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John Smith posted:It is only the bare minimum in general. Certain jobs' bare minimum is much higher than this norm. Then those people are stupid and should be shot. Honestly I miss being a different salary employee sometimes as I could piss off more due to my work being done.
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May 8, 2015 15:42
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1500quidporsche posted:Working from home today I discovered my work are so cheap that my laptop doesn't even have a number pad. 70% of my job is entering numbers. You can buy an external USB number pad for a few bucks. Assuming that your computer isn't so locked down as to disable external devices.
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May 8, 2015 15:45
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1500quidporsche posted:Working from home today I discovered my work are so cheap that my laptop doesn't even have a number pad. 70% of my job is entering numbers. My work laptop is very expensive and doesn't have a numpad...most laptops don't.
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May 8, 2015 16:07
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Nail Rat posted:My work laptop is very expensive and doesn't have a numpad...most laptops don't. I wish that was the case now. What I'm seeing is 15.6" laptops have a compressed keypad so they can fit the numpad in there. I just ordered 30 without verifying they were full size keyboards because I've never seen that before.  Guess who gets to send them back and probably get hosed with a restocking fee?
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May 8, 2015 16:34
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Renegret posted:You can buy an external USB number pad for a few bucks. Assuming that your computer isn't so locked down as to disable external devices. You don't have a usb keyboard lying around?
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May 8, 2015 16:44
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Blorange posted:You don't have a usb keyboard lying around? That's true. I'm thinking something more long term though, since I can see something that big getting in the way.
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May 8, 2015 17:41
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llamaperl2 posted:We had a director leave recently and gave 4 weeks. It took 4 week's of management's hand wringing to make a decision between two candidates, neither of whom were qualified for the position. At the end of the day, one of them was promoted, and the one that was passed over has to work for the newly promoted guy. After having gone through that process myself, it is a pretty big gently caress you. 4 weeks? Pah! sounds, like you work for a Utopia. Try the exact same situation, except for 52 weeks' notice.
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May 8, 2015 17:49
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Cheesus posted:Anecdotally, over the course of two companies and nearly two decades of experience I can confirm this works. Its company dependent. Do you have any colleagues who have had a kid you can ask? At my company people tend to take off a week or two, which seems ridiculously low.
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May 8, 2015 19:18
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Ugh. One of my team members figured it out. He shouldn't have had to find out on his own.
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May 8, 2015 19:43
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My company is implementing teams to improve efficiency in the plant. The team improving machine PM is named CILTS. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it and saw CLITS. I busted out laughing and some people gave me a weird look. I hope the naming was intentional.
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May 8, 2015 19:48
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1500quidporsche posted:Working from home today I discovered my work are so cheap that my laptop doesn't even have a number pad. 70% of my job is entering numbers. I remember reading a post here on SA one time of someone being ratted out to his boss by a coworker that he was just messing around on the computer instead of entering data. She could tell because he wasnt pressing any of the number keys across the top.
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May 8, 2015 20:55
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Found out today that a VP doesn't like the way our style of formatting telephone numbers looks so we're going to have to change it everywhere.
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May 8, 2015 21:21
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Cup of Hemlock posted:Has anyone else's boss managed an exit this haphazardly? This guy is great, but this sort of Upper management at my old place pulled an even worse move - 2 guys put in their notice back in October within a week of each other. One guy was an engineer I worked closely with for about a year; after a few weeks of training in hopes of moving into an account manager/service manager role (we had one of each role open at the time), management hired people outside the company to fill those roles. After telling said engineer he was guaranteed one of the roles when his training was complete. He put his notice in, talked to management about it, and when they found out he was leaving for a competing company, he was unceremoniously walked out the same day and given no option to update any clients or say goodbye to any coworkers. Almost the same thing happened to a senior sales guy who wanted to move into a vCIO position in the company, minus the training part. He was given a long laundry list of different training he'd need to complete, and started it on it right away after being told the same thing about a "guaranteed promotion". Same thing happened, company hired someone from outside to take the vCIO position, sales guy gave his notice, and the only difference was that he got the chance to say goodbye and update his clients before he left (he was still walked out the same day he gave notice). So yeah, glad I'm not there any more, some of my coworkers were fun and I still keep in touch, but from what I can tell they still haven't learned their lesson, nobody new has been hired, and the workload is getting progressively worse.
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May 8, 2015 21:28
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management style is part of the reason why staying isn't appealing.
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KoB posted:I remember reading a post here on SA one time of someone being ratted out to his boss by a coworker that he was just messing around on the computer instead of entering data. She could tell because he wasnt pressing any of the number keys across the top. I can see this given the fact that me editing a spreadsheet to use data you already had to paste in from a different spreadsheet but wasn't used saved everyone in my department a ton of time. The spreadsheet was around for four years before I got there and apparently I was the first one to notice excel had the number in there. Before that everybody else was just using a calculator. 
F1DriverQuidenBerg fucked around with this message at 22:07 on May 8, 2015 |
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May 8, 2015 22:04
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Oh boy, spreadsheet talk again! Just the other day I accidentally stumbled upon a few files in my team's shared network drive. Now, I've lost my cool a few times because of my coworkers' technological ineptitude but I promise that it happens because I care and that I genuinely want to help by teaching them do things better. Instead of consulting me for advice they do the exact opposite and try to keep me out of the loop. On my end of it I've been trying to not give a poo poo anymore so in most cases it works out for the better that I just don't know what they're doing. Anyway, I found a series of spreadsheets that are quite literally the result of one person viewing our SQL database on one monitor and manually typing values into a separate Excel window. I flipped my poo poo again, then after calming down I created a query that replicated all of that work as well as future-proofed it so later data can be exported with the click of a button. This took me five minutes, at most. loving days had been spent making these spreadsheets.
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May 8, 2015 23:04
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Cup of Hemlock posted:Has anyone else's boss managed an exit this haphazardly? This guy is great, but this sort of Not quite as bad maybe, but after I gave notice at my last job, I had - no exit interview with the boss, no communication from HR (besides a couple questions that I initiated), no direction on transitioning anything to my coworkers, no direction on what to do with my email or various work-related files, etc. Between that and the fact that I hadn't had a performance review (or a raise) in 3 years....the sense of freedom and not-giving-a-gently caress for that 2 weeks really was as great as everyone says. And my useless former boss still hasn't managed to keep anyone around to fill my spot for almost 6 months so far. Deathwing fucked around with this message at 00:59 on May 9, 2015 |
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May 9, 2015 00:49
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Teeter posted:Oh boy, spreadsheet talk again! Sounds like you're handling the other-people's-excel-files situation extremely well.
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May 9, 2015 01:27
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Deathwing posted:Not quite as bad maybe, but after I gave notice at my last job, I had - no exit interview with the boss, no communication from HR (besides a couple questions that I initiated), no direction on transitioning anything to my coworkers, no direction on what to do with my email or various work-related files, etc. I didn't get an in-person exit interview at my last job either but HR did sit me down at a table with a survey to fill out while my paperwork was processing, it kind of felt like I was a kid being handed a coloring book while the adults did their jobs. I wrote a goddamned novel about a particular manager being awful and he got fired shortly thereafter so I feel like I helped that along in some small way. I wasn't going to call anyone out but I was urged to by several coworkers who were suffering under him and I already had personal contacts of my references secured with no intention of ever returning to that company so I was like "gently caress it why not". I had no guidelines on how to hand off work, but since I wasn't being assigned anything new in my last week I spent some time writing up details on where I was with each project, who the other contact people were, where I had all the files saved, etc and emailed it to everyone I could think of who might take it over. No one read it and I was getting calls weeks and months after I left asking me questions about things that were clearly stated in my email I sent everyone.
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May 9, 2015 01:38
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Teeter posted:
How do you even get access to a SQL database without knowing how to run a query? All that poo poo is locked down at my work.
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May 9, 2015 01:46
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Cup of Hemlock posted:Has anyone else's boss managed an exit this haphazardly? This guy is great, but this sort of I've seen an onboarding happen that shabbily. The team was made of of lifers, established, and brand new people. There were three more recent people about due to transit from contract to perm. The first one through got it, but the announcement that that tech had been made permanent was handled in a whispered discussion, at the table, with everyone present, during a staff meeting. There was apparently some sensitivity over announcing good news while simultaneously calling out the next two techs as not pulling their weight. Somehow I suspect that could have been handled with more foresight. e: Xandu posted:How do you even get access to a SQL database without knowing how to run a query? All that poo poo is locked down at my work. Sounds to me like it was a case of not knowing to run a query. If all someone has is rote knowledge of exactly what they need to do their job and nothing else, then the idea that "I can move those numbers over here" might not occur to them. Raise a glass in sadness to these poor folks, they never get the lightbulb over your head feeling. Not with computers anyway. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 03:20 on May 9, 2015 |
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May 9, 2015 03:12
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Id wager someone did write a query for them, they were viewing the results and then hand copying them.
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May 9, 2015 11:16
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Oh, jesus no. You think these people know what a query is? They're lucky I even introduced them to what forms are.mllaneza posted:Sounds to me like it was a case of not knowing to run a query. If all someone has is rote knowledge of exactly what they need to do their job and nothing else, then the idea that "I can move those numbers over here" might not occur to them. This is basically it. Some people see a button and avoid it because they don't know what it does. Other people push the button to find out. Our database is built in MS Access but is prettymuch wide open. A few pre-made queries and simple forms make up 90% of the use. It's been treated like voodoo since before I was ever around, with things being done in a particular process yet nobody could explain the reasoning behind any of it. It was just constant sidestepping around the minefield of terrible programming and design. It literally is just the sidebar with all tables, queries, forms, etc accessible, but thankfully that voodoo is particularly applied to tables because I'm pretty sure everyone fears being cursed if they open one and they're completely avoided. I knew nothing about SQL or databases at the beginning of this job but as the "computer guy" not IT I made the jump from troubleshooting printers to fixing this thing up. I've added a lot of forms as a simple UI so that people can easily get what's needed, and tried to get reports created so that data can presented instantly rather than wasting time making Excel spreadsheets. At this place they do by hand (like, on paper) what should be done in Excel, and they use Excel for what should be done in a database. They've never been able to properly experience what a good relational database can do so it's treated as a necessary evil or something. It runs the whole show yet it's still undermined by manually created spreadsheets on the side. I'm stuck between wanting to point them in the right direction but mostly trying to bail out because what the gently caress I'm not paid for this poo poo.
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May 9, 2015 11:41
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If its actually critical and you will in anyway be held responsible if it gets hosed over do yourself a favour and install sql server express on a spare unused workstation. Assuming its been mostly made with bound forms and wizards the uplift feature can map over like 95% of your ms access frontend to it.
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May 9, 2015 11:47
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Trust me, I have done what I can to separate myself from it. It's on a completely unused workstation already and has plenty of backups. I try to back off as much as I can as well. I suppose I should mention that our "Programmer/Database Manager" has been out of the office for over 5 months on disability but our server is an internal LAN so you have to be physically in the building to do anything with it. e: I don't really want to discuss it any further, but it seems like a mess so I'm working my way out. 
Teeter fucked around with this message at 12:10 on May 9, 2015 |
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May 9, 2015 12:01
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MC Hawking fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Jul 20, 2018 |
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May 9, 2015 17:54
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Cup of Hemlock posted:Has anyone else's boss managed an exit this haphazardly? This guy is great, but this sort of Sort of, but I'm not sure whose fault it was. The former director of my department resigned in February of last year and we didn't fill the position again until September or October of that year. From what I could gather, the hiring process emphasized candidates with skillset A, but after six months of interviews the people in charge of hiring decided they didn't like any of the candidates and started over, this time looking for skillset B. They finally did hire a guy with skillset B (who I really like), who now spends the majority of his in-the-lab time working on skillset A stuff  The fact that our upper management just can't make up its mind and commit to anything is probably the #1 reason we've stalled out so horribly. Can't grow the tree if you keep re-arranging the roots, guys!
