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As it is, I'm pretty happy with my (federal) government job and its worker protections/benefits. I keep having this fear, though, that the longer I stay in a federal job, the more tainted I will be to the private sector — I've heard a lot of perceptions about the work ethic of public employees, and there's a good portion of our workforce that that's not unfounded for. How do I demonstrate that I work more than the bare minimum to the outside world?
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Jan 9, 2014 14:36
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P.D.B. Fishsticks posted:As it is, I'm pretty happy with my (federal) government job and its worker protections/benefits. I keep having this fear, though, that the longer I stay in a federal job, the more tainted I will be to the private sector — I've heard a lot of perceptions about the work ethic of public employees, and there's a good portion of our workforce that that's not unfounded for. How do I demonstrate that I work more than the bare minimum to the outside world? Well, if you did work hard it shouldn't be hard tog get that across in an interview. As for resumes, just use powerful action words and quantify EVERYTHING. Maybe if your titles aren't that impressive do a little stretching, ie "Grade 19; equivalent of Senior Manager". Do youwork in a regulatory body? It may be easier than you think to go private b
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Jan 9, 2014 14:59
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DoD acquisition as an engineer managing a subsystem of a large program.
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Jan 9, 2014 17:44
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Awesome. Was writing down some thoughts for an internal review of some of our processes, focusing primarily on how projects which are international, rush, or low-incidence are not worth our time because they always turn to clusterfucks that cost us extra money and make life miserable for the PMs (me). Interrupted so I could be briefed on the newest international project targeting people who take international vacations 2+ times a year, with a mix of other demographic requirements. Oh, and it needs to launch this morning (normal turn-around being 2-3 days). There is no goddamn market research important enough to warrant a rush project. None. It's the people in this industry being morons that causes all the problems because they have no clue how to set expectations or manage their poo poo. loving PEBKAC on a massive scale.
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Jan 9, 2014 17:44
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IT forced a rushed Sharepoint "upgrade" on us a while back, from a licensed one to the free version. Mystery. Today I found out why: MS politely took issue with our low level users sharing single account licenses on the cheap. How many on a singe user account? 2000 people... 
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Jan 9, 2014 17:57
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I dont know why it has taken so long for me to realize, but I have decided that the company IT department lives by the mantra of "If it's not broke, better hurry up and change something until all hell breaks loose". That and not allowing anyone to use any browser but IE 7.0. I managed to install Chrome some time ago and was loving life, but got caught with it when they were trying to figure out why W7 updates weren't being applied to anyones machine. Naturally, they removed it. FYG, we are a HUGE worldwide company. Tide fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Jan 9, 2014 |
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Jan 9, 2014 20:57
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Hooray for year-end evaluation time! (Not really.) First, my boss realized that she never signed off on my goals for 2013. I gave them to her, but she never filed them. So, she has me write them up again (and while I'm at it, redo them to reflect what I actually did vs what I said I'd do back then). Signed, submitted for 2013 while dated 09Jan2014. Good start. Then comes the official rating process. I wasn't here a full year, so all I can get is a middle score. My full evaluation is "Was here less than 6 months, not applicable. 5 of 9." Then, for the kicker, my boss hands the original form to me. It says "Insert Company Logo Here" in the top right where the header ought to be. Boss: "Here you go." Me: "Wait... don't you give this to HR? This is the original copy." Boss: "Things are pretty loosey-goosey around here, in case you haven't noticed." Me: "So how does this get into the system if I have all the paperwork?" Boss: "No idea. I'll ask my boss the next time I'm at (our headquarters site, 75 miles away)."  I know people at other subsidiaries of our corporate overlord, and they have significantly more structured review processes. Sure, my subsidiary is in such flux that "jack poo poo" would be an accurate appraisal of what we accomplished last year, but I'd at least like that poo poo recorded in the system somewhere.
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Jan 10, 2014 15:23
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Sundae posted:Hooray for year-end evaluation time! (Not really.) I think you should just get a lawyer and cut a deal with the FDA to sell out your current employer.
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Jan 10, 2014 16:05
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Solkanar512 posted:I think you should just get a lawyer and cut a deal with the FDA to sell out your current employer. I don't need to. There's no way in hell these guys are getting out of consent decree in time. They're going to start racking up the $15K a day fines and the overlords will pull the plug so fast it'll make heads spin. I'm just holding my breath until the end of March to see where the new re-org lands me (or doesn't). Fingers crossed for termination, since that'd activate my severance while voiding my relo repayment agreement. (I've practically made a career out of severance agreements now. It's hilarious.)
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Jan 10, 2014 16:12
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Someone replaced our coffee with de-caf.
