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evilpicard posted:In my experience people who never take vacation are usually stealing or hiding a massive fuckup so they're afraid to let anyone see their work when they aren't there. Some old school companies had their employees by the throat with the old pension system. I have heard stories from older coworkers about demands placed on them when they were on vacation. Having to come back from out of state to fix something, or be on the phone non-stop due to some issue cropping up. It was partly just the threat of being fired, and also the threat of your pension going away. So I am sure a lot of people just didn’t bother doing anything more than taking a random day here or there. Why go anywhere if there is the likelihood of getting called back into work. Funny thing is that since they have ended the annuity pension plan for most of the employees, they no longer have nearly the leverage they once did. And they seem surprised that they can’t seem to keep field supervisors around for any length of time. Or that no one wants to work crazy on-call hours or shift work.
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Dec 30, 2021 21:22
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I had a fun moment at the end of an internal interview for a new job a couple days ago. The position is currently WFH, but the company had been pushing to reopen the offices until the Omicron surge hit. So after I asked what the long term plans were (2 days in office, which days worked out with the other person in the position), I offhand mentioned that operations had been working in the office this whole time. The look on all the interviewing manager’s face when they processed that was amazing. A nice mix of confusion, disbelief, and maybe pity.
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Jan 14, 2022 15:40
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Sanctum posted:This is a valid criticism and I got see why when I left that position. I was working around the problem in a way I felt was fair by automatically approving overtime for anyone that wanted to come in early or stay late. On slow days management wanted me to send people working overtime home - leaving me with a skeleton crew. I would cite the union contract which specifies how many people I should have and tell management there's no way I'm sending anyone home. The guys deserved those easy days. Similar circumstance is going on where I work, a 24x7 utility operations. We have been short of staff since the start of 2021 when an HR change encouraged about 20% of our department to retire slightly ahead of schedule. The shift managers have been keep things patched together by themselves covering vacations and sick leave for the dispatchers. While we have a crop of trainees working their way up, at best they are going to replace the people it’s looking like we are going to loose this year. I have been preaching for awhile that until there is pain for the rest of the company, nothing will change. I recognize that the shift managers care, and don’t want to deny people their time off (also, some people will walk if they can’t get their time off). And that the shift managers refusing to cover dispatcher shifts will absolutely suck and potentially require more OT or vacant desks (and more work for those on a shift). But until work starts getting cancelled because there is no one to do it, the direct can drag his feet on raises and/or finding other solutions to fixing the current problem. I am just hoping I can hop ship to a day shift position before any one else leaves. It’s just that HR drags it’s feet on everything.
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Feb 22, 2022 23:56
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Dude was awesome. He let that operation fall to pieces. Every time upper management came over to yell at him he'd shrug and say he's understaffed. Can't blame the supervisor for those delays when he is understaffed after all. After months of major issues, the company tripled the staff. But management dragged their feet too long before making changes, so the operation lost half their business to another company by the time they'd finally fixed staffing. Did letting things turn to poo poo and causing the company to lose business improve their working conditions? Yes, absolutely.
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I love the dissonance that sometimes comes up in longer term managers. My department (24 hour operations at a utility company) is just about at minimum staffing to keep things running. There are 6 shift managers, 5 of which have less than 2 years in position. They have all been working crazy hours to make up for the fact that we are at minimum staffing of dispatchers. So they have been filling shifts so the dispatchers can have some time off and/or call in sick and not have any of the scheduled work be impacted. All the shift managers have come to realize that by covering the dispatcher shifts themselves, they have allowed management to paper over the fact that the department is critically understaffed. This has all come to a head recently when I managed to line up a promotion to a day shift position elsewhere in the company. In addition, a dispatcher that had just recently come back after being off work for 3 months with a broken leg (in 2 different spots) just gave his two week notice. At this point everyone is just waiting for another person to put in their notice (or just outright quit mid shift) for the cascade failure to start. The dissonance comes from the long term manager who recognizes that one of the few dispatchers grandfathered into the old pension plan would be well served to apply for a promotion position that should be posted soon that is vaguely in her IT background. When I mentioned that since that position was inside our direct organization, our department manager would just talk to that department manager and tell them to not pick the dispatcher. The older shift manager seemed incredulous that that would happen. “That’s not right” was a direct quote. I told the SM, it’s not about what’s right, it’s about the realities of the situation. I am pretty sure the only reason I was able to get out is that I am going over to the project management organization, and trying to back door something would basically be publicly admitting that operations is screwed, and the department manager and director have been working very hard to hide that fact by doing as little as possible to attract new people. Doesn’t help that the training program grew from 12 months to 18 months over the pandemic while aligning with other OpCos under our parent company. And we are still having trainees fail out.
