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EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:It is a business liability to keep email beyond a certain amount of time! Every industry I have worked in purges all email as soon as legally permissible. This really depends on the type of business - some have to legally hold information for a specific time before purging or do a "litigation hold" in the event of legal action and stuff. I agree though on most email, purge it out or if you're going to archive, at least keep the PST file manageable.
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Jan 23, 2015 20:30
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Sundae posted:Edit: This is round 2 of the poster, by the way. They originally spelled it "concensus" and had to go reprint all the posters. This is my favorite part.
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Jan 23, 2015 22:12
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DJCobol posted:Thats not necessarily a bad thing. I can agree to disagree with something my boss wants done, or the direction that a certain project is going, but when it comes time to actually do the work, you can't have someone second guessing or deliberately tanking the project because thats not what they wanted or how they wanted it done. Being in training, I don't agree with every single policy or best practice that corporate comes up with, but when I'm out there working with end users, I certainly can't tell them "here's this policy that you have to follow that I'm going to train you on but FWIW its loving retarded P.S. corporate goons are dummies" and expect to keep my job very much longer. "Disagree and commit" is a core leadership principle at Amazon. And it's actually reinforced enough that people will use the phrase in everyday conversation. Both 'disagree' and 'commit' are equally respected. This thread reminds me just how good I have it 
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Jan 24, 2015 01:54
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The division I started with at my current company did Fish! as well as Gung Ho! I probably don't need to mention how little employee input makes it to being process improvements.
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Jan 24, 2015 02:02
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Killmaster posted:"Disagree and commit" is a core leadership principle at Amazon. And it's actually reinforced enough that people will use the phrase in everyday conversation. Both 'disagree' and 'commit' are equally respected. It's complete bullshit here, just another corporate slogan not acted on or adopted as a principle whatsoever. We're so dedicated to putting that moose on the table with open, honest, courageous communication that a VP has asked my boss and me to leave the room when I objected to his (terrible and almost certainly illegal) plan, stating that I was "clearly not interested in cooperating." Way to be all moosey, bud. Apparently scientists who have some experience with regulatory requirements and the laws of time and space shouldn't interfere with the plans of our executive god-kings. (Long story short, the guy thinks he's going to keep producing drugs in the facility while we're actively ripping out the ceiling, roof and two walls in the same manufacturing suite to do some expansion and qualify new equipment. You can't do that. Particulate control, air handling, contaminant control, etc etc are all legal requirements. It'd be comparable to flea-bombing the kitchen of your restaurant while you're still serving steaks to the customers. Sundae fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Jan 24, 2015 |
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Jan 24, 2015 02:21
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Sundae posted:It's complete bullshit here, just another corporate slogan not acted on or adopted as a principle whatsoever. We're so dedicated to putting that moose on the table with open, honest, courageous communication that a VP has asked my boss and me to leave the room when I objected to his (terrible and almost certainly illegal) plan, stating that I was "clearly not interested in cooperating." Way to be all moosey, bud. Apparently scientists who have some experience with regulatory requirements and the laws of time and space shouldn't interfere with the plans of our executive god-kings. Yeah, the nice thing about the principles at Amazon is that it's generally not just lip service; you really are expected to speak up during the planning phases if something sounds like bullshit, then just accept whatever decision gets made and move on with your life. Of course, there are other things (Frugality!) which don't always work out as well (Penny wise, pound foolish!), but you can't have everything.
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Jan 24, 2015 02:26
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BigDave posted:Meh, Moosie the Moose sounds more fun then Fish! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish!_Philosophy I worked in a dorm at the University of Arizona in college, and we had to watch this stupid loving video every year for employee orientation. Its so loving condescending.
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Jan 24, 2015 02:39
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BigDave posted:Meh, Moosie the Moose sounds more fun then Fish! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish!_Philosophy God drat if I worked for a firm that did this I would probably blow my brains out
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Jan 24, 2015 04:32
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I don't know if I should be proud, but the last time corporate tried to push a Fish style plan onto us, it ran into a wave of cynicism and uncaring so powerful you could almost taste it. Watching some idiot motivational speaker just lose hope in reaching a group of people is truly something magical to watch. As it turns out, a toxic work environment isn't made better by chucking a stuffed fish around. Speaking of toxic, my department supervisor is apparently working on a goal to drive us all insane. He has found a way to do 0 meaningful management while at the same time, micromanaging individual steps for no reason. Apparently today he decided that I need to call people and leave them voice mails sooner, rather then waiting until they are back in so I can talk to them direct. It doesn't make a difference, but this warrants throwing a tantrum about.
