Does not follow...

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Greg
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Re: Does not follow...

Post by Greg »

randy wrote: Sat Aug 17, 2019 6:41 pm Bitter? Nay, life in modern corporate America. Which is not to say I ain't calling them on their BS. Whatta they gonna do? Send my job to India?
Oh goodness it's like you're reading my mind.

My job before that was for J&J. I was a contractor there. They always did contract to hire so starting as a contractor was normal. What was not normal was I started just as they entered a budget cutting period, so they stopped converting contractors to employees and started looking for ways to save money on contractors....

Anyway I was there nearly 4 years. As a contractor, yes. I was in the ecommerce/web hosting team. Tylenol? St Josephs aspirin? Anything Neutrogena? (well after J&J bought them) That was us, we had all those websites for all those J&J products you know and love.

Group was considered important enough we had 24/7 onsite responsibility. First 2 years there I had juniority so I worked nights. One of the things we were responsible for was a BtoB communication/supply chain management thing. Walmart used it to order from us. When it was down, it was BIG money. It sometimes went down at night.

I mentioned budget cutting. There was a big money saving initiative. One was they decided to do that was offshoring. Yep, outsourcing to India. They were going to replace all front line help desk functions and all off hours (US) support with bodies attached to telephones in India. Because for the cost of one body in the US you could get 4 bodies in India.

Note I said bodies, not brains.;) My last 6 months there was spent training my replacements. They needed a lot of training. There were other issues. Like, the people they hired knew nothing. I mean NOTHING. Once you trained them so they werent useless, they'd job hop to some place that paid better. Our training program was like a treadmill. Or a vocational program, or something.

So anyway, eventually our (US people) contracts were up and they let us go. I heard some horror stories from friends there who were employees (so not let go). Quality of service went WAY down. They had (expensive!) outages, unhappy customers, it was a shit show. Turns out my team did indeed replace US workers for Indian at a 4 to 1 ratio, and still quality of service went down. (Yes the US workers were way more than 4x as productive as Indian.)

About 8 months after they let me go, I got a call from them asking if I wanted my old job back. I just laughed. (Yeah I was already with EDS)
Maybe we're just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive. -Ennesby

If you know what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -Unknown
Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr
MarkD
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Re: Does not follow...

Post by MarkD »

Some of my favorite "A-hole boss" stories:

I had a manager who believed she could get anything she wanted from "her" people if she demanded it forcefully enough. Well, one day we had an abend (ABnormal ENDing for the non-computer people) that corrupted the database, so we had to do a restore from the checkpoint before we could even start correcting the problem and re-running. I'd just started the restore when she came by and asked me what was happening. I told her I just started the restore. She asked me how long the restore took, I told her 45 minutes. She said "I want it done in 20." You know, I'm talented, but I can't shit I/O bandwidth.

Another time (same company, different manager) we had an abend that had all-hands-on-deck to fix. Our manager wanted to have a 30 second status meeting every five minutes so we could update him. Ummm, we'll tell you when there's some actual CHANGE in status.

Then there was the manager who got an award for "increasing profits" one year (and of course we ALL had to attend the after-work award ceremony, and dinner was cheese and crackers AFTER the awards were presented). We thought it odd, that she got such an award, given that we were a maintenance contract, and we'd had the same number of people on site for YEARS, it was hard to understand how our profits had increased to any substantial degree. It later turned out she'd over-estimated our vacation time (which is non-billable), so the client paid for more hours than she projected for the year. An award for incompetence! Yay!

Actually, in almost 35 years of employment, I've had exactly two managers who, if I walked into a job interview and saw one of them sitting there I'd walk right back out. One is the one from the first story above, the other was from the story I told earlier of the manager who paid us straight time but billed the client time-and-a-half for overtime. I wouldn't piss on either of them if they were on fire.
Greg
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Re: Does not follow...

Post by Greg »

The 5 former full-timers in my department were 4 regular guys and our manager, who was also our technical architect.

The 3 who left included our manager. We've been dividing up the responsibilities amongst ourselves, getting things done faster and better than when the team was 5 people.

Of the 2 remaining full timers, I grabbed most of our former managