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A few years ago I was working for an agency whose CEO-equivalent got on a health kick and issued a decree that the organization would no longer pay for any catering of "unhealthy" food -- e.g. donuts, pizza, etc. Fruit or veggie trays were the only snacks they'd pay to bring in from then on, which made the already-absurd employee pep-rally type meetings even more pointless and resented. Oh goody... fruit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Kj17oVHAk
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Jun 22, 2021 01:28
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Cthulu Carl posted:During a lull in the re-opening 'festivities' (mostly giving out headphones then telling people we're out of headphones)
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Jun 22, 2021 03:34
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Cthulu Carl posted:During a lull in the re-opening 'festivities' (mostly giving out headphones then telling people we're out of headphones), the boss said that senior leadership has been having emergency meetings attrition is apparently approaching Verdun levels. We're all shocked that telling a few hundred people who have been doing their jobs remote they have a couple weeks before they'll probably have to start coming back in, and oh yeah, you now have to book a desk in advance if you want a place to sit might... Lead to people loving off to other companies? Wait,so you have to come in,but you also need to book a desk? What happens if you don't book a desk? Stand in the corner? Can you automate a desk requested to go out at 00:01 for the best desk every day?
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Jun 22, 2021 05:38
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Outrail posted:Can you automate a desk requested to go out at 00:01 for the best desk every day? Use it to book the CEO’s desk. You’ll either be instantly fired or become part of their cherished inner circle due to your ingenuity.
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Jun 22, 2021 05:52
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Blue Moonlight posted:Use it to book the CEO’s desk. You’ll either be instantly fired or become part of their cherished inner circle due to your ingenuity. As if the CEO is going to give up wfh.
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Jun 22, 2021 07:22
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Laffo if your CEO doesn't have the only designated office in the company but they're never in it because work from home since before covid
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Jun 22, 2021 07:26
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I really wonder how long it'll take me to be competent/good at this job, considering that: • The training has been garbage • The documentation is incomplete/confusing/wrong (sometimes more than one) • I'm being pulled in different directions constantly • Every time I feel like I'm beginning to master a process, I discover missing/undocumented process steps that have not been performed in X (where X can range from a couple months to three years) It took me about 5 months at my last dumpster fire of a role to really feel like I might be starting to get it, but I'm not so sure about this one. 
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Jun 22, 2021 07:36
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That's commonplace in every job. Eventually you get the baseline knowledge you need and see all the angles that everyone else is coming from and you learn what to do and when to do it. You just gotta stick it out until you get that institutional knowledge you need to make it work. And in the end, remember the situation you were in at your last job and how lovely that was and just thank god you're not there still AHH F/UGH fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Jun 22, 2021 |
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Jun 22, 2021 07:50
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AHH F/UGH posted:That's commonplace in every job. Eventually you get the baseline knowledge you need and see all the angles that everyone else is coming from and you learn what to do and when to do it. You just gotta stick it out until you get that institutional knowledge you need to make it work. Yeah . . . it took 5 months last time. I'm around 3.5 months now, so it might be the same-ish. Some things are starting to make sense. I just need to hope that I can get up to speed before one of the people I lean on to explain stuff decides to quit (one already did  )The more I do this, the more I deeply envy the people that followed me. Documentation was fresh, thorough, and my support was world-class. Amusingly, I've come to realize that probably part of the reason transitions suck so much is that nobody is really graded on them. They're not part of anyone's PDP. Generally, any training you do is doing work for an old boss, not your current one. The whole system is a scam. AHH F/UGH posted:And in the end, remember the situation you were in at your last job and how lovely that was and just thank god you're not there still Heh, I think it might have been better, to be honest. The only difference is that I think I get paid more now, after factoring in the COL differential  Thanks for the encouragement, though. It genuinely helps a bit, heh.
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Jun 22, 2021 08:51
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Don't forget this was you like 4 months agoZarin posted:I hate that so much credit goes to hotshot self-aggrandizing fuckers who make a name for themselves rolling out a new system or something, but then after we start using it for awhile we realize it's a fuckin' dumpster fire and sucks.
