|
Translating Slack messages from my boss is a full time job on its own: "I’ve just taking to positive out for a few things which I’ve placed above. It’s fine to have them as a on the right track."
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2020 07:51
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 7, 2024 00:30 |
|
|
The good: my department ordered us to work from home a week ago and the rest of the university has only just caught up The bad: finance has ordered a pause on all spending, including bonuses (which I was eligible for) and pay rises (mine was in the approval process) Also a hiring freeze which extends to replacing current roles, so if this is still happening when I go on mat leave in 4 months then I don't get replaced. Good times
|
|
#
¿
Mar 17, 2020 09:09
|
|
|
Good news: full bonus coming through, didn't think this would happen as all budgets were cut Bad news: a 20 paragraph all staff email advising "with a heavy heart" that redundancies are coming Pretty concerned because I'm going on maternity leave in a few months and due to the hiring freeze they can't replace me. So I'm pretty sure that I won't have a job to come back to.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2020 10:25
|
|
|
Lockback posted:Are you actually pregnant right now? If so, while you're not totally safe, rest assured they will have to have hours of back and forth before they'd decide to lay you off. Yep, pregnant and due to go on leave in July. This is in Australia and at a university which has fairly solid HR policies but given that the redundancies are going to be across the entire uni, I don't know how much pregnancy is going to be taken into account. I'm gonna be real dirty if I miss out on maternity leave benefits, I'm entitled to six months full pay 😭 Hopefully a redundancy payment would be equivalent...
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2020 06:18
|
|
|
Finally had the all-staff Zoom presentation we've been awaiting for nearly a month, after getting a long rear end email that redundancies were inevitable and there'd be more info in this session. It was a shitshow. Started with the CEO being unaware that his mic and camera were both on, then 25 minutes of waffle about the importance of looking forward, shared understandings and togetherness, and culminated in "I was going to present you with Stage 1 workplace changes today but now I can't because I got something from the union on the weekend which I can't tell you anything about, I don't agree with their proposal but I can't tell you anything about why, so...hold on for another fortnight". So glad we waited a month to hear no more news. On the upside, we then got to watch him cop half an hour of increasingly salty questions.
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2020 13:01
|
|
|
Update from looming redundancy world: I dodged getting cut in round 1, hooray. 300 others weren't so lucky though. I'm going on maternity leave in 6 weeks and my position still isn't being filled while I'm off for the year, but in theory I'll have a job to come back to. Round 2 could be a different story though. This first batch was a pure downsize to save the university cash (this is why you shouldn't have a heavy reliance on international students, folks), while round 2 will involve larger restructures and centralisation. So more redundancies, but new roles being created which might work out well. If I make it through. Unfortunately one of my close colleagues got the axe, and she's 24 weeks pregnant and absolutely distraught. Hopefully she can drag things out legally so she'll get at least some of her leave in addition to the payout.
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2020 12:27
|
|
|
This is Australia - there's strong workplace protections in place through both the workplace agreement and unions, but it's still a poo poo situation. The unfortunate reality is that her job is absolutely non-essential right now, so the business has a good leg to stand on. Edit: her whole team got cut.
