they're definitely going to pay me, so shout out to the going from poo poo to average folks! TL;DR YOU'RE AN ABSOLUTE ASSET TO THE COMPANY WE WILL DO ANYTHING TO KEEP YOU ON!!!!!!! Except compensation, we can't do that.
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Jun 15, 2021 01:43
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interwhat posted:TL;DR What about an iPad, if you stay with the company for 6 months?
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Jun 15, 2021 02:04
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interwhat posted:..., and going to companies that are switching to a quality of life model, and when your car breaks, its gonna be broken for MONTHS. What does this mean
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Jun 15, 2021 02:35
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