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I'm slowly being eaten from the inside. I switched 2 years ago from an inhouse position into a small boutique consultancy (SaaS-sector). The consultancy was recommended by a colleague who had worked with them in the past. Thought that this would be a small little detour to skill up and learn new things. Things were ok until last summer when suddenly projects dried up and I found myself spending time on the bench. My compensation is based on base + billed hours, so I was making a lot less than I used to. I also ended up getting hosed on payroll by my manager one month, which didn't really make me happy. Then the company was asking us to work reduced hours due to the poor financial situation, talk to your manager about the possibility. I didn't have the chance to discuss this, since my manager was away for over a month. The next time we met, I was told I was temporary laid-off (furloughed) for 2 months. Didn't feel nice. I did apply for new jobs during that time, but that didn't work out. Other consultancies are hard to jump into, since I have a 3 month non-compete and 1 month notice period. Now I'm doing small projects here and there, got moved to a new team, but no new projects have been coming my way since the move. Someone might think that this is a good thing and that I should enjoy it. The problem is that I need to mark my hours, including time on the bench. This stresses me out as management can see my unproductive hours. The situation is partly to blame for the poor sales resources of the company. One person has been doing it on their own alongside their top management duties leading to friction in the funnel. Now they want us to come in once a month to do sales the whole. This is being presented as mandatory, with no client work to be done and you need to be present at the office. How can I continue working at this company?
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Mar 12, 2024 04:16
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You don't. Find a new job.
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Mar 12, 2024 05:15
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Asteroid Alert posted:I'm slowly being eaten from the inside. non-competes are often unenforceable, are you in the US? Even here they are largely scare tactics especially if they severely limit your ability to work. I assume you are constantly asking for more work? I was at an MSP, in a similar situation as you. They had staffed up, the engineer they hired with me and I slayed projects left and right for like 5-6 months and then work dried up; the other guy ended up leaving, I hung on another 8 months. I made salary so comp didn't go down but had billable hours goals that were constantly not met which means I was constantly being hassled about it despite constantly asking for work etc etc (this was very stressful and every timesheet was painful and stress inducing). Eventually I got laid off which was no surprise. I guess my point is that this happens in the consulting world. Keep looking for a new job, keep asking for more work/projects at your current job. MF_James fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Mar 12, 2024 |
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Mar 12, 2024 05:15
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Asking for more work constantly. Fortunately I'm getting spot assignments from colleagues, since I have unique expertise no one else in the company has. Hell, I'm even writing recommendations on how we should redo our office WiFi. It's just that there's not many projects to go around, as sales has been slow.
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Mar 12, 2024 05:28
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Not sure why you want to stay there after being hosed on the payroll, furloughed, being asked to work less hours and have zero prospects on sales improving. On top of that sales is out of your hand but directly linked to your take home pay. You don’t owe these people nothing. They have been actively showing you that they have no problem with loving you over in their interest. Find something else and  asap.
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Mar 12, 2024 08:15
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Asteroid Alert posted:I'm slowly being eaten from the inside. What do you actually do? This sounds like such a weird compensation plan?
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Mar 12, 2024 09:33
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Defenestrategy posted:I don't know if anyone wants or cares to hear this, but I finally got done with the first run through of getting my azure environment NIST 800-171 compliant. Now I just have to write 8 billion pages of policy before we go through assessment in Q3. Is this something I can put on my resume? Only if you want to be known for it and possibly do it again (and again and again) somewhere else
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Mar 12, 2024 09:44
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Gucci Loafers posted:What do you actually do? This sounds like such a weird compensation plan? I’ve seen it before at consultancy shops where it’s been positioned in between freelance and fte, some calling it “midlance”. This is EU, so not sure if it’s a thing in the US. They basically pay you a very low base salary but you get 60-70% of the revenue you generate. Of course the company first subtracts all costs they make for you so basically you’re getting 60-70% of the profit instead of revenue. In my opinion it’s worse than both freelancing or being a fulltime fte. The low base salary means you’re taking a serious hit if the company can’t provide work (just like OP is encountering) or if you take sick leave. The 30-40% profit the company takes out means you won’t be able to build the buffer for these situations which you would be able to as a freelancer. Worst of both worlds and even if you’re fully billable you’ll end up just slightly ahead of a normal fte take home pay while bearing all the risks. The only way this pays off is if you have 50+ billable hours a week all year round and if you can pull that of you’d double your take home pay by going freelance. It also creates a fairly unhealthy outlook on work as “taking a day off” suddenly costs you hundreds of dollars revenue. This construction puts most of the risk at the employee while letting the employer gets to maximize profits.