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Apr 4, 2022 23:01
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Escape From Noise posted:Don't worry! Starbucks has a plan for dealing with those unions! They're getting into NFTs (this is not a joke. The same weird ghoul who tried to run for president in 2020 put this forward as a strategy to stop unionization). How does NFTs stop unionization? Do they force you to run the stores so bad they close, then no employees to unionize?
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Apr 6, 2022 06:57
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Escape From Noise posted:I think it was more "Don't unionize! We're gonna do NFTs. Isn't that way cooler than unionization?" because somehow digital currency makes unions obsolete or something? Good to know that guy is so brain damaged he is self sabotaging. Anyone with half a brain cell is going to see that and fight harder for union protections before the company starts slashing after it loses it shirt in the crypto grift space.
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Apr 6, 2022 17:01
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Scientastic posted:That is not true Fixed that for you. For some it’s better paying, or better benefits, for some it’s better work life balance. But you need to be kept just content/busy/scared enough to keep from looking around and seeing that better is possible.
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Apr 17, 2022 20:09
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I got a fun story out of my cousin at his kid’s graduation party yesterday. My cousin is a Mechanical Engineer with his PE who used to work for a company that makes valves. At some point last year the company he works for got bought by some sort of Gordon Gecko type of company that just bleeds acquisitions dry before moving on. Nobody matters, everyone is a replaceable cog. He was furloughed last December for a couple of weeks. And of course there was no change in deadlines or workload so he had to work a bunch of unpaid overtime to make up his workload. When they did it again in March (coincidentally at the end of a quarter to juice the stock) he had enough and started looking. His department is pretty small, just 3 engineers, one of them a managing engineer. He put in his notice on Friday, and his other coworker had put in their notice earlier in the week. The manager had the audacity to try the “I know you have to do what’s best for you, but your timing is awful”. My cousin is pretty excited to be working with foam now, and has an even shorter commute. It was probably 20 minutes, and will now be like 8.
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May 29, 2022 16:37
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YeahTubaMike posted:
You need to conveniently have another meeting scheduled right at the end time if that meeting. Then you can drop the call, or leave (depending on work situation) with the excuse of having another meeting to attend. Two birds one stone, you look super busy to your peers and/or boss, and you get out of lovely meetings.
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Jun 8, 2022 21:25
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evilpicard posted:But if my employees quit because of harassment they will not generate profits any more You forget, that’s still a win, as the payroll goes down without having to pay unemployment. Management doesn’t think past the next bonus payment.
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Jun 9, 2022 21:23
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/edit: I misread a joke post
Orvin fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Jul 7, 2022 |
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Jul 7, 2022 12:39
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I could have this wrong, but isn’t the mileage rate set by the IRS? I know waiting until the end of the year to get money back from your taxes absolutely will not help some people, but could it help bridge the gap and recover some of the expenses while job hunting? https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-increases-mileage-rate-for-remainder-of-2022 Like how dies this work when you work for a lovely company?
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Jul 14, 2022 02:04
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Motronic posted:The IRS sets the tax reimbursement rate, not what your employer may or may not reimburse you. If your employer is reimbursing less than the IRS rate you can claim the difference between the two on your taxes. I figured it might be something like that. It’s only a deduction, not a credit, so you only get your tax rate back per dollar spent. Super lovely, but something to keep in mind for those that just got screwed but have to keep working while job searching. ~$.20 on the dollar back next year is better than nothing. Hopefully the OP can get out before they go below the IRS rate.
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Jul 14, 2022 15:02
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Takes No Damage posted:
I have the Bob’s running through my head entirely way too often at work. “What would you say you do here?” And I am pretty sure most of management here wouldn’t have the bullshit “I’m a people person answer”, as most of them are clueless about their employees.
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Jul 30, 2022 14:26
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Volmarias posted:
If you fired all your staff in one day, what would you do the next day? Need to leave some behind to grind out that work.
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Aug 15, 2022 20:14
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Just got a bunch of executive emails about the employee engagement survey that will be rolled out in a month. First one since before the pandemic, so I expect it will be a full bore negativity bloodbath. So that’s fun. Lots of cut benefits since then. In addition to the fact that everyone is expecting the current hybrid (2 days a week in the office) to expand sooner rather than later. What’s extra nice is that an email from the CEO was sent around trying to hype it up. Then 15 minutes later, another email that had the exact word for word body text was sent around from both the CEO and COO. Not sure if the assistant forgot to add the COO, or woke up and realized the CEO needs a fall guy for the inevitable bad results.