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Jan 24, 2015 08:25
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I work at Amazon but I got lucky enough to be placed on an awesome team that doesn't work people to the bone. Note: I'm only on the QA side, not development, so those poor bastards may in fact be working 90 hour weeks and if so, sucks for them, I clock my 40 a week and peace out. The core leadership principles are definitely a thing. I do agree with a lot of them though. Customer obsession is a hugely important factor for Amazon and when you take the customers into account whenever you do something, I do believe that you end up making a better product or service than if you just focused on costs and revenue. I'm not one to drink the corporate Kool-Aid, but when Jeff Bezos says "Take care of the customers and the stock will take care of itself", not only does he mean it 100% but it's also by and large true. Amazon turns very little actual profit (and what profits are made is immediately reinvested into the company and operations) yet the stock price is relatively high and the company is healthy financially with great cash flow and market share. The other leadership principles I agree with are the Ownership one (taking charge of your contributions to your team/project), insisting on the highest standards (which is natural for QA, we're anal about quality as a rule), and having a bias for action (mostly because I'd rather just DO something rather than sit around and wasting time with bullshit). The poster was absolutely right about these things being ingrained in the workplace here so much that they find their way into everyday conversation.
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Jan 24, 2015 09:51
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Ha ha I'm in QA also but it's hard to stay anal about quality when my bugs get closed by the director as "almost nobody will do that, not a problem". My primary motivation is absolving QA of all responsibility for fuckups. Yo if I opened that bug and you said not a problem and then when it got into production some other director got mad, I have proof on TFS that it's not my fault. Lol I have rescued devs from their own incompetence before though since the new guys apparently slept through training or didn't think it was that important. I heard them saying, "why don't we not put in the form control 'subject to federal unemployment', nobody uses that." when discussing the project to retool a part of our internal software. (There apparently was some goof up with the constraints or something for this column and they didn't want to remake the table for it.) I had to go point out that a certain percentage of employees in our system don't make over $1,000 per quarter so if they remove the control, every time that happens operations will have to send in a request for devs to go in to the production database to manipulate the data manually. They quickly realized it would be better to do the work to include the control now rather than do data fixes in perpetuity. I'm sure their idea would have been shot down by the director before they caused any real harm but it's sad they are working on tax software and haven't bothered to learn the basics of federal tax law. Still while I think devs are undeservedly considered superstars I don't envy them, because if something gets dicked up in the production database, all the devs are under scrutiny and QA is in the clear. Once something stupid retarded happened to production DB that required a patch, like a major table getting several hundred rows overwritten with junk data. There was this huge witch hunt until the culprit was found. Some DBA from the parent company apparently has unfettered access to our production SQL azure server and decided to play with our production DB for funsies. Have I mentioned before that I hate the parent company?
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Jan 24, 2015 18:11
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Sundae posted:Apparently it's our company's version of addressing the "elephant in the room." And yes, there are people who are so terrified of open confrontation and disagreement that they need a stuffed animal to buffer the interaction. But, poo poo, apparently the thing works, so I guess if it keeps people from splitting up that's better than having them let their lives burn down because they're too scared of fire to put out the flames.
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Jan 25, 2015 08:49
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I like the moose, it's kinda cute. It gives me something that I could hold during a meeting and make believe I am instead petting my dog, letting me forget, if for one fleeting moment, that I am sitting in a room full of executives making empty promises and lying to my face. Yes I'm bitter. If I'm not allowed to sit the moose on my lap and pet it I will get violent.
