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Daddyo posted:woohoo. I love the corporate world. I love being at the top of my "pay scale" so I haven't gotten a raise in 3 years. I love being on call 24/7 and getting paid $2.50/hr to come in on the weekends to fix poo poo for idiots. I love being pushed into Six Sigma project management so I can tack on another bullshit certificate to my resume. At Halliburton, we replaced 6S with "Kaizen", which from what I could tell from the huge posters they plastered everywhere, it is basically the same thing but more "kawaii". What this amounted to was that for 2 months, we were pulled out of our work area and had to sit down with this super bubbly Korean dude and listen to him give Powerpoint presentations on how we could humanize the coefficiency variables and create more output or something. Mind, every hour we spent trying to "maximize efficiency" was an hour that we weren't getting circuit boards ready for implementation into multimillion dollar sensors, tools, etc. Management decided that the best way to "maximize" was to have us stop in the middle of the day and clean our work area....which was something we did at the end of the day, anyway. A clean work area is a productive work area! They then decided to humanize the workspace by giving everyone a plant for their work area. This was after they decided to cut the Christmas party, the Thanksgiving lunch, our bonuses, and there were rumors of layoffs. Management loved the threat of layoffs, using them as a goad to get us to work harder. We actually exceeded our numbers, so they laid off 30% of the workforce. Still, working for them was way better than working at a hotel.
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Apr 21, 2010 20:47
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Orgophlax posted:The thing that boggles my mind about big corporations is how really high upper management (like CEO, VP of specific departments, etc) are treated as celebrities within the company. You know how celebrities send ahead a ridiculous list of stuff they expect to be in their dressing room? Our national managers did that, half the year's catering budget spent providing enough food and drink to feed 30 people when only 3 were going to come anyway. And I'd like to take this opportunity to send a big gently caress you to our old district manager. You know exactly when the guys in the warehouse were on break, because god loving forbid anyone take it half an hour earlier or later due to the current workload. So why is it you *always* came over 5 minutes after a break started and then complained that you're paying X people and no one's around and you might as well fire half the staff you shrivelled up old gently caress. And stop losing your loving flash drives, christ!
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Apr 21, 2010 20:50
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What is the point of 6S anyway? No one ever loving uses it. A company I worked for a while back required managers to get at least green belt training. It didn't loving make a difference that the company went down the shitter. Probably in part because they still brought in 6s dickwads to help us improve efficiency. So we get to go to stupid meetings to try to streamline our process. Bunch of ground-grubbers suggest poo poo they've been asking for years, and all of a sudden that they say it in the 'friendly' 6S brainstorming sessions, it ALMOST gets implemented. Which then takes me to annual performance reviews. I could bitch forever about setting 'goals' that are either pre-set for the entire company, or goals that don't apply to you, or goals that you just pull out of your rear end to sound good. Maybe I could complain about the review process which is 90% you just bullshitting the whole thing anyway, because they aren't distributed till the last minute (3 weeks after deadline), or that the boss just usually parrots the comments back to you regardless. But most of all I complain that they don't do poo poo to give you a raise, and they're a tool that the managers use in order to say "hey we're managing!" when if it were a real god damned review: your manager would know what the hell you do and you could both work to make realistic goals. oh, and gently caress the FISH philosophy.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:00
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ODC posted:Anyone else eagerly anticipating Friday? I can't wait to wear jeans. Oh god, THIS... I work for a finance company, so we are generally pretty dressy. However, they occasionally give us "jeans days" as a loving reward!!! How utterly patronizing, it feels like high school to me when they do that. Even worse, last summer they gave us "jeans days all summer long". Except that, we have frequent client visits, so that means you have to dress up for those days. So, they published a schedule of client visits on the intranet, so you could look up to see the exceptions to the all-jeans policy. I don't even wear jeans. On jeans day, I wear my slightly-more-casual khakis.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:01
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Dunno what this 6S is that you guys are talking about but it sounds similar to ISO. ISO is great for factories and processes that have definable steps and measures. ISO is retarded when applied to dynamic things like troubleshooting issues. My division was ISO certified last year. It's a complete joke where we make things up so we can get audited on them and pass.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:06