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2020 21:49
|
|
|
Got hit with the random slack "Hello, how are you ?" message at 4pm, immediately followed by an Outlook invitation to a 2-hour meeting over lunch tomorrow (over the top of 2 other meetings already), and then another invitation to a meeting in 10 minutes to talk about the meeting. All this to participate in a box ticking "signoff" session for something that has already been approved, work has already been done on, and would have required me to talk for maybe 30 seconds but attend the entire 2 hour meeting and miss actual important stuff. Conveniently I'm going on maternity leave in a few weeks and am merrily declining things left and right. Feels good. Along with deleting the billion "you are now due to complete xxx training" emails.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2020 11:38
|
|
|
We have over 200 slack channels for our department which are desperately needing a clean up, and still today someone thought it was a good idea to separate a single project into nine separate channels but keep all of the same people in all of them. And then provide an enormous comms matrix document specifying what each channel can and can't be used for. It's agile
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2020 09:14
|
|
|
Update: the 9 slack channels for one project are now 10, with the new one being for "conversations that don't fit in any of the other channels or need to go to multiple stakeholders" It's got the most posts by far
|
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2020 10:05
|
|
|
I'm on an interview panel on Monday for my maternity leave replacement. Any tips? There'll be 4 of us including my manager who's great - I just have no experience being on the other side of the desk so jumped at the chance. We got 200+ applications, and are interviewing 6. HR have (of course) been a goddamn nightmare throughout this process - they took weeks to approve the hiring exemption as we've had a ton of redundancies, but my job is essential to be filled. Then their initial job ad had bits of someone else's job description pasted in which were completely irrelevant - and they short-listed 27 other people who were in no way suitable. One guy had zero marketing experience but had worked on directing a TV ad one time and apparently that was enough to make it through HR. Also they told us TODAY (a week after the ad closed) that it should have only been advertised to internal applicants, and tried to force us to only interview internals, except that only 2 internals applied and both were way too inexperienced.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2020 10:07
|
|
|
Bingo Bango posted:No joke, this was almost exactly how it was explained to us at the "optional" agile training I had to go to like 5 years ago. I think our guy did a turkey sandwich instead. Ours did a gin and tonic.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2020 04:40
|
|
|
(context, in Australia where 12-month maternity leave is standard and employers must accommodate requests for part time work from parents) me, on maternity leave: hey I'm going to come back in July 3 days a week and then increase to 4 in January manager: great, no problem *a month goes by* manager: that's not ok anymore, your job is full time, you have to work out a solution me: ok, could we get an intern or an assistant, find someone else in the division who wants to upskill on these projects... manager: let me check manager: yes we can get an assistant me: cool *a month goes by* manager: we're not getting an assistant, you can come back 3 days to start but have to be back full time at least from September me: I'm happy to reassess how it's going in September but I can't commit to full time right now manager: then it sounds like this isn't the right job for you me: *throws the employee agreement and fair work legislation at her* manager: ok let's talk to HR together to find a solution me: ok *HR meeting gets mysteriously cancelled* manager: hey don't worry I found a solution, somebody else in the division is wanting to upskill and is going to help me: ok sometimes...HR good?!
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2021 11:00
|
|
|
bee posted:Yeah I had a similar experience working in a government department here (Australia). Once HR starts quoting Fair Work and the NES at management and how if they try to ignore it they'll be in all kinds of poo poo, it is amazing how quickly management "find a solution" outside of trying to force you out of your legal work rights and entitlements. This is at a uni so fairly similar. Apparently our senior management team got "concerned" about the number of parents returning part time and decided the best way forward was to force everyone to be full time within six months of returning, ideally sooner, regardless of personal circumstances. Or, you know, the law. I was the first one to come back after that decision so I'm hoping that now HR have slapped them down, other women won't have to deal with it. In any case I put in the best job application of my life the other day...really hoping it turns out well.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2021 10:18
|
|
|
My work is restructuring at the moment and it's the hottest mess I've ever seen. Take this as a lesson in how not to do an organisational restructure. It started when we had an all staff (Zoom) meeting where it was announced that major change was coming and there would be around 200 redundancies. The CEO said that we would get to see the new org charts shortly, that he wouldn't go through specific changes during the meeting, and that affected staff would be told directly by their managers that their role no longer existed. It turned out that "shortly" meant "halfway through the meeting when someone uploaded all the org charts to the employee intranet". So I scrolled to page 99 of a 160 page PDF to find my team's new org chart no longer featured me, my manager or ANY of my colleagues - our whole team had been cut. But they also uploaded a redundancy calculator, which told you exactly how much $$ you'd get as a severance payment. And the payouts are really good - 6 months plus 2 weeks for every year you've been there, plus accrued leave. So I went from "oh no, I lost my job" to "sweet thanks I'll be on my way". However the proposed cutting of my team was an absolute disaster. I'm in marketing and it means that there is absolutely nobody left to deliver major campaigns, creative, copywriting or any marketing strategy at all. Turns out that the Exec teams in charge of the restructure didn't consult with our CMO at all, and just wrote a new structure removing our whole team without checking whether or not it would actually work. We ended up having all these consultation sessions where the Exec basically admitted they had no idea what our team did, to "send in our feedback" and finally said they had got it wrong and would redo the structure AGAIN because it turns out that running campaigns is actually vital to the survival of the business. So now you have the situation where most of us are wanting to leave anyway because morale and trust has been destroyed, and we'll get good money for leaving. BUT because they hosed the structure up and have to redo it, there's a risk that we'll all be put back on the structure and have to stick around - or quit without a payout. So we had to apply for voluntary redundancies. Fun fact, they made the redundancy calculator available to all staff, so EVERYONE went looking for how much cash they could get, and started applying. They got 1000 applications for redundancy when they only wanted to get rid of 200 roles. This has now been going on for a month, we'll find out next week whether we actually have jobs, and the kicker - "this shouldn't affect your day to day work!".