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Jan 25, 2015 14:04
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I realized on my drive in this morning that I no longer have any desire to talk to my boss about anything. Any time I want to ask his advice on something, I get one of two responses. He either acts like I'm an idiot for not knowing or he thinks it's not something I should be handling. Which leads me to another point. He is entirely inconsistent about what he wants me to do. Usually he'll do scheduling, including calling employees to fill holes in the schedule. That is, until he decides that he wants me to start doing it. Which is fine, I'm a supervisor, I can understand my doing scheduling. But then within a week he'll put out a schedule and when I ask about a mis-schedule (and there is always something wrong with the schedule), he gets pissed and snaps that he's taken care of it already and why am I asking? I can't even tell him about potential problems. Like, I can't say, "Hey, just a heads up, I've been hearing that this area which we're entirely reserving for the basketball game has been double-booked by someone who didn't actually pay for our services or work with us in any way, so we're going to be getting some complaints when those folks get turned away." Apparently that just makes him mad. I can't even bring him solved problems. I told him the other day, "Hey, I found out what the confusion out at [location] was. Apparently one of our guys was accepting printed out emails as identification and the practice kinda spread to our contractors through osmosis since they don't always work the same gates. I've corrected the contractors, I've talked to the contractor supervisors, and I'll talk with our guy once he gets back from vacation." My boss's response was, "You just hate that guy." No, he wasn't joking. He honestly thinks that this employee, who has generated more complaints from customers and contractors than the rest of our employees combined, couldn't have done that and that I just hate him. His justification? I wrote this guy up one time because he was demonstrably unable to do his job. This is the same boss who, when an employee was half an hour late and almost made us fail to fulfill a contract, told me, "You have to write him up but I don't want you to write him up." I really only have myself to blame for staying here. I get full tuition remission and I desperately want to finish my master's degree so I can move on to a better paying job.
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Jan 25, 2015 14:45
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Your boss reminds me of my boss quite a bit. If I e-mail him something that needs immediate attention and he doesn't see it, I get told off for not telling him. If I e-mail him something that needs immediate attention and he does see it, I get told off for telling him when he's already working on it. If that e-mail uses a pre-approved template that doesn't contain management's FOTM, I get told off for not adding that important information. (And god forbid I request that he updates the templates ohhhhhhhhhhhhh boy that was a mistake I'm never making again) If that e-mail deviates from the pre-approved template so I could add yesterday's FOTM, I get told off for deviating from the template. He doesn't actually dislike me, he's just an insufferable rear end in a top hat. Come review time he gives me glowing reviews so I keep my mouth shut and deal with it, he's just a grumpy human being. And on that note, I remember when the executive management's FOTM was not having a FOTM anymore. That lasted about a month before something else caught their attention. I swear I actually like my job, I have thick skin and can normally deal with this bullshit, but lately I've been a lot less patient for it. e: and since posting this, I just encountered Option 3, which teaches me what the current FOTM is. Renegret fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 14:59
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At one work place, our manager showed us the Fish! video. We were young and naive, and thought that people throwing fish and having fun working was the greatest thing ever. A few months later, the same manager showed us the Fish! video again, with no mention of us recently having seen it. It was very awkward.
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Jan 26, 2015 10:27
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So I want one of those giant Microsoft surface tables for meetings, I think I"m broken as they would help people work together if we could all do our spreedsheets on the same giant table at the same time.
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Jan 26, 2015 18:09
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sbaldrick posted:So I want one of those giant Microsoft surface tables for meetings, I think I"m broken as they would help people work together if we could all do our spreedsheets on the same giant table at the same time. When you interview with Microsoft, they let you touch the prototype Surface Table or whatever they're calling it. It has horrible multi-touch support (or did, in 2013). Maybe try laptops and a conference room? They make a few laptops now that will mirror your screen to a second display on the back of the lid, which I thought was pretty neat. That said, the sort of place that would benefit from a bunch of people doing their spreadsheets in the same place will probably not spring for either.
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Jan 26, 2015 20:01
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SolTerrasa posted:When you interview with Microsoft, they let you touch the prototype Surface Table or whatever they're calling it. It has horrible multi-touch support (or did, in 2013). Maybe try laptops and a conference room? They make a few laptops now that will mirror your screen to a second display on the back of the lid, which I thought was pretty neat. The one they announced last week seems to work pretty well from the testing plus tablets have come along way since then. Given how much our video conference stuff costs, the 10 grand for the giant table is nothing.
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Jan 26, 2015 21:38
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Today at work my boss was loudly ranting about how Jimmy Carter is the 2nd worst president ever (Obama is the worst ever, of course!) and how we should have glassed Iran in 1980. Not sure if he had momentarily forgotten that one of our devs is from Iran or if he just didn't care. Not sure which reflects poorer taste on the part of my boss. 