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^^^^^ ISO is supposed to be best in class industry standards. 6s is just a problem solving scheme. HerrMorden posted:At Halliburton, we replaced 6S with "Kaizen", which from what I could tell from the huge posters they plastered everywhere, it is basically the same thing but more "kawaii". What this amounted to was that for 2 months, we were pulled out of our work area and had to sit down with this super bubbly Korean dude and listen to him give Powerpoint presentations on how we could humanize the coefficiency variables and create more output or something. Best story I have about TM, the delivery date for a big refurbed piece of equipment is pushed back to the day before manufacturing was scheduled to go down for maintenance. Engineer responsible for the project sarcastically said it was all according to plan and following the lean idea of just-in-time delivery. Even the department head who was all gung-ho lean this and kaizen that laughed. e. Its hard to take kaizen seriously when every engineer breaks into a b-movie japanese accent whenever talking about it if management isn't around. zedprime fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Apr 21, 2010 |
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Apr 21, 2010 21:09
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Scrapez posted:Dunno what this 6S is that you guys are talking about but it sounds similar to ISO. Haha you are so not corporate, dude. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma
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Apr 21, 2010 21:10
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Doctor Butts posted:Haha you are so not corporate, dude. Psh, but with $1,500 and a free weekend, he could be a black belt.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:13
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Could we have a ban forever on 60+ year old women in managing positions? Every single one I've encountered in the work place has just been a nightmare since I graduated college. At my current job, I work in a law firm and I literally received an email from the office admin stating how I should sign emails with "Thanks in advance" instead of "Thanks" and spending paragraphs just stating why and how it reflected poorly on me if I didn't.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:18
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Orgophlax posted:The worst part about a corporate office is when you realize how much like high school it really is and how people don't really grow up. This is so loving true. While I was working at a software company they hired this 'hot shot' to be a coder. He was probably in his early to mid 20s and looked/dressed like a complete guido (despite the fact that he wasn't Italian). He would yell whenever he picked up the telephone so that everyone in the office could hear what he was saying at all times, couldn't take any constructive criticism and would actually lash out at you if you did. My job was to test the software so when I was tasked with testing his stuff he'd actually come up to me and be visibly angry telling me that I was stupid and didn't know how to 'use the software' despite me providing screenshots where the application had crashed or wasn't behaving as it should. Then there was the great Secret Santa incident. Someone else in the office received a bottle of Alcoholic Egg Nog. Hot Shot was eying this and couldn't believe that someone got such an awesome gift. He jokingly mentioned that he was going to steal it from the other employee. Egg Nog goes into dude's desk drawer which wasn't locked. The next morning he realizes the bottle is gone. Turns out Hot Shot went into dude's desk and straight up stole the bottle. When confronted about it he just said 'I wanted it so I took it'. Dude who had the bottle didn't want to report it to management so he let Hot Shot off the hook but others in the office pressured Hot Shot to buy him a new bottle (which he did end up doing). Seriously too many retards work in offices.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:21
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This video is a fairly good summary of my life in corporate IT: there is no arrange by penis option. It's a great life if you can put up with annoying, dimwitted, technically incompetent sales people all day. mr_cardholder fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Apr 21, 2010 |
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Apr 21, 2010 21:23
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Firstly, i'd like to give a big gently caress YOU to all you people who get bonuses. Working for a government agency as an IT drone we're lucky if we get a pat on the back at the end of the year. All in all though, i don't mind my users because 99% of them are really nice people and don't do anything overly stupid. But, about 10 months ago i got a new IT Manager. He came from the corporate world. He needs to chill the hell out and learn that we're the government, it doesn't matter how much money he saves, things don't change. He did at least get me and the other 2 IT grunts a reorganization so that we're now salary (yay, i get to work on weekends for free now) but I did get at least a pretty hefty bump in pay in a year where no one is getting merit raises at all. Last year i got a GIANT 2.2% pay increase. This year i'll get jack. Next year if i'm lucky i'll get 5%. God i hate my life.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:25
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The company has laid off our whole testing group so I now write, test and implement my own code.  They've laid off 75% of the support staff but haven't laid off anyone in marketing/sales. They are still selling as much or more as ever and are wondering why the support just isn't what it used to be.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:25
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veedubfreak posted:Last year i got a GIANT 2.2% pay increase. This year i'll get jack. Next year if i'm lucky i'll get 5%. God i hate my life.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:27
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Scrapez posted:The company has laid off our whole testing group so I now write, test and implement my own code. Don't test the code unless they start paying you to do so?