|
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2021 23:47
|
|
|
Reporting in from the world of restructure hell again. Our head of department, knowing that we all want redundancies, has created a new structure and deliberately not matched anyone directly into new roles - this is great because those who want redundancies should get one, and people who want to stay can apply for the new roles. But now it's with HR, who are going to try their hardest to match people into the roles directly, because it saves them mad cash. It's actually kind of genius on the business's part. 1. Tell an entire team they're going to be cut 2. Promise them money for doing so 3. Retract the cutting under the guise of "it was only a proposal" 4. Put everyone who was told they were redundant back into the new structure 5. Everyone's morale is destroyed and they quit 6. Because they quit of their own volition, you don't have to pay severance. I had a really good interview today which I'm hoping pans out into a sweet new role - but drat it'd be nice if I got a severance payment instead of having to resign.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2021 04:36
|
|
|
FrozenVent posted:Has anyone ever seen change management done right? The last place I worked at was bought out by a private equity firm. The office was an open-plan converted warehouse with no offices, so on the day they started telling people they no longer had jobs, they would literally take them down one end of the space and tell them they were gone, then lead them back to their desk crying to grab their stuff, and then onto the next person. In full view of the entire office. After the initial slash-and-burn they then just....forgot about redoing the structure. They got rid of my boss, then didn't put in anyone to be my manager, and finally said that I could pick who I wanted to manage me. I quit on day 365
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2021 00:00
|
|
|
I'll be finding out this week both if I'm keeping my current job (company restructure meaning a good payout if I get let go) and getting a new one (had a great interview last week elsewhere). Possible outcomes are: 1. Lose current job, don't get new job. Thanks to the severance payment I'd put off job hunting until January and enjoy some time off. 2. Lose current job, get new job. Best outcome in terms of cash (severance plus higher pay) and career progression. 3. Keep current job, get new job. Good for career progression. 4. Keep current job, don't get new job. The most depressing because no payout and no progression. But I'd still have a job.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2021 11:37
|
|
|
Jumpsuit posted:I'll be finding out this week both if I'm keeping my current job (company restructure meaning a good payout if I get let go) and getting a new one (had a great interview last week elsewhere). Possible outcomes are: Options 1 and 2 are now left in the running. Haven't heard back about new job but confirmed I'm not on the structure in my current job. Which yay, redundancy payout, but there's also a whole lack of clarity about when this will happen. Apparently there's a loophole where even if your role no longer exists and hasn't been translated into a new role, if you want a redundancy and don't apply for redeployment then you can just be put into a random role that HR thinks you can perform, ergo no payout. That's one way to build a motivated and engaged workforce
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2021 11:59
|
|
|
Fil5000 posted:That reminds me, who was it that was at a company that asked for volunteers for severance and practically everyone put their names in the hat for it? I don't remember seeing if the goon concerned managed to get out with the cash. Might be me, my work wanted to get rid of 200+ people and got 1000 applications for voluntary redundancy. I didn't get the voluntary redundancy, but my role no longer exists so I'm currently "displaced". I'll be getting the cash, but have to keep working until at least mid November at this rate because HR won't make anyone redundant until all the new roles have been filled.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2021 10:13
|
|
|
Update from Displacementville: In further proof that management is trying to make people quit instead of holding on for redundancy payouts, they've now advised that redundancy timings need to be planned "deliberately and strategically" to avoid untenable pressure on the staff who remain. "This may be good news for those who want a paid Christmas break and to stick around into mid February!" And the "untenable pressure" is because they gave out a bunch of voluntary redundancies out this week, but then announced that the new structure wouldn't take effect until February, so there are now a ton of gaping holes in teams while work still needs to be done.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2021 07:59
|
|
|
August: HR: You're being made redundant but we'll give you lots of money Me: When HR: Soon September: HR: We made a mistake, we're probably keeping you October: HR: You're probably being made redundant but we can still put you in a role against your will Me: But my payout HR: Yeah nah if you don't like it you'll have to resign November: HR: You're definitely being made redundant and we'll definitely give you lots of money Me: Now? HR: No Me: December? Boss: Please stay until February, I have nobody left Me: I can do January HR: No Boss: How about December HR: No HR: Wait HR: Ooh there are 3 spaces left for the 21st! I've added Jumpsuit to that date my next post will be from whatever bus they put me in on the 21st
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2021 05:35
|
|
|
Sundae posted:Received a workflow notification to approve a procedure today. Someone wrote a Desk Organization and General Housekeeping SOP and seriously though I wouldn't immediately reject the gently caress out of it. How much clipart and "YOUR MOTHER DOES NOT WORK HERE" was included
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2022 06:23
|
|
|
Back on PE buyout chat - I worked at an independent retailer for six months before they were bought out by a private equity mob, and lasted six months after that. Up until the buyout, the founders were in charge of everything day-to-day but had zero strategy, would burn through money doing pointless goofy poo poo and giving jobs to their dodgy friends. It's a miracle they got bought out honestly and probably only because the product was great with a good national reputation. The PE guys came in, sidelined the founders (who immediately got dirty that they couldn't order the staff to do random "guerilla marketing" stunts any more), made maybe a third of the office redundant in really public and traumatic circumstances (though thankfully it included the dodgy friends who immediately grabbed as much product as they could fit in their cars on the way out), and brought in a new CEO who brought in several mates as execs. From that point, the new strategy was "go hard, go global, open a billion stores and we'll make our money back by repositioning us as a luxury product". Didn't work. All the new store openings put them in a massive financial hole that they couldn't make back. The office was incredibly toxic, my job had totally changed and I bailed six months later (and yeah, I also stuffed as much product as I could fit into my car). Once Covid hit, the company went into voluntary administration blaming lockdowns and not the fact that they had been mismanaged for years. They were hunting desperately for a buyer... ..and one of the original founders bought it back. Would love to know if he made or lost money on that.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2022 05:09
|
|
|
Yesterday I got dumped into an hour-long platform training session that was for our entire division, with no word on what this thing was or what we would use it for except that we now had an account yay! The trainer was in a different time zone at the crack of dawn and looked and sounded exhausted. Once everyone trickled into the session (because they had sent out both Zoom and Teams links so people were waiting in both), he launched straight in: trainer: ok so this is the main interface, and you go to this menu over here - colleague: sorry, hang on, can you tell us what this system is and what it's for? trainer: oh ok ok sorry *gives sales spiel* CMO in the chat 10 minutes later: Am I supposed to be in this meeting?? he then spent an hour noodling around different screens of an entirely basic product that really didn't need an hour-long introduction at the end: trainer: any questions? colleague: can we import content structures via a spreadsheet? trainer: .... trainer: ...I....think so? you're testing my knowledge here. let me have a look *fucks around publicly for 10 minutes* 10 minutes later trainer: no I was staring at the clock and I've never seen from 4:57 to 5:00 go so slowly
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2022 05:23
|
|
|
It's my last day at this job today. Sent a cloying Teams post thanking everybody, got a coffee, set up my out of office, about to wipe my computer and throw it back to IT. Have I forgotten anything?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2022 02:19
|
|
|
bee posted:Depends on the government. I work for the federal government in Australia, and my personal (sick/carers) leave (18 days/yr) and annual leave (20 days/yr) most definitely do accrue and roll over into following years. If you're extra lucky, some even roll over into subsequent jobs if you stay in the industry. I just changed jobs (higher education) and got my billions of hours of sick leave plus my long service starting date moved with me.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2022 10:39
|
|
|
Barudak posted:For me its a direct correlation with moving up the career ladder. Yup. I just started a new senior role. It's my second week and I have 19 hours of meetings booked so far (5 straight hours tomorrow). Next week, I have two days of 4+ hours, plus two days of all-day training. I might die. Absolutely going to block out all of the remaining day so I can maybe get some work done. In one of the meetings today, a stakeholder realised that I needed to be added to another working group which you guessed it, meets every week. Thankfully their next meeting clashes with my all-day training.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2022 06:19
|
|
|
Lockback posted:"Support organizational objectives" I about had an aneurysm at my last job when it was time for performance planning. Everybody in our department had the same goal, which was verbatim "support the organisation's objectives by doing the work we do". I questioned my manager on what the gently caress that was and how it was supposed to be measurable. Apparently they had just been through a restructure which was rough on everyone and created a lot of confusion about roles and responsibilities, so in his words "we wanted to go easy on everyone and not give us all the pressure of individual goals". In my mind this would have been the perfect situation to actually specify what people should be aiming for, to clear up the aforementioned confusion. The real underhanded genius part of it though was because it was an unmeasurable goal, nobody ever got a bonus for achieving it