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Aug 17, 2022 18:13
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Found out during a department call that recently offers were made to six different people for project management positions, and they all turned down the offers. Couldn’t possibly be that the company has completely slashed all benefits to the bone, is a hybrid 2 days a week in the office, and is relying heavily on a 15% annual bonus to even start to approach reasonable pay. And the response is just to change nothing and keep posting. The company is now gearing up for an employee survey in September. With the amount of unfilled open positions, and the general feeling that the executives are trying to prep for 100% in the office, I expect this survey to not go well. I am looking forward to watching the executives spin the hell out of the results, or just outright ignoring the responses. To the company’s minimal credit, it has payed equal to or greater than the baseline annual bonus the 7 years I have been there. But in a 1 step forward, 2 steps back, the metrics are usually hit for a 1.7x bonus payment, but the board typically limits it to a 1.2x payout. For extra fun, that not only reduces actual money, it also reduces 401k profit sharing as that is based on bonus payout levels.
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Aug 27, 2022 13:40
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I work there because I am just old enough to be grandfathered in to some benefits still. I get a small cash balance retirement fund contribution. And if I am still there 15ish years, I qualify for some extra yearly money for medical insurance at retirement. Also, up until July of this year, I had been in operations for 20 years. So while I could get another job elsewhere, it would require moving to be working shift work on-site at another utility. There are some rather strict rules physical and cyber security rules that require that. Early this year I had applied to various jobs in somewhat nearby cities, and my pay requirements to move ended up being a little too high. The company pays operators reasonably well, and I transitioned into my new promotion position above the midpoint of the pay band. My new, now current, position has me on a straight daytime position that is a subject matter expert submitting outages for the PMs that have no clue. I luckily live 8 miles from my office location, so while going in to the office is boring, it is not a horrible commute. Generally, my wife and I like our home and neighborhood. My oldest kid just started school, and my wife would have a little difficulty finding a new job in a new city. So moving was a bit of a hard sell. In a year or two if the company continues its slide, I will start looking for remote work, now that I have something other than just operations work under my belt. Some PM adjacent work should hopefully give me some options outside of utilities.
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Aug 27, 2022 14:36
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Dang It Bhabhi! posted:So the former “CFO” that Fixed that for you.
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Sep 30, 2022 04:24
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I get to hear how things are going in my old department (real time operations). I changed positions back in July due to staffing issues making the shift work extra lovely for my family. The director who let things get so bad finally retired at the end of June, and the department manager who just went along with director’s lack of effort got promoted to director. So the big question is who is going to be the new department manager and deal with the dumpster fire of staffing at real time transmission operations at a large electric utility. For context there are 9 people in training for a full staff of 18 dispatchers (they did overhire by 3 knowing more losses were coming). So I finally got some back channel info on everything surrounding the search for the new department manager. A person who was previously a great dispatcher and has moved up in the ranks to be a good department manager elsewhere was encouraged to put in for this position, so she did. Everyone in the department was looking forward to having her as a boss, because there was the potential for her to push back against the new director. But of course she didn’t get selected. The new director went with someone he must know from his time at a previous department who has zero operations experience. This person is currently a manager with a single person below them in the org chart. Going to being the head of a 25ish person department that is 24x7x365 might be a fun shock to their system. I haven’t heard what the feeling is in the dispatch control room, but I have a feeling bleak doesn’t even begin to describe it. I know people were passively looking for new jobs, this will probably accelerate the last of the experienced people to leave.
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Oct 1, 2022 15:07
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My company has just sent out an email about next years annual raise (actual numbers in Feb, takes effect March 1). They are going to raise the money pool from the usual 2.5% to 4%. The email blathers on about listening to the employees about compensation. But an extra 1.5% raise is just switching to an extra large band aid over a sucking chest wound. It’s not going to be enough to keep people around who are looking elsewhere. And it isn’t going to bump the bands enough to attract outside people to sign on. Too much of our compensation is tied up in an annual bonus to make things look palatable to most people outside the company. No matter the fact that the executives know if they ever don’t pay the bonus, there will not be a single non-management person left.