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Jun 22, 2021 09:02
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AHH F/UGH posted:Don't forget this was you like 4 months ago True! I have no reason to think it's different anywhere else, though. My understanding of large corporations is that That Guy exists everywhere. I suspect I will meet him here before too long. Perhaps that's overly cynical. Or, he may have already left . . . my own private slice of heaven here is following several people who left the company (some voluntarily, some not). Makes me wonder if they know something I don't
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Jun 22, 2021 09:56
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Outrail posted:Wait,so you have to come in,but you also need to book a desk? What happens if you don't book a desk? Stand in the corner? I have no idea, our desks aren't in the booking system because we have our own area with a fridge and microwave. We're also pushing for a couch because anytime we leave we get hounded by people asking about random IT bullshit because no one wants to call our help desk. Well, I don't, because even before covid, I developed a thinking face that I guess looks like I'm planning a spree shooting, even if I'm thinking about my dog running in his sleep.
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Jun 22, 2021 12:03
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"Open File Explorer-" "What's that?" what the hell kind of hiring standards
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Jun 22, 2021 15:11
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SkyeAuroline posted:"Open File Explorer-" I, too, once lived the dream of a Team Lead tasked with teaching cranky, salt-of-the-earth, I-remember-this-job-when-it-was-all-manual-and-there-were-no-computers-on-our-machines, 60-year-old union dudes how to use the brand-new machines in the shop  Edit: This is when you're going to tell me it's a fresh intern straight out of school and I'm going to insist that I don't believe you
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Jun 22, 2021 15:24
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I've had coworkers under 30 who required further clarification after the instruction "Open the Start menu".
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Jun 22, 2021 15:29
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Watching the new hire next to me use only his laptop screen and not the connected monitor, for the last 2 weeks.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:32
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Zarin posted:I, too, once lived the dream of a Team Lead tasked with teaching cranky, salt-of-the-earth, I-remember-this-job-when-it-was-all-manual-and-there-were-no-computers-on-our-machines, 60-year-old union dudes how to use the brand-new machines in the shop No, half our hires are high school graduates at best and half are over 55. (so, one of each...) This is the latter, though I've had to teach the former similarly-basic things with Windows. We just keep hiring completely unsuited people for the job because, no points for guessing, anyone qualified needs to actually be paid as such.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:35
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satanic splash-back posted:Watching the new hire next to me use only his laptop screen and not the connected monitor, for the last 2 weeks. SkyeAuroline posted:No, half our hires are high school graduates at best and half are over 55. (so, one of each...) This is the latter, though I've had to teach the former similarly-basic things with Windows. We just keep hiring completely unsuited people for the job because, no points for guessing, anyone qualified needs to actually be paid as such. I do wonder if The Goon Generation (TM) is uniquely placed in history where we grasp the Windows UI better than most because we grew up with it (this statement assumes some level of privilege I guess but bear with me): the people before us didn't have computers at all, and the ones coming up behind are growing up with tablets/smartphones, so they look at the Start Menu as some sort of weird thing they only use for work, similar to how I view most of the B2B software I use. That was very depressing to write, I need to go lie down.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:41
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How about the CEO in an all-hands meeting lauding the freedoms that employees have, pointing out two employees that are taking three months sabbaticals as an example , but not mentioning the massive burnouts those two guys have from being worked to the bone by him personally and them being on medical leave and not a sabbatical? Does that fit in here?