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Mar 12, 2024 10:31
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That sounds... way to complicated and I would seek employment elsewhere.
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Mar 12, 2024 11:33
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Having your pay based on billable hours that you aren't in a position to control (since it depends on a sales team doing their job) would be the most stressful work environment I think it's possible to come up with.
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Mar 12, 2024 12:42
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Asteroid Alert posted:since I have a 3 month non-compete and 1 month notice period. I don't know gently caress all about US labor law let alone foreign, but this sounds like total BS that any labor advocate can get you out of. Especially since you've been furloughed, gloves are off at that point. Do not give this company any more loyalty. Hell, guiet quit and collect your pittance until they fire you, no more severance notice needed then.
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Mar 12, 2024 13:38
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Sounds like consulting, and lovely at that.
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Mar 12, 2024 13:38
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Thanks Ants posted:Having your pay based on billable hours that you aren't in a position to control (since it depends on a sales team doing their job) would be the most stressful work environment I think it's possible to come up with. It’s fairly straight forward in a job market as we’ve had the last ~ decade or so. That is if you have a sales team with a beating heart and you’re selling something that’s in high demand (windows/linux/network admin, generic devops, cloud or k8s consultancy for example). In the current situation you’re completely hosed. I know a few folks who have such a contract and they all cling to their current gigs for their life. I doubt any one of them really is able to live on their base salary for more than half a year. In that case it’d be best to just look around for a normal contract at a different company (if you can still find them) and quit.
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Mar 12, 2024 13:38
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The description is one where even with the non compete and you can’t or can’t afford to sue and win I would just take a job at wal mart or something and wait it out. If you know you need to leave and have to wait 4 months regardless just start the loving clock. That’s never going away.
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Mar 12, 2024 13:40
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If you die, do you have to give them a 1 month notice too???
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Mar 12, 2024 15:47
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Sometimes, I find the strangest poo poo. We have an info@companyname and marketing@companyname set of emails - very standard. Except marketing is set as a user that we had licensed with an email, and info is a shared mailbox with 0 delegates on it, and the only thing it did, was forward to marketing@companyname, which was used as a shared mailbox even if it had a license. tl;dr? we had an email that only served to forward to another email that was licensed with an exchange online license that in turn only served as a shared mailbox in reality. Presumably I did this, except I do not loving remember a drat thing about all of this, nor why I was asked to. Kinda funny but also man wtf was I thinking
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Mar 12, 2024 20:46
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Zoho and a few other lovely CRMs or whatever require a license to integrate
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Mar 12, 2024 20:48
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There was 0 integration with this, we just used it to forward to that other mailbox which in turn was used as the de-facto info@ mailbox. Very strange!! Only figured that one out because our marketing person quit, so I'm gonna have to push on people to figure out wtf we should do with this
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Mar 12, 2024 20:52
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Just delete it. What's the worst that could happen
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Mar 12, 2024 20:54
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If your CRM/helpdesk/whatever can't authenticate to your tenant using a custom application with tokens and just enough permissions granted to be able to pick emails out of a restricted set of mailboxes then Your SAAS App Is A Piece Of poo poo. Runner up to the above is having you forward emails to their own address. If it wants to login as a POP account then lmao.
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Mar 12, 2024 20:59
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johnny park posted:Just delete it. What's the worst that could happen YEET Also it’s marketing and they can eat poo poo
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Mar 12, 2024 21:34
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Asteroid Alert posted:How can I continue working at this company? I'm not nearly as experienced and I don't do consulting but huge IMO, if the job wants you to eat paint to save its own rear end then you should hit da bricks and never look back
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Mar 12, 2024 21:51
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tehinternet posted:YEET Marketing usually has large budgets and freedom to spend how they see fit. If you get them to sponsor your pet project “because you need it to deliver there marketing campaigns” you’re going to be one happy camper. Opens the door to shadow IT though
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Mar 12, 2024 22:49
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I have no clue what our marketing budget is nor do I care, quite honestly, but I'll still need to bring it up cuz people use the info email to contact us. I'll let other people decide what the gently caress to do, but I still found the situation funny because I did that, but it's like not something I would do in a thousand years - wish I could remember but for now I can only laugh at it (and make people decide what the hell they want to do with this)
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Mar 13, 2024 00:03
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Update: Seems like the company is on top of the situation since there will be "temporary layoffs for part of the team". Just got a longer 1-to-1 meeting invite from my direct manager.