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Oct 10, 2022 15:35
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My mind immediately went to tiny chunks of mystery meat floating in beer and was immediately horrified. I know it wasn’t the intent (at least I hope not), but felt compelled to share that mental image. Although, I suppose it could be tofu, but somehow I don’t know if that would be better. I can’t envision what that would actually be like, so my mind just defaults to boba beer. Can you tell I know nothing at all about brewing other than to leave it to people who do?
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Nov 9, 2022 15:08
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tactlessbastard posted:They released the comments from the employee survey to management. I know this one. The company will be rolling out a Diversity and Inclusion initiative. Thus focusing on something that is the current trending topic, and of minor importance to the actual worker. At least in my company there is this huge D&I push. While it would be good to get a more diverse workforce, recruitment, and hiring is all management and HR. At best, the workers attitudes can affect retention. And only by trying to keep the workplace from being toxic. My company had a survey in back at the end of September, and there hasn’t been any info coming out about it yet. The executives must be melting their brains trying to figure out which minute nugget of the survey they can spin into a win.
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Nov 12, 2022 15:13
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My company just sent out a notice that pretty much amounted to COVID is over. Even vaccinated people don’t get extra sick time if the pop positive and have to isolate. At least most of the managers in my departments are pretty good about letting people stay home the two days a week they are supposed to be in the office if they are showing any generic cold/flu symptoms. Executive management made a big deal about 4% raises (as opposed to standard 2.5%) next March. I wonder if they will start mandating more time in the office soon. There are a hell of a lot of openings they can’t seem to fill already, but senior leadership around here is just old school enough to push for something like that. I can only imagine the mass exodus at that point.
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Nov 16, 2022 16:36
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I am guessing this is some sort of official or governmental approvals. Otherwise, the comedy option is to just fake the approvals to keep things moving. The real solution is to just keep escalating up the chain of command about how you can’t put out these various fires due to IT fuckery. Eventually you will hit a director or VP with enough clout to get you a proper IT solution.
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Nov 30, 2022 19:26
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TaurusTorus posted:high precision gallons Something about this has me giggling like an idiot. I am sure there is a reason somewhere, but my mind just keeps shutting down when I try to think of it.
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Dec 6, 2022 05:02
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I had a department all hands lunch/meeting late last week. It was at a fairly nice hotel ballroom with some pretty good food, so that was nice. Got the usual random prepared comments from some VPs talking up random stuff about how the Project Management department is growing, and how good everyone did this year about hitting the budget. The usual random generic positive feel good stuff. Then one of the VPs briefly pivoted to the corporate survey results, which just came in a couple weeks ago. She commented that “We hear you about compensation, but it takes time”. Which must mean that universally they got horrible results about pay and raises. To absolutely no one’s surprise. And I am sure executive emails a few months ago making a big deal about upcoming 4% (as opposed to 2%) raises in March 2023 is probably not helping things. But just that what seemed to usually be a pat everyone on the back for all the completed projects type of event, to throw that in there kinda stuck out to me. Like they are laying the groundwork to do absolutely nothing and blame something or another as to why they couldn’t do more than the 4% while cutting other benefits.
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Dec 10, 2022 19:00
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Salami Surgeon posted:I'm on another trip with my boomer coworker. If you are doing all the driving, couldn’t you just leave without him at some point? Just claim it was some sort of misunderstanding, and spend the rest of the trip actually getting to the work location in a reasonable time. Then get the proper work done on the proper system.
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Dec 13, 2022 23:53
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Samuel L. Hacksaw posted:As soon as you have to scroll more than one direction on a spreadsheet, it's ruined. You will not change my mind. Does it still count if you make the cells so narrow they are unreadable? Or how about the boomers that need the resolution of their monitor at 600x800 to be able to read anything and can only have a spreadsheet like 6 cells wide?
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Jan 1, 2023 16:44
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kru posted:loving hell, it is tracked! From other posters, I think the obvious solution to EFN’s drama is to replace the spreadsheet with a whiteboard in some obnoxious location. Does it go in the walk-in that is occasionally a literal death trap? Or maybe next to the keg lines that are never cleaned out? Right in the middle of the kitchen so he has to ask the head chef to borrow a marker might be a step too far.
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Jan 3, 2023 20:27
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Chaotic Flame posted:To be fair, it's not the same at all. My limited exposure to sweet tea has me believing that they are making a simple syrup with just enough tint from a tea bag to call it something other than syrup. That is probably why you can’t just add packets of sugar to regular iced tea. Can’t get enough sugar dissolved in it to really spike the blood sugar.