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Jan 10, 2014 18:34
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Pleads posted:Someone replaced our coffee with de-caf. Are you saying "someone" because there are no identifiable remains?
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Jan 10, 2014 18:44
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P.D.B. Fishsticks posted:DoD acquisition as an engineer managing a subsystem of a large program. Then that will be easy. There are certifications you can get (and probably already have if you've gone through DAU) that show your knowledge of acquisition. You can defect to the contractor side of things and your understanding of DFARS and government selection processes will be invaluable.
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Jan 10, 2014 19:11
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ItalicSquirrels posted:Are you saying "someone" because there are no identifiable remains? 
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Jan 10, 2014 19:14
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Pleads posted:Someone replaced our coffee with de-caf. someone's pregnant!
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Jan 10, 2014 19:27
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There's cinnamon-hazelnut coffee in the fridge for me at work. It's decaf. I haven't touched it and will never touch it no matter how loving lovely the Maxwell House is. At least Maxwell House has caffiene. EDIT: There's a fair amount of thinking to do in my current capacity, but a big part of the job is still making spreadsheets and answering the phones in between customers up front. I'd fall asleep at my desk by 11 AM without caffiene. D34THROW fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 02:24
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They've been slowly replacing all the communal coffee pots with Keurigs at my office so everyone can bring their own coffee flavors. The coffee snobs keep their own personal coffee pots at their desks anyway. I somehow survived the layoff, seems like for the most part everyone who got the axe was already on management's poo poo list for one reason or another.
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Jan 11, 2014 04:05
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Pleads posted:Someone replaced our coffee with de-caf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzBVhHoMQ18
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Jan 11, 2014 04:05
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Pleads posted:Someone replaced our coffee with de-caf. I had a summer job where the communal pot was watched like a hawk by someone who had to have 10 cups a day, but not too much caffiene/flavour. So you get about 1/10 of the grounds per pot and the other people other than her that would drink it... would put about 10 packets of sugar in it. But it was balanced out by a Company boss who was a coffee nerd and there was an espresso machine in the office.
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Jan 11, 2014 04:16
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D34THROW posted:There's cinnamon-hazelnut coffee in the fridge for me at work. After I have my morning cup or two, I'll switch to decaf so that I'm not totally wired for the rest of the day. When I was younger, I always felt like decaf was just missing the point, but as I've aged I've realized that I can enjoy coffee on its own merits without ~*caffeine*~
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Jan 11, 2014 04:51
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Sundae posted:I don't need to. There's no way in hell these guys are getting out of consent decree in time. They're going to start racking up the $15K a day fines and the overlords will pull the plug so fast it'll make heads spin. I'm not really familiar with the pharmaceutical industry, but pretty much all the companies you've posted about have been cartoonishly evil (like the relo stuff or the "hourly to a max" contractor poo poo). Is everything there that's not a startup like that? Because if so, I'm really glad I'm in a different field.
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Jan 11, 2014 10:16
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P.D.B. Fishsticks posted:As it is, I'm pretty happy with my (federal) government job and its worker protections/benefits. I keep having this fear, though, that the longer I stay in a federal job, the more tainted I will be to the private sector — I've heard a lot of perceptions about the work ethic of public employees, and there's a good portion of our workforce that that's not unfounded for. How do I demonstrate that I work more than the bare minimum to the outside world? How long have you been at a federal job? There's got to be a cut-off point, right?
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Jan 12, 2014 01:41
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7 and a half years so far.
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Jan 12, 2014 04:31
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:They've been slowly replacing all the communal coffee pots with Keurigs at my office so everyone can bring their own coffee flavors. We do this. For a while, our office kept some standard flavors in a cupboard and if you wanted one you put a buck in the jar, but then we opened up our board rooms to the rest of the organization and suddenly the coffee started disappearing without being paid for (and once, the money disappeared too). So now we have a Keurig and everyone has to bring in their own K-Cups. I have an entire drawer of a filing cabinet full of them.
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Jan 13, 2014 16:46
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We have a k-cup machine, but most of the coffee the office provides is flavored, so I have my own stash of coffee.
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Jan 13, 2014 17:00
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How much of a red flag is it in a job interview if you say you want to leave your current job due to poor work-life balance? In my case, I'm working 11 hour days not even including travel or meal time, which would make it even more. However, I don't want the interviewer to think I'm lazy and can't handle a 45 hour workweek or something or an occasional 55 hour week.
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Jan 13, 2014 17:04
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Just be honest, say that you work X hours in your current job and that it is interfering with family/personal priorities, but you would be perfectly willing to work Y hours or put in extra hours during a short busy period or crisis. If they don't hire you because of that, then you probably don't want that job anyway.