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Jun 22, 2021 15:44
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ephex posted:How about the CEO in an all-hands meeting lauding the freedoms that employees have, pointing out two employees that are taking three months sabbaticals as an example , but not mentioning the massive burnouts those two guys have from being worked to the bone by him personally and them being on medical leave and not a sabbatical? Welcome friendo.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:50
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Imagined posted:I've had coworkers under 30 who required further clarification after the instruction "Open the Start menu". The first company I worked for out of college began doing basic computer literacy tests on all interviewees shortly after I was hired due to some people who seemed competent being complete disasters the second you asked them to open and edit a file. I'll never forget the person who complained they couldn't log into their email on their work computer and it turned out they were trying to conduct company business through their Yahoo! account because they didn't understand what Outlook was.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:50
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satanic splash-back posted:Watching the new hire next to me use only his laptop screen and not the connected monitor, for the last 2 weeks. Oh man, in a pinch I can try to do my job with a company issue Chromebook which works fine for email and Meet but the tiny screen is a slog for everything else. When we began WFH I remotely connected with my desktop and two monitors so I was all set. The company was offering to provide laptops with docking stations if needed so anyone could work with two monitors from home. Later found out the effort of figuring out a docking station was beyond several "senior IT" employees in my dept and they had been trying to work on large projects using a Chromebook trackpad. Imagined posted:I've had coworkers under 30 who required further clarification after the instruction "Open the Start menu". I'm sure many under 30s at my company are smarter and harder working than me, but when I'm in charge of training I've had to overcome the challenge of telling adults with college degrees: -stop browsing reddit and complete this basic task so I can tell the manager you achieved a tiny thing -stop reading a PDF of Infinite Jest -stop watching soccer on your phone -don't go home in the middle of the day out of boredom then report back the next day you broke your xBox after kicking it after losing at online FIFA
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Jun 22, 2021 16:02
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Outrail posted:Welcome friendo. Hi! How about when management pronounces a smart growth strategy, which results in most of the interns and working students getting sacked and their work now being done by freelancers that cost a lot more?
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Jun 22, 2021 16:13
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Hell, if it's a job that lets you just go home in the middle of the day, that's incentive enough to do everything possible to keep it. "Reporting back on a broken video game console" ain't part of that list. Please god send me the "can go home early and not lose pay" benefit without becoming salary and getting uncompensated overtime hell, I need to go the gently caress home some days including today
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Jun 22, 2021 16:13
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Hyrax Attack! posted:-don't go home in the middle of the day out of boredom then report back the next day you broke your xBox after kicking it after losing at online FIFA Yeah, gotta say it broke at work when a ceiling tile fell on it so the company has to pay to replace it.
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Jun 22, 2021 16:14
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Believe it or not, there was a huge backlash to mandatory back to work. Don't worry, you have to register to come into the office on fridays! 
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Jun 22, 2021 16:20
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ephex posted:Hi! Oh oh pick me pick me. What if we fired a department, realized we need the department, but lack anyone with that specialty to hire and staff it, can't attract talent since we literally just fired everyone to the point where it was a news story so we need to hire contractors at 5x their wages and strict 9-5 working hours so even less is being accomplished than before so we all miss our target goals for the year???
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Jun 22, 2021 16:21
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SkyeAuroline posted:Hell, if it's a job that lets you just go home in the middle of the day, that's incentive enough to do everything possible to keep it. "Reporting back on a broken video game console" ain't part of that list. Lol it was less that the job allows employees to go home early if they would prefer to play videogames and more that he cared so little it seemed like a good idea. I switched to another dept and eventually he stopped being around but I dunno where he ended up.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:10
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Zarin posted:I do wonder if The Goon Generation (TM) is uniquely placed in history where we grasp the Windows UI better than most because we grew up with it (this statement assumes some level of privilege I guess but bear with me): the people before us didn't have computers at all, and the ones coming up behind are growing up with tablets/smartphones, so they look at the Start Menu as some sort of weird thing they only use for work, similar to how I view most of the B2B software I use. I actually read an article about this effect a few years ago (but for the life of me can't find it - I know XP inside and out but can't Google for poo poo), where it discussed how people who came of age between the 80's and early 00's (so basically after home computers became more mainstream but before smartphones and social media) are the generation of the most competent computer users and that because of modern UIs abstracting away the need to actually know anything about how a computer works, the adage of "young people are just better at technology" stopped being true and that being a "digital native" actually does not mean magically being good at computers, but merely being good at navigating smartphone interfaces etc. while not understanding any of the underlying technology.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:29