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Jan 27, 2015 02:44
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sbaldrick posted:So I want one of those giant Microsoft surface tables for meetings, I think I"m broken as they would help people work together if we could all do our spreedsheets on the same giant table at the same time. I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before but just do what one of my clients does and print out your spreadsheets across a bunch of pages then literally tape the pages together like a giant jigsaw before laying it across the conference table and writing all your adjustments and queries in coloured pencil, removing the tape and scanning it back into the computer to email to me 
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Jan 27, 2015 03:41
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cyberia posted:I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before but just do what one of my clients does and print out your spreadsheets across a bunch of pages then literally tape the pages together like a giant jigsaw before laying it across the conference table and writing all your adjustments and queries in coloured pencil, removing the tape and scanning it back into the computer to email to me I'm laughing AND crying. The scanning back in is the part that makes me want to die.
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Jan 27, 2015 05:57
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There was a few files in the shared drive at my old company that were exactly that. They were drawn on in colour, but about half of them were in B&W. Fortunately they were from before my time there, and I left before more were added. A relic from an unfortunate time.
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Jan 27, 2015 06:20
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I might have mentioned this, but we have multiple people who get an email, print the attachment, scribble a file number on it, scan it and email the scan on. I just hit forward, change the email subject to the file number and send it on 
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Jan 27, 2015 13:45
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So I work in NY, and for those who don't know, we're having Snowpocalypse '15 right now. As a result, we're under a travel ban. No non-emergency vehicles are permitted on the streets by law, and there's no public transportation available. My office is still open. These are the options we were given in anticipation of the blizzard. 1) Take an unpaid day. 2) Take a personal day. 3) Work from home for less than a standard day's pay. 4) So the only available option that does not result in some kind of penalty is unlawful. There is no big enough.
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Jan 27, 2015 13:48
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I'm curious as to how #3 isn't unlawful as well, unless they're only letting you do like a half day (and you're hourly on top of it) or something.
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Jan 27, 2015 14:47
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TwoSheds posted:So I work in NY, and for those who don't know, we're having Snowpocalypse '15 right now. As a result, we're under a travel ban. No non-emergency vehicles are permitted on the streets by law, and there's no public transportation available. Even in the USA, surely it can't be legal to penalise you for not coming in to work when to do so would be illegal?
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Jan 27, 2015 14:55
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Remember that America favors corporations so the question you should be asking is "surely it can't be legal to have to pay workers when they're not working"
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Jan 27, 2015 14:59
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rolleyes posted:Even in the USA, surely it can't be legal to penalise you for not coming in to work when to do so would be illegal? It's absolutely legal if you are an hourly employee. If you are salaried, it can be a little gray depending on the state. You can be required to use a vacation day or personal day in some states, but I don't know if every state does that. If my site out here in PA closes for weather emergencies, all workers are required to take an unpaid day (if hourly), vacation day, or personal day. If you do not have any vacation or personal days left, though, salaried employees still get paid at full rate because they can't legally cut your pay like that. But if there is a personal day available, they absolutely can take it. That "work from home for reduced pay" one is the illegal option if salaried, I believe. Sundae fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 15:05
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If you're salaried exempt, then partial day absences cannot be docked and full day absences can only be docked for personal reasons excluding disability and sickness. I'm presuming that it being illegal does not fall under a personal reason. Hourly can almost assuredly be docked since you didn't work. Not certain about salary non-exempt, I would assume that they can be docked as well though I haven't looked. Reasoning behind the salary exempt law is that since the employee doesn't benefit from overtime, they also can't be punished for lack of time. edit: Sundae is definitely correct that the DoL allows PTO to be taken to cover partial or full day absences, though some states may have laws that prevent it. asur fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 15:13
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My employer was always silent on partial days off, they didn't seem to have an official policy published anywhere, no one really knew the rules except that if I asked my manager I'd be told I have to take a full sick or vacation day because the system didn't allow partial recording of absences. We were also told if we missed our timesheet we would not get paid until it was corrected which would take another pay period to do, though that never actually happened it was repeated many times like some sort of corporate myth. When I moved into a new team I had a personal emergency come up and had to leave at 9 am after getting in at 8.30. I told my new manager apologetically that I would put a whole day of leave in when I did my time that week and he told me to just put 30 minutes and leave it at that. He also told us that if we were on vacation and got a work call, to put even the few minutes it takes to deal with it towards an appropriate non-vacation code and remove the vacation time entirely, hence saving ourselves a full vacation day and still getting paid for the full day. I wasn't working on call, but about 1/4 of my vacation days I would get a phone call about something, even though I'd put an out of office email notification on and let people know beforehand. I would literally get people (often clients) calling and saying "I know you're out today, but I need help with" some low priority thing that could wait a day or two or someone else on the team could handle. While it never actually stopped the phone calls from coming it was a lot better dealing with them when you knew you were going to save a vacation day out of it.