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Jan 13, 2014 17:15
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Xibanya posted:How much of a red flag is it in a job interview if you say you want to leave your current job due to poor work-life balance? In my case, I'm working 11 hour days not even including travel or meal time, which would make it even more. However, I don't want the interviewer to think I'm lazy and can't handle a 45 hour workweek or something or an occasional 55 hour week. You could also talk about the reasons you are having to work so much and how that affect your desire to stay. For example, my last job there were long hours due to layoffs and outsourcing, and in the interview for my current job I talked about wanting to have positive momentum to my career rather than just wait around to be laid off, and how there were not opportunities for advancement, training or learning new things.
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Jan 13, 2014 17:49
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more friedman units posted:How long have you been at a federal job? There's got to be a cut-off point, right? I had a chance to ask someone at a different company in my city that does the same job I do in the private sector if they would hire from the government. Basically they try from time to time but it's hard to pry people out. The only reason I'm considering leaving is the pay bump but be rather large (new car large) and I would have room to advance by career a bit, which isn't going to happen where I work now.
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Jan 13, 2014 19:29
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RE: Cubicles vs. open work space The company I've been with for 10+ years has always had cubicles. At the beginning of the year, we were absorbed by a much larger company, and our team here had a chance to show off our product to a new set of corporate eyes. They really, really didn't like that we mostly kept the lights off/low (the area we were in was 3/4ths of a circle, all windows floor to ceiling, tons of light) and in cubes. They resolved to have an open work space when we moved to a new building. Thankfully that didn't happen. The new place has some pretty annoying climate control issues though. Over the summer, there were days where it was 85+ degrees in here with the AC on. Now in the winter, we had a day last week where it was 45 in here, and today when I walked in it was like walking into an oven. Turns out that while we do have central AC, the only heat comes from these little wall/floor units that are around the room. My boss's office today was 91 degrees, he finally moved to the conference room.
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Jan 13, 2014 21:31
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Say you're looking for a workplace that's a better fit. The work environment seems awesome, you like their product a lot because <reasons>, their mission is very positive and resonates strongly with you (which entails reading their company website to find out their mission ahead of time--do your research!), etc. Konstantin posted:Just be honest, say that you work X hours in your current job and that it is interfering with family/personal priorities, but you would be perfectly willing to work Y hours or put in extra hours during a short busy period or crisis. If they don't hire you because of that, then you probably don't want that job anyway.
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Jan 13, 2014 21:42
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martyrdumb posted:Say you're looking for a workplace that's a better fit. The work environment seems awesome, you like their product a lot because <reasons>, their mission is very positive and resonates strongly with you (which entails reading their company website to find out their mission ahead of time--do your research!), etc. It's probably OK to say "I'm looking for a better work life balance, and I've heard that (company) is pretty good in this way. Is that true?" It gives the recruiter/interviewer an easy way to spin the current environment positively, or gives you a really nice red flag of your own when they weasel and say "well, you know, in this line of work you really have to take what comes at you..."
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Jan 14, 2014 02:07
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martyrdumb posted:Say you're looking for a workplace that's a better fit. The work environment seems awesome, you like their product a lot because <reasons>, their mission is very positive and resonates strongly with you (which entails reading their company website to find out their mission ahead of time--do your research!), etc. I agree with this. You always want to give the impression that you're interested in joining the company you're applying for, not that you're primarily fleeing the previous the job. Focus on what you like about and can offer to the new job, not what drove you away from the previous job.
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Jan 14, 2014 02:15
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Don't bullshit around, just say you want a better work life balance. If the company is wage slaving people at 80 hours a week they won't pick you up, and if they stick to 40 hours a week nothing more they'll see you're a fit. Just say you're fine doing the occasional overtime, just not all the time.
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Jan 14, 2014 03:25
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Why not say you are looking for a satisfying work life balance and leave it at that? They don't have to know if you are getting that at your current employer or not which gives you better leverage during salary negotiation.
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Jan 14, 2014 04:32
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Tide posted:I dont know why it has taken so long for me to realize, but I have decided that the company IT department lives by the mantra of "If it's not broke, better hurry up and change something until all hell breaks loose". That and not allowing anyone to use any browser but IE 7.0. I managed to install Chrome some time ago and was loving life, but got caught with it when they were trying to figure out why W7 updates weren't being applied to anyones machine. Naturally, they removed it. I've worked tech support for a company where the build of IE we used was 2 versions lower than the minimum stated requirements for the site we were supporting. We were given printed-out taskcards of what the options screens in current IE looked like so that we could guide our customers through troubleshooting, not being able to bring up those screens ourselves.