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Apr 21, 2010 21:27
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WarLocke posted:Don't test the code unless they start paying you to do so? Oh trust me, it isn't tested well. See my statement about marketing wondering why things don't work like they used to.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:28
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veedubfreak posted:Firstly, i'd like to give a big gently caress YOU to all you people who get bonuses. What's a bonus? (2.1% raise here, btw. Salaried Employee average was 1.9%. CEO and CFO got over 12%.)
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Apr 21, 2010 21:28
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My boss cannot enter a URL into a web browser unless it's google. From there, he will type the url he needs into the google search bar, click "search", and then click on the search result that goes to the URL he typed into google. I can't even get him to at least type the URL into the firefox google search in the upper right of the browser.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:34
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mr_cardholder posted:This video is a fairly good summary of my life in corporate IT: Somehow I have never seen this one before. Hilarious.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:36
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The Rokstar posted:My pay has actually steadily gone down over the last 2 years, consider yourself lucky you're getting anything. Considering i could go back to being a loving waiter and make more money than i do now, the only lucky part is that i know my hours are the same every week.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:37
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ericdrawback posted:A small part of me dies every time I have to end an email with "Please advise" Please Advise killed off whatever was left that it could kill, years ago. It has since taken full control over the part of my brain that turns nastygrams into cordial nastygrams.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:37
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Orgophlax posted:Are you in the US? Cause there's got to be some sort of OSHA regulation against that. There's definitely no regulation against it. I work at a national lab, and we don't have first aid kits. If we get injured, we're supposed to go to medical and get it treated (or call 911 if it's an emergency). Their reasoning is that way they can keep track of injuries and bug your supervisor about whatever unsafe thing caused it.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:39
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Also here's a fun recent story, one of my responsibilities is getting people their business cards. Its one of a thousand things I do and its about the lowest thing I do. One day a few months ago, one of my attorneys talks with me and says "I need some business cards made up." I tell him thats fine, let him know it takes about a week as it does with everyone's, he walks off. The next day, the attorney storms into my office and literally yells at me, "WHERE THE gently caress ARE MY BUSINESS CARDS? YOU SAID YOU'D HAVE THEM! I'M LEAVING TOMORROW!" I calmly tell him that again, it takes a week. He screams for a bit more and demands them immediately. I tell him I would see what I could do and call the company that gives us the cards. The company proceeds to do a rush job and somehow, SOMEHOW manages to get the cards to us about ten minutes before we close by sending it through a carrier. I look at the cards.....and there's a typo. I tell the lawyer about it, more yelling, and he tells me if I don't get those cards for him by tonight then I'm out on my rear end. I talk with the lawyer and say that I will have the business cards delivered that night to my own house and will drive them to his house and give them to him. He then tells me that he always goes to sleep at 8 o'clock as does the rest of his family and if I wake them up, his wife will come out and kill me. Like literally. His wife will come outside the house and yell at me. So I need to: a.) get the business card typo fixed and get the cards delivered to my house b.) drive 30 miles to this lawyer's house c.) in cover of darkness, without making a sound or ringing the doorbell, leave them in front of his front door d.) text his cell phone to let him know that the cards are outside his house. I manage to somehow do all of this and I go home at around midnight and pass out. The next day, I receive a long written up "warning" sheet, which is in essence a demerit, about my "attention to detail" skills.  Thank God I'm leaving in a week.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:40
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E the Shaggy posted:
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Apr 21, 2010 21:43
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E the Shaggy posted:Buillshit. gently caress that! You don't need that job! That's loving terrible.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:45
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standardtoaster posted:gently caress that! You don't need that job! That's loving terrible. I'm actually sitting in my office now, halfway through my two week exit and haven't felt this good at the job in a LONG time.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:48
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Most of the companies I have worked for don't seem to realize that their business is riding on an IT backbone and if there is no IT, it won't go very well. Last company the CEO decided he wanted to see what the grunts do. He ventured out of his million dollar + home to pay us IT folk a visit. He does this in the shortest way possible - 1 hr time slots for two groups to give a presentation. UNIX and SAP are together as SAP was running on the UNIX boxes. The whole time my manager was giving a presentation, he was picking his fingernails, looking anywhere but the powerpoint slides, etc. Later he expected everyone in the company to pay attention to his boring poo poo about boring poo poo. I'd say about 85% of management in most corporations are not needed. I hate that my job is being threatened while they are hiring more project managers and other managers for some reason. When you lay everyone off, who will the managers manage?