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Mar 13, 2024 08:21
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Asteroid Alert posted:Update: Seems like the company is on top of the situation since there will be "temporary layoffs for part of the team". Just got a longer 1-to-1 meeting invite from my direct manager. Really hope it’s not your rear end on the line. Good luck but let this be the wake up call to commit all of your available time to searching for a new job.
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Mar 13, 2024 09:09
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I’m fairly sure my rear end is on the line. They said ”everyone” wil have meetings, yet there were only a select few who had calendar bookings related to this. And to go on a tangent here about job hunting, a guy reaches out on LinkedIn, I check the job posting, do the easy apply and let him know. "Oh, I need to send you over some meeting times then". I message the guy 2 days later, asking if they ever sent out anything and to which address? "Hey can we chat on the phone today? Let me know when you're available and which number you can be reached at". Sent the info and the times. Also, they do have my information on file so it wouldn't hurt to check my phone number from there. No reply to that message. Not holding my hopes up the guy ever calls. Asteroid Alert fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 10:51
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tehinternet posted:it’s marketing and they can eat poo poo  Without fail, wherever I’ve worked, Marketing has been the worst department to deal with.
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Mar 13, 2024 11:26
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Asteroid Alert posted:I’m fairly sure my rear end is on the line. They said ”everyone” wil have meetings, yet there were only a select few who had calendar bookings related to this. Recruiters are the worst.
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Mar 13, 2024 11:32
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NPR Journalizard posted:Recruiters are the worst. I've seen the best and worst of recruiters. This guy isn't a recruiter per-say, C-level (at least looking at title) for a fairly well-known (locally) B2B-oriented product company.
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Mar 13, 2024 11:36
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I have Infrastructure in my title on LinkedIn so I get hit up for Azure poo poo all the with them not realizing it means on prem infrastructure. I don't have Azure anywhere listed in my skillset except babies Azure cert.
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Mar 13, 2024 13:25
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Recruiters are the worst, especially ones at contracting firms trying to place you in a position. I was ghosted by so many of them while I was looking, I think there was only a single time I actually interviewed with their client. Third party hired to execute a search for a full time position were also not great, I applied for one job at a company, talked to a recruiter, then the next week got cold messaged on LinkedIn by another recruiter at that firm about the same position, unaware I'd applied already and talked to a recruiter. I had another recruiter at a placement firm reach out to me to talk to me, so they could keep me in mind for positions they were filling, and after that initial call I never heard from him again. I wanted to have a blanket rule about ignoring cold messages from recruiters, but the job I ended up taking that I love was because a recruiter from the company reached out to me. So, you never know if an opportunity is going to pan out. You shouldn't count on any one interaction to be "the one" but also you never know when a message is going to lead to "the one" so you can't ignore it.
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Mar 13, 2024 13:42
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My boss is now demanding all staff get her approval before using any website because someone used a free, no-signup crossword puzzle site for a staff meeting. My coworkers proposed solution was to implement a whitelist of approved sites. We're a 90 person nonprofit, not the NSA or anything.
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Mar 13, 2024 19:32
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That usually only lasts until an exec can't get to their favorite porn site.
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Mar 13, 2024 19:41
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xzzy posted:That usually only lasts until an exec can't get to their favorite porn site. I still can’t get it through my head anyone would do that on a company device.
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Mar 13, 2024 20:24
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LochNessMonster posted:I still can’t get it through my head anyone would do that on a company device. don't you wanna see some huge gazongas while you're eating lunch??
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Mar 13, 2024 20:25
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If I had a penny for every time my boss was being condescending on something she didn't understand I'd be retired by now
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Mar 13, 2024 20:40
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That sounds like it's malicious compliance time. If my workplace did this my output would absolutely crater and i'd be there twiddling my thumbs every time I came across another new domain during research. I run out of tabs using vertical tabs with my monitor in portrait mode during most projects, so…
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Mar 13, 2024 20:40
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I think we need to have a goon team represent this next year: https://www.cloudfest.com/world-server-throwing-championship
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Mar 13, 2024 20:46
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My back hurts just reading that url.
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Mar 13, 2024 20:49
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