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May 9, 2015 20:45
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C-Euro posted:Can't grow the tree if you keep re-arranging the roots, guys! Yup, wonderful, isn't it? To expand a bit on my previous post, similar crap is a big reason why I left my last job on an IT helpdesk - the guy that would have been my boss actually quit two days after I started, and the other person on the helpdesk (and the sysadmin) both left for other jobs within a month. Not long after they brought on 2 other people to work with me, a new guy to be my boss, plus a contractor to fill the admin spot. Hums along fine for about a year, we all know what to do, work together well, stuff gets done, etc. Our boss, however, decides that he doesn't like one of us (not for actual work-related reasons), and basically manufactures a situation to force her to either leave or get fired. Plus they let the extremely competent sysadmin contractor go (at Christmas) because they didn't want to pay him appropriately and/or convert him over to permanent. This begins a series of replacements over the next few years, and so by the time I left i'd had 8 different immediate coworkers (on a 3-person team), a new sysadmin, a new boss, my boss had a new boss (a guy who thought a PMP would let him run an IT dept. with no IT experience), and they've gone through at least 2 or 3 more contractors trying to fill my spot since. And just as a bonus - a couple years ago, the first replacement I mentioned mysteriously couldn't take rotations at an off-site location anymore, no explanation given. Turns out he'd been caught taking upskirt cellphone pics at a local mall, and at least one of his victims happened to work at said offsite building. Never heard a word about it until right before I left. Deathwing fucked around with this message at 21:27 on May 10, 2015 |
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May 9, 2015 22:30
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sbaldrick posted:Then those people are stupid and should be shot. Honestly I miss being a different salary employee sometimes as I could piss off more due to my work being done. Well, they could be receiving a higher pay. Or it may be a passion job. Or admittedly, they could indeed be stupid. Teeter posted:This took me five minutes, at most. loving days had been spent making these spreadsheets. You should have stayed out of it. I am not as good at excel as you, but am way better than my older co-workers. When I tried to offer my excel automation services, it did not end well for me. My boss wanted both the initial programming and subsequent execution to be quick, in spite of the fact that the initial programming is going to take some time since I am not a pro. I keep my big mouth shut nowadays.
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May 10, 2015 13:14
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Unless it's you're job to do so for others, only ever automatr your own workflow. You'll get nothing but headaches for it.
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May 10, 2015 16:39
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Expense accounts are annoying. That is all.
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May 10, 2015 18:51
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:Unless it's you're job to do so for others, only ever automatr your own workflow. You'll get nothing but headaches for it. THIS THIS THIS THIS x1000. I've also gotten burned by automating inefficient processes. People either refuse to believe that my scripts or whatever won't work (even after I've proven it does), start to all of a sudden expect 5 minute turn around times instead of 5 days or just plain hate you trying to shake up the establishment as a lot of corporate folks hate change. At one job, I wrote a script to run through directories and return a text file that's a list of all files that match a certain naming convention. Even though I was able to show it produces reliable results, I was still told that we need to go through each directory manually, look through all the files and manually add the name to a text file. Whenever I was assigned this task, it had a good one day turn around time. I'd just run my script, let it spend 5-10 seconds scanning and spend the rest of the day loving off. At another job, I could tell that the corporate culture was very rigid and the company was full of checked out people that were just doing the bare minimum and running out the clock until retirement. No innovation or anything. So when I, a then fresh out of college greenhorn, started automating things left and right (again, that were proven to work), I was called into my boss' office. He admitted that he gets what I'm doing and he's also frustrated at the resistance to change. He then implied that I need to quit automating things so that I can get work done faster, since it's making all the slackers in very high positions look bad. White collar work sucks sometimes. td;dr - automate your own job, don't tell anyone. Use the time to gently caress off or beef up your skills to jump ship to a company that doesn't suck.
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May 10, 2015 20:26
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My team lead quit in February, and they did not replace him. My department supervisor's last day was Friday. Starting tomorrow my department has no direct supervisor. We won't have one until management can convince some sucker to come in and work 55 hours a week for 40k.
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May 11, 2015 01:38
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:Unless it's you're job to do so for others, only ever automatr your own workflow. You'll get nothing but headaches for it. I once read a list of career advice from a senior academic. Buried in there was something like: "Never display technical competence, or that you can do any task you don't want to do." Kinda wish I'd read that before volunteering that I knew how to get reports of our database ...
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May 11, 2015 11:29
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outlier posted:I once read a list of career advice from a senior academic. Buried in there was something like: "Never display technical competence, or that you can do any task you don't want to do." I learned this more as, never say you won't do something, always say you don't know how. In various help desks, if you told a customer "I could probably write a script to do this for you, but that is beyond the scope of our help desk", the customer's response was something along the lines of, 'how long and how loud do I have to scream before you will do this for me?' But if you said, I'm sorry, I've exhausted the resources available to me, let me escalate to the next tier', then you were done.
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May 11, 2015 14:43
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A managing director told me today, without a trace of irony, that any technical explanation of a competitive analysis to the VPs could not use algebra. Not just the conclusion of my analysis, but the appendix on how the analysis was performed. I asked him why I shouldn't be looking for a new job this second if the people guiding the company can't do math. that went over well.
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May 11, 2015 14:54
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Just learned that my best work buddy (and the only other really competent person in our department) just had another kid, which is great for him but he's going to be gone all this week. Not only will this week suck, but it's my last week here which means I won't get to say bye to him AND I won't be able to coast to the finish line. Of course this is how my time here comes to an end. E: Buddy sent a pic of his newborn to the department, which our supervisor uses to send an announcement email to the whole company. In the message he says the baby "looks very different from her brother and sister"  Way to imply to everyone that your employee got cucked.
C-Euro fucked around with this message at 19:37 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 15:22
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I just helped write my own job requisition for when I go full-time W-2 from being a contractor. Nothing like having job security while I'm looking to get out of this career. 
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May 11, 2015 15:36
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outlier posted:I once read a list of career advice from a senior academic. Buried in there was something like: "Never display technical competence, or that you can do any task you don't want to do." Sort of similar to that... Later last year, my supervisor was out for leave for a few months. Two of us took over a few of those tasks each. The other tech took this above and beyond to including a lot of late days (including email from home and remoting in to machines to check on them), sending off company wide emails about things, and lots of extra responsibilities. Neither of us had an increase in pay or any formal increase in responsibilities. To me, that was just too much to take on with no compensation. They've hinted at the idea of compensation later for all this, but I could never figure out why they would be in any hurry to give a raise when they're already getting the extra work for free. I already moved departments and have taken a "raise" just by having built in overtime. The other bonus to this is this job is more of a punch out and stop thinking about it type of job. I leave that poo poo at the door when I walk out.
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May 11, 2015 16:04
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It's burgin' time! 
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I normally just lurk and read how terrible everything is for everyone else, but it seems incredibly cathartic to write some stuff out. I keep getting pulled between two departments in an area of work that overlaps between their responsibility, but only makes up about 25% of the work I actually do. The rest of my work is with one of the departments that I actually like being in, but the other department bitches enough to upper managent to bring me over. That is, until they get mad that I still spend the majority of my time doing work for the other department and send me back. One would assume that a single round trip would have settled the issue, but high turnover at the top of the departments means they don't remember the lesson. I've just started my third lap around this merry go round. Jokes on them though because they gave me money to switch the last two times.
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May 11, 2015 16:52
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Now that's what I call making the best of a bad situation. Keep playing so long as they keep paying!
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