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Apr 21, 2010 21:49
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Thanks, thread. Every now and then I wonder if I did the right thing by leaving and this just confirmed for me that "construction" was the right choice. I'm far happier now and have been ever since I left the corporate world. I never really fit in in the first place and I'd be even less likely to now, I think.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:52
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E the Shaggy posted:I'm actually sitting in my office now, halfway through my two week exit and haven't felt this good at the job in a LONG time. You should order that rear end, like, $1,000 worth of business cards on your last day. And make sure there's a period somewhere in his n.ame.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:52
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Enilev posted:There's definitely no regulation against it. I work at a national lab, and we don't have first aid kits. If we get injured, we're supposed to go to medical and get it treated (or call 911 if it's an emergency). Their reasoning is that way they can keep track of injuries and bug your supervisor about whatever unsafe thing caused it. Enilev - do you have any idea whether or not it's legal to not have access to emergency services or medical departments and still pull that? That's the case at my place. Our company's medical clinic is 15 minutes away from my laboratory, meaning it isn't feasible to reach if you've injured yourself. Additionally, there is no emergency access to the building if you have to call 911, and there is no street route by which to bring an ambulance to it. You'd have to have the ambulance go through the main security area, take a stretcher into an elevator, run it about 1/3 of a mile down a bunch of various halls, take a second elevator, and then go about another 1/3 of a mile just to get to where the injury took place. Repeat in reverse to get out.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:52
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meatcookie posted:I never really fit in in the first place and I'd be even less likely to now, I think. If you can't justify your job by using made-up corporate speak and pretending to believe that your job is very important when it's not, then corporate is not for you.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:55
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standardtoaster posted:You should order that rear end, like, $1,000 worth of business cards on your last day. And make sure there's a period somewhere in his n.ame. He asked me to order some, I've been continually saying, "Yeah they're on their way" for the past week and haven't done poo poo. gently caress that guy.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:57
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Squashy Nipples posted:Oh god, THIS... gently caress yeah prep school represent'n ITT. I'm actually working in asset management this summer and I was browsing the company's employee website--charity "denim days." Yeah, that's right. Remember how you could pay a few bucks to wear jeans instead of slacks to high school? Same idea, except in high school I actually wore jeans occasionally. I now find that cords fit the same bill (in between casual khakis and sweatpants/athletic pants) and are significantly more comfortable. Maybe too warm for the summer though. Vinyard Vines (a brand with which I'm sure you're acquainted) has some great, thin casual khakis that are perfect for the summer, as does J. Crew. I wonder if I still give to the charity on denim days, if I don't wear jeans...
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Apr 21, 2010 21:58
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E the Shaggy posted:
I absolutely detest professionals who believe that being abusive towards others is some sort of entitlement you receive along with their degree. I'm a professional and I don't walk around screaming at everyone about what they hosed up. Honestly, I've found that it's way easier to get my secretary to perform "rush" jobs and fix other things on the fly simply by being nice (not to mention, most of them will do poo poo for me on the fly before they do it for some other people, simply because I treat them with as much respect as I would want in return). The stupid poo poo about your situation is that I fail to see how him waiting until the last minute to order cards is somehow your fault. gently caress, man, we get like a thousand cards in a box! Did he not notice when he had only 20 left? Really? Oh, of course it's not his fault he waited until the very last possible minute and didn't plan ahead. Planning ahead is in no way an attorney's job. 
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Apr 21, 2010 21:59
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My first job out of college was your typical corporate atmosphere - they expect the job to become your life, so of course you'd want to sacrifice your life for it because what else are you alive for? It simply didn't register to management that some people didn't give a poo poo about banking software and were just there for the paycheck. At any rate, I was placed in the department that customizes the base product for a particular client. Since we were the most visible to the customer, we were also massively overworked to prove to the customer: We'll Kill Ourselves For You. The project I'm eventually on leads up to crunch time, which I should use loosely because it entailed three months of working ten hour days (plus weekends) in the office, and a three-month stay in Green Bay customizing the software on-site. There's nothing to do in Green Bay (I don't care about football), and I didn't get along with my co-workers, so this was pretty much hell. We got one rental car to share between five people, so I couldn't even leave the hotel most of the time. After putting in six months of unpaid overtime, the project was finally complete. I was about to fly back home for a well-deserved weekend of rest, and I asked my boss if I could take the following Monday off. He looks around and slyly tells me that I can take a sick day if I want, and that it'll just be our little secret. I asked if I could come in a little late, to which he responded I needed to be there ready to go at 9am. After giving the company at least a month of free work in overtime, my boss acts like he's doing me a favor by letting me use some of my entitled off-time after completing a huge project. To this day I can't believe they can get away with treating their employees that way. The mentality preached at us over and over again was that we should "be flexible," which of course is code for "work for free." After realizing that the company had no intention of repaying the kindness I'd shown it, I started working six hour days, slacking off at work, and eventually up and quit for a contract position. Life's much better now.
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Apr 21, 2010 22:02
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I've recently been laid off from a decent office job - drudgery wise anyway, I actually got to help people but the pay sucked. It was a bummer but I kinda knew it was too good to be true, having a job where you feel good about what you do can't last. Been doing office work for 15 years and have yet to have one of those mythical 9-5 jobs. It's always been 8-5. And you usually have to come in early and stay late. Oh and there's constant "lunch meetings" so you get screwed out of that (and you have to bring your own lunch to the meetings). The hours at the last job were kinda different, 7:30 to 4:30. I usually went in just after 6:30 to get caught up if there were a lot of meetings (cuz you don't get work done during meetings) and would often stay till 5 or 5:30 rather than sit in traffic. BUT instead of overtime I got comp time and they were really cool about letting me use it, which is awesome if you have to take care of sick kids and still want enough time off left over to take a vacation.
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Apr 21, 2010 22:03
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meatcookie posted:Thanks, thread. Every now and then I wonder if I did the right thing by leaving and this just confirmed for me that "construction" was the right choice. I'm far happier now and have been ever since I left the corporate world. I never really fit in in the first place and I'd be even less likely to now, I think. The thread is titled "Reasons I no longer want to work in corporate," not really "Reasons I enjoy working on corporate." I don't think this really confirms anything except that sometimes your job can suck... bad. If you're happy, though, more power to you.
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Apr 21, 2010 22:05
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Wagoneer posted:The thread is titled "Reasons I no longer want to work in corporate," not really "Reasons I enjoy working on corporate." So...there are corporate people who enjoy their jobs even if they feel underpaid?
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Apr 21, 2010 22:08
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standardtoaster posted:So...there are corporate people who enjoy their jobs even if they feel underpaid? I'd say that I like my job when I don't have to sit in meetings. I love my labwork - very fulfilling to manage to solve (insert problem X here) when it's been a thorn in my side for months. I don't feel underpaid compared to where I could be - I'm definitely underpaid compared to the rest of the people in my department, though. I don't want to work in corporate. I want to work in research. That's why I applied to Research and Development. I just somehow seem to get dragged into corporate hell all the time. (Not that this answered your question any, given I hate the corporate side.  )
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Apr 21, 2010 22:12
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I'm a programmer. These are my favorites. "Just A Quick Question...". I know it's meant with respect for my time. They think that if they downsell how much work they think it should be for me to give them an answer, it suddenly makes it better on me. Guess what? It doesn't. This prefaces most questions that require work for me to research. Yes, I might have been involved with the implementation. Yes, I might even have written it entirely by myself. But unless I did it in the past week, I have forgotten the kind of detail you're asking for. If I get the question in email, I can get back to them but if it's in person, I have to tell them I don't know/don't remember. The look on their face is visible dissapointment. If theres a real-world analogy, it's like being asked what you ate one day 6 months ago with the expectation that you immediately can rattle the answer off. After all, you ate it, how can you possibly not be able to answer? The Perfect Interruption. I don't get interrupted very often but when I do, it's absolutely at the wrong time. Ok, when you're programming, any interruptions are bad. Having to switch your mental gears away from what you're working on is very hard. However, you're not neccessarily thinking/writing full-on during the entire day. There are times when interruptions are not as bad as others. Like if you were coming back from the bathroom or maybe taking a break to read emails. The most recent example occured last week. I was in a slump that lasted about two days. During this time I could not get anything done. No motivation and I was slacking off, reading the forums, youtubing, etc. During this time when it would have been absolutely perfect to ask me questions, I had no interruptions at all. Finally I kicked myself in the rear end and got my mojo on. No more than five minutes into "the zone", I get interrupted. By a "just a quick question", no less.
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Apr 21, 2010 22:14
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