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Jan 14, 2014 12:55
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Chaucer posted:Why not say you are looking for a satisfying work life balance and leave it at that? They don't have to know if you are getting that at your current employer or not which gives you better leverage during salary negotiation. A good work/life balance IS a benefit, but it's intangible and also not something interviewers are necessarily going to be frank about. Unless it's in writing, you can't be sure that they actually stick to 40 hour workweeks (unless you know someone who works there and can personally verify that). martyrdumb fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 15:27
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martyrdumb posted:A good work/life balance IS a benefit, but it's intangible and also not something interviewers are necessarily going to be frank about. Unless it's in writing, you can't be sure that they actually stick to 40 hour workweeks (unless you know someone who works there and can personally verify that). In most states, it isn't binding even in writing. You'd have to be a waged hourly employee on a contract with something backing it up (union, etc), and at best all it'd do is constitute them violating the contract themselves. In reality though, they can tell you to work whatever hours they want and your choice is to do it or say no. Sundae fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 16:31
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martyrdumb posted:A good work/life balance IS a benefit, but it's intangible and also not something interviewers are necessarily going to be frank about. Unless it's in writing, you can't be sure that they actually stick to 40 hour workweeks (unless you know someone who works there and can personally verify that). My father was complaining about this the other day. His company is set to retire about 70% of the workforce in the next ten years. He says the biggest hurdle to finding young replacements is that they're not willing to work more than 40 hours a week. I imagine that the company will eventually have to relent and ease demands on employees at some point. Until then, they weed out the ones who aren't willing to spend that extra time at the office. For what it's worth, he works at a nuclear plant. So they're pretty loving strict about the whole "Hey this work has to get done, no matter what" thing.
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Jan 14, 2014 19:47
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Well, I think most Millenials would work more than 40 hours per week, especially younger ones but there are also a lot of jobs out there where the "work" ie. the tasks that must be done that day dry up around 3pm and there's no reason to stay. If these places were managed better, then... Edit: full disclosure, I'm a Millennial, so I guess I kind of have that attitude but whenever I've managed people if they can't get their tasks done in their 8 hours and need to stay late consistently, I see that as a problem with either me, or the process, so long as it's a result-oriented job. peter banana fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 14, 2014 20:07
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Spike McAwesome posted:My father was complaining about this the other day. His company is set to retire about 70% of the workforce in the next ten years. He says the biggest hurdle to finding young replacements is that they're not willing to work more than 40 hours a week. I imagine that the company will eventually have to relent and ease demands on employees at some point. Until then, they weed out the ones who aren't willing to spend that extra time at the office. The whole working a stupid amount of hours is retarded to me. Hell, even working 40 hours is retarded to me. If people have to work more than 40 hours constantly, that tells me either they're slacking off, or there's enough work for another person to be hired. My office is awesome for expecting people to work late (not me though, they expect me to do my 8 hours and go home). I actually had someone going off on me today because they wanted work done sooner. I was like "It's going to take a week like I said, but someone is working on it" and they're like "SOMEONE? We should have a whole team working on it if it's that big!" and I just stared at them and went "ya, we should..." It's not my fault you guys assigned one person to do what probably 4 people should be doing if you wanted it done in 2 days, but I'm not going to come down on them because they're going home at a reasonable time. If they want it done sooner, they can allocate more people. Not willing to do that? stop whining. I honestly think the entire idea of offices are outdated in a lot of industries and could be done just as easily with people working from home. I communicate with people who sit on the other side of the office from me via email and phone. Same with sales people. I can do that from home. Half our people just input stuff into a computer system. Give them remote access, let them do it from home. There is literally nothing that is done in our office outside of say client meetings that actually requires us to be in the office. Even group meetings could be done via conference call. But no, we pay rent on huge chunks of real estate because it projects an image. Companies could have a small office with a couple board/conference rooms, essential employees and a few servers, but instead they take up multiple floors in very expensive office buildings and spend money that could be used to hire more people and do away with people working 80 hour work weeks. Decentralization would be an amazing boon for a lot of industries and people. People could choose to live in areas where it's cheaper vs. paying huge rent/housing prices to live in cities or the suburbs. Companies could hire from potential candidates nationwide and not be concerned with paying moving fees, or only having people who are geographically viable apply vs. getting the best candidates regardless of location. They save on office rent and other related bills etc. It even provides a push for other industries. Decentralization of office work pushes telecom companies to provide better internet service to rural/under-served areas for example. There are a ton of benefits with the one downside being people at home may slack off - but that's a personnel issue, not an issue of the idea. Obviously that doesn't work for every office based industry. Some for security reasons, some because people have to be on-site for one reason or another - but for those that don't have to be in the office to complete their work, you can't tell me it's cheaper to pay rent on office space to house them vs. the cost of providing remote access.
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