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2022 10:18
|
|
|
I just staggered out of two days of SAFe training and I'm more convinced than ever that the whole thing is pulled from the CIA sabotage field manual
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2022 12:24
|
|
|
Elephant Ambush posted:I've been an agile coach for about 10 years and I absolutely hate SAFe. It's a low-risk low-change product created to sell to executives and to sell training courses and certifications so that those executives can say "we're agile now" without actually being agile. Nobody who is looked up to in the industry endorses it This absolutely felt like an upsell. Apparently our department all did the base SAFe training a year or so ago (before I started) and this session was for leads only and was the Product Manager course. The really frustrating bit was that the course wasn't tailored to our group at all - we're a marketing & campaigns team in a non-tech organisation, but the course was the bog-standard software development version. So we were all trying to figure out how on earth to map and reinterpret all of this to our day-to-day work while the guy is going on about DevOps and systems engineering.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2022 02:33
|
|
|
 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2022 10:20
|
|
|
Sleep last night: 5 hours Meetings today: 6 hours Time to bust out the Homer glasses
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2023 00:09
|
|
|
The latest anti-Taliban weapon is here: All The Scrum Things
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2023 06:37
|
|
|
Management just announced that employees are no longer allowed to bring their dogs to work and now there's a full blown mutiny brewing
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2023 02:55
|
|
|
Jumpsuit posted:Management just announced that employees are no longer allowed to bring their dogs to work and now there's a full blown mutiny brewing update: the #pets slack channel is now melting down, openly poo poo talking management and pulling together a petition to restore dog privileges Maybe they haven't realised that a) the channel is public to all employees and b) the managers who made this decision are channel members I like dogs but yeah, as soon as you get one allergic or dog phobic person, it's game over.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2023 07:30
|
|
|
Trapped in a loop of stakeholder comms stupidity - My team gave a presentation yesterday to another team - The other team shared the presentation with their managers, who arced up about something and told their director that it was a problem - That director then goes to my director who hauls me into a meeting at 4.50pm yesterday to explain myself - I am instructed to immediately send an email to the pissed off managers clarifying details ("just send them a top line summary") and inviting them to a meeting to discuss the issue today - I do it. None of the pissed off managers reply or turn up - Their director asks me for an update, I tell him that none of his team showed up or got back to me and reiterate that they can come straight to me if there's an issue - I am then instructed that they need more detail than "just a top line summary" - I send them the original presentation that has all the detail - Silence I still don't know what they're mad about or what the problem is Jumpsuit fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Mar 9, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2023 05:17
|
|
|
Lockback posted:They realize they flew off the handle for nothing but now need to save face. Offer a meaningless change and then everyone can congratulate themselves on everyone's teamwork and agility.  You're right. I just wish it was acceptable behaviour to call middle management a bunch of cowards
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2023 06:48
|
|
|
Chainclaw posted:What kind of tenure bonuses and benefits do people's companies offer? At 25 years service, you get a bronze medal. Once you've retired, you might be considered for a silver or gold medal to recognise truly exceptional service, which has to be signed off by multiple committees and councils. Yes, I work at a university. Unis are generally fairly desirable places to work here in Australia - they pay well, offer 17% superannuation instead of the mandated 10%, have excellent parental leave policies, generally flexible work environments if you're on the professional side, and if you stick around long enough you might be able to ride the recurring restructure wave through a sweet redundancy package. I got a redundancy from my last uni role which wound up being about 10 months pay. There aren't really any other tenure benefits specific to this organisation as our government manages a fair bit. In this state, if you work for 7 continuous years for a single employer, you can access 6 weeks of long service leave which continues to accrue.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2023 02:02
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 7, 2024 00:30 |
|
|
Renegret posted:It's just, his job isn't important, and if him and his entire department fell off the face of the planet, the world wouldn't even notice. This, and I work in marketing, which everybody at my work loudly agrees is pointless. Except when course applications are down. MARKETING! EXPLAIN YOURSELVES! What do you mean you can't press a magic ad lever to make number go up immediately??
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2023 05:13
|
|