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People laugh at government employees for being slow and lazy but that's literally the logical response of any sane person to the system they're in. If there's a perpetual freeze on raises or promotions or education, if any performance evaluation with too many "exceeds expectations" gets kicked back to supervisors to be dialed down and resubmitted, if the only reward for competency or hard work is picking up the slack and extra work from people who've already given up on trying, you're basically training people to either leave or do as little as they can possibly get away with. If the monetary benefits of your job literally never increase (and thus actually decrease every month through inflation) and the path to promotion is permanently closed, the only way a sane, rational person has to even the scales is to do less to the fullest extent possible. Talk about perverse incentives. Generally, if you meet a government employee who is motivated and hard-working, they're either so new they don't get it yet, they've drunk an insane amount of protestant work ethic/capitalism kool-aid, or they're an intrinsically motivated saint who truly, truly believes in public service to such an extent that they're acting against their own best interests. I will say though that the meme about it being impossible to fire government employees is complete bullshit, at least in my experience. It's very possible. You just have to have to actual documented reasons to do so, and documented efforts to get the employee to improve. You know, like a civilized place would treat firing somebody. You can't just say, "Pack your poo poo and get out." Many bosses in government are too lazy to do the necessary work to fire someone, and just bitch about how "impossible" it is instead. Imagined fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Jun 22, 2021 |
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Jun 22, 2021 17:32
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Nobody wants to be back in office, so today everyone (a third of the company, we have to come, but can't all at once by law) booked a meeting room for the whole day, and we only briefly interacted during lunch and when fate brought us at a coffee machine at the same moment. I estimate I worked 2h less than from home. On the plus side coffee, TP, electricity are all free. I'm torn.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:44
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Queen Victorian posted:I actually read an article about this effect a few years ago (but for the life of me can't find it - I know XP inside and out but can't Google for poo poo), where it discussed how people who came of age between the 80's and early 00's (so basically after home computers became more mainstream but before smartphones and social media) are the generation of the most competent computer users and that because of modern UIs abstracting away the need to actually know anything about how a computer works, the adage of "young people are just better at technology" stopped being true and that being a "digital native" actually does not mean magically being good at computers, but merely being good at navigating smartphone interfaces etc. while not understanding any of the underlying technology. I think it's also partly that Android, iOS, game consoles, etc just straight up don't have built in ways to do things you used to have to do at least occasionally with a PC. If a PC game crashes you can monkey with config files, check system logs, or kill process that have files locked. With an Xbox you can restart and... that's pretty much it. I don't think young people will ever be as technologically illiterate as old people, though, because they grew up with google as an extension of their consciousness. Just having the habit of googling an error message puts you on the good half of the bell curve.
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Jun 22, 2021 18:03
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Imagined posted:People laugh at government employees for being slow and lazy but that's literally the logical response of any sane person to the system they're in. If there's a perpetual freeze on raises or promotions or education, if any performance evaluation with too many "exceeds expectations" gets kicked back to supervisors to be dialed down and resubmitted, if the only reward for competency or hard work is picking up the slack and extra work from people who've already given up on trying, you're basically training people to either leave or do as little as they can possibly get away with. Literally all of this matches my experience at the very very large military tech company I work for. Everyone gets the same raise, between the slowest slug human that barely completes one job a week and the extreme go getters that complete one every shift. Management refuses to scold or discipline anyone for their lack of work. While also refusing to praise or raise up anyone who works hard. Thus we are left with a system of everyone slowly mutating into slow slug humans out of self interest and to spite the company. This leads to management hiring new employees that we can exploit. But they never get rid of anyone. In the last two years the manufacturing floor has tripled in size, but the work load has not increased at all. Leading to situations where some people literally don't have any work to do for weeks at a time. Then their bosses complain how busy it is and hire more people.
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Jun 22, 2021 18:15
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Barudak posted:What if we fired a department, realized we need the department, but lack anyone with that specialty to hire and staff it, can't attract talent since we literally just fired everyone to the point where it was a news story so we need to hire contractors at 5x their wages and strict 9-5 working hours so even less is being accomplished than before so we all miss our target goals for the year??? And is part of the reason that the contractors can get so little done (besides the 9-5 hours) is because they are also micromanaged? If so, 
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Jun 22, 2021 18:27
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LeninVS posted:Literally all of this matches my experience at the very very large military tech company I work for. Are you hiring?