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Jan 27, 2015 15:42
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cyberia posted:I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before but just do what one of my clients does and print out your spreadsheets across a bunch of pages then literally tape the pages together like a giant jigsaw before laying it across the conference table and writing all your adjustments and queries in coloured pencil, removing the tape and scanning it back into the computer to email to me That may be the single worst thing in this thread that includes Sundae.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:11
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TwoSheds posted:So I work in NY, and for those who don't know, we're having Snowpocalypse '15 right now. As a result, we're under a travel ban. No non-emergency vehicles are permitted on the streets by law, and there's no public transportation available. My job put us up in a nearby hotel so we can make it into work today  Or should I say  , I'm not really sure.We're actually considered essential personnel, and we were told that we could drive to and from work and the cops will leave us alone if we show them our work badges. I still took the hotel because no way in hell I'm driving in that, even if it was legal. (I work at an ISP. It's no hospital or anything crazy important like that, but a customer that goes down is a customer that has no phone to call 911 with which is generally A Bad Thing that draws the ire of the FCC.)
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Jan 27, 2015 17:22
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sbaldrick posted:That may be the single worst thing in this thread that includes Sundae. It's certainly the most ignorant and backward. Mine are just malicious.
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Jan 27, 2015 17:33
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sbaldrick posted:That may be the single worst thing in this thread that includes Sundae.
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Jan 27, 2015 18:01
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Holy gently caress I didn't think they could make it more dysfunctional, aggravating and painful to do my job but they just did. Starting Monday for 'records keeping' purposes we can no longer receive quote emails with the specs attached. What we will get is an email with no attachments while the email with the attachments will be saved on our buggy, slow, shared LAN in a quarterly folder that usually has 8,000 files in it near the end of the quarter. This file will then open in lotus notes. This was the solution instead of setting our inbox to delete emails after 3 years
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Jan 27, 2015 18:58
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Came in this morning to an email from the president stating that our well-liked HR director is "pursuing other opportunities." Not the way she saw it, apparently, per sources. I've been here for 3.5 months and we've lost half a dozen good, competent people by one mean or another in that time. Not all of them, unsurprisingly, have been replaced. Our department, thankfully, has been one of the few untouched. But it is adding fuel to the "get the hell out of here" fire.
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Jan 27, 2015 22:04
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GanjamonII posted:We were also told if we missed our timesheet we would not get paid until it was corrected which would take another pay period to do, though that never actually happened it was repeated many times like some sort of corporate myth. This is what they always say at my company, but that is actually not legal in my state (CA). The company is required to pay on payday for any hours they "reasonably know we worked" and since they publish our schedules for each month, they always know what hours we actually worked. I've never run afoul of it, though, so ... eh. They also require us to turn in our timesheets 5 days before we actually get paid, which is such a pain in the rear end, because if you change your schedule for any reason after the timesheet is turned in, you have to hold onto it for another two weeks and then figure out how to submit your hours on the next timesheet so you get paid correctly retroactively. I just use it as an excuse to refuse to take on extra hours after my timesheet is turned in. It's my employer's responsibility to pay me for the time I work, not my responsibly to make sure I get paid by holding onto time for weeks and figuring out a bunch of extra documentation. The whole thing is so dumb because by insisting on the timesheets at a certain exact time, which is well before actual payday, they create so much work for themselves. They're always having to correct mistakes and try to figure out how to document variations and extra hours correctly, and I recently found out there's a bunch of people who never turn their time sheet in on time because it's due at seemingly random times, so they have a whole bunch of people they have to text personally to remind them to turn in their time sheets. Why not just pay people off the schedule and collect the time sheets on payday for recordkeeping purposes? It makes no sense. The managers can even update the schedule in real time, so they would always have an accurate record of hours actually worked. But that would be too easy, I guess.
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Jan 27, 2015 22:14
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The people who are responsible for doing the grant work here are frequently complaining that they have to work long hours during grant season because no one ever turns in their paperwork until the last minute. Perhaps that would change if our boss didn't require ever increasing amounts of work based on how early the paperwork is turned in. Seriously, we've got enough other work to do, don't string along the process by complaining about ever more trivial things because "the paperwork isn't due yet."
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Jan 27, 2015 22:47
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I really wish people would stop calling and leaving voice mails with requests for information that they could easily look up in the time it took to leave a voicemail.
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Jan 28, 2015 16:13
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