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Jan 11, 2023 20:24
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Outrail posted:Notice how the correct answer does not include a 'Verify the program actually hit its objectives'. That is like the standards for electric utilities is that they have to test their black-start plan every year. It doesn’t say anything about having a successful test, just a test.
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Jan 26, 2023 00:07
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I may have seen The Whole Nine Yards a few too many times to immediately think of Bruce Willis’ character in that movie. Someone involved with creating that movie had a thing against mayo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYzOFfl2c-M
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Jan 28, 2023 00:21
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We got one of the results of the grand company survey last year. I am just high enough in the company to get HR update emails. I am the highest level of individual contributor, which is equal to the lowest level of people managers, and why actually bother to differentiate? So a big hit on the survey was staffing and pay. So what does HR do? Increase pay for job postings? Of course not. Reduce the required education (allow equivalent experience in more positions), and also reduce total experience in most positions as well. Because that will totally stem the tide of people working for the company as contractors just long enough to get hired on full time. Then work full time just long enough to jump ship to a company in a different sector. The Project Management departments are just about a revolving door at this point. Raises and bonuses are given out at the end of this month. So we will see how many people leave in March. I still give the company a microscopic chance to realize that the 4% raise they crowed about last fall is not going to cut it.
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Feb 7, 2023 00:21
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thathonkey posted:i have to do a lot of corporate training but i couldnt tell you if any of them have offensive/problematic content or not. There is some other way to do corporate BS training that has no penalty for failing the quiz? My personal pet peeve on these is when they include the “check all that apply”, especially when they include program numbers.
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Feb 10, 2023 15:09
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carrionman posted:New pay increase offer came through. Is it just that the lower level people are getting bigger raises? Or has the company somehow inverted (very slightly) the pay structure?
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Feb 14, 2023 23:25
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How bad is it going to be if McKinsey and Company are coming around to advise the parent company on what appears to be a reorg? I am only a little worried so far, as I am in a regulated electric utility. And the company I am in is in the Midwest, where most of the rest of the partner utilities are on the East Coast. The majority of the gains will be in consolidating the East Coast companies, which has been started somewhat. It also helps a tiny bit that all the East Coast companies combined are about equal to the Midwest company in size and revenue. One thing that saved us in the past is that any major change in the Midwest would involve present a rate case to the state utility board. And until the company is ready to present a new rate case, nothing major is going to change in terms of consolidation. But I never discount executive stupidity or a pissing match. Also, I love the cognitive dissonance in the email announcing this. There is a note about how O&M expenses are higher than peer utilities, and this will have to be examined. And for like 5-10 years there has been this huge push to climb the various outage ranking polls. The companies have succeeded in getting higher rankings, but executives must think that comes from happy thoughts or something.
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Feb 27, 2023 18:20
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zedprime posted:Preface this with a reminder that your baseline working relationship with an employer in the US is no one owes anyone anything. You should be treating each other with a mutual level of respect which means you should be in a union or continuously investigating other employers or lines of work just to make sure they aren't baseline screwing you for a variety of reasons including reorg lay offs. Thanks for the qualifications. It definitely sounds kinda like #2. I don’t particularly see a fire sale in the near future, but as your paragraph #1 states, it’s always possible. The companies definitely have a huge amount of middle and upper management bloat. There has been a lot of retirements/turnover at the IC level, so short of outsourcing even more than they currently do (at even higher contractor costs) I don’t see a direct headcount reduction. But potential for a lot of “we are going to cut all these unfilled roles”. Jen heir rick posted:I work at a regulated utility that brought McKinsey and Company in to consult a few years ago. They decided the best course of action was to outsource all of IT and layoff all of the current workers. Luckily some heroic union action reversed the decision at the last moment. But things are still hosed around here. So, hope you have a strong union. The physical union is really strong, and they care a lot about things that directly impact them. Outsourcing IT is probably not something they may care a huge deal about. So if that is what is decided, I expect things to get especially fun. One of my previous employers (another utility) would bounce between outsourcing IT to IBM and bringing it back internal every 3-5 years because of how much of a shitshow IBM IT would be.
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Feb 27, 2023 20:41
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Barudak posted:If they wanna pay me to be a patsy they know my rates 16 craploads a year? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o16h6voegFU&t=90s
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Mar 3, 2023 23:38
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Barudak posted:It is time to sell even less, folks. I must come up with a plan for this year and next. Have you tried adding a couple of zeroes to the price? Then keeping the extra as commission? It’s win-win.
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Mar 25, 2023 14:29
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