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Jun 22, 2021 19:11
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Never be first, never be last. Never volunteer.
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Jun 22, 2021 19:14
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I once worked for a parks and rec crew doing maintenance. A lady who I worked with got a DUI on her lunch break and didn't get fired. Another time she was on the big mower on a softball field, parked it halfway through the job, and promptly passed out, in the middle of the day.
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Jun 22, 2021 19:18
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Imagined posted:A few years ago I was working for an agency whose CEO-equivalent got on a health kick and issued a decree that the organization would no longer pay for any catering of "unhealthy" food -- e.g. donuts, pizza, etc. Fruit or veggie trays were the only snacks they'd pay to bring in from then on, which made the already-absurd employee pep-rally type meetings even more pointless and resented. Oh goody... fruit. I dunno, man... my first job had a day each week where they catered in a poo poo load of fruit and it was pretty great. I'd load up on bananas, apples, oranges, etc for the week and have healthy snacks essentially every day. That being said... a donut day each week would probably be infinitely cooler.
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Jun 22, 2021 20:05
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Imagined posted:People laugh at government employees for being slow and lazy but that's literally the logical response of any sane person to the system they're in. If there's a perpetual freeze on raises or promotions or education, if any performance evaluation with too many "exceeds expectations" gets kicked back to supervisors to be dialed down and resubmitted, if the only reward for competency or hard work is picking up the slack and extra work from people who've already given up on trying, you're basically training people to either leave or do as little as they can possibly get away with. This hits home way too hard. When I started working for state govt, I busted my rear end, got a lot of kudos and acknowledgement rock solid reviews, and promises of greater things in my future. Four years later, the only thing that's come true out of those promises is the ability to move out of the state capitol (and that's only because of covid). I legitimately love the gratitude I get when I fix problems for other agencies and make poo poo better for the public, but that's not enough to stave out burnout and our relationship with other state agencies is so bad due to burnout and everyone penny pinching due to hosed budgets that sometimes I get more abuse than anything. The Boomers working for the state who make way more than anyone else and are grandfathered into an actually decent retirement plan lament how bad the turnover is for people under 35, but poo poo, there's jobs I qualify for that are full WFH and double my pay. Benefits and Work life balance used to be a point in the govt's favor, but they've been loving that up in recent years too. Imagined posted:I will say though that the meme about it being impossible to fire government employees is complete bullshit, at least in my experience. It's very possible. You just have to have to actual documented reasons to do so, and documented efforts to get the employee to improve. You know, like a civilized place would treat firing somebody. You can't just say, "Pack your poo poo and get out." Many bosses in government are too lazy to do the necessary work to fire someone, and just bitch about how "impossible" it is instead. Eh, when I started working for the govt, I was told the only ways I'd ever get fired were by breaking the law or by watching porn at work (don't ask why that came up). Since then, I've only seen one person actually fired for any other reason, and they got caught billing a month's worth of time to a ticket and doing nothing while already on a PIP. This is likely not the norm, but we currently have 3x more people leaving on a monthly basis than we're getting applications, so beggars can't be choosers.
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Jun 22, 2021 20:29
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Most of the people I saw who SHOULD have been fired were old people who'd been there for a thousand years and were going to either die or retire any day now, so it wasn't worth it for anyone higher up to go through the hassle of documenting why they should be terminated when the end result would just be loving someone who probably USED to be a good worker out of a decent retirement. Not that that would stop anyone in the private sector, but it might if the private sector guy had to 'show your work' in documenting why they deserved to get fired and what steps were taken to avoid doing so first. I remember one old lady who was a couple months from retirement who would literally bring in the newspaper every day and just unfurl it across her desk in the morning and read the whole thing. The anecdote about 'too many 'exceeds expectations'' is true, too, because it happened to me my first year. My supervisor put "exceeds expectations" on six or seven categories of my first performance review, and HR kicked it back to him to take at least 4 of them off because something something. The original version would've led to no money or promotion for me, so the effect was very 'kick 'em while they're down'. The lesson I certainly learned was 'never exceed expectations again'. Imagined fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Jun 22, 2021 |
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Jun 22, 2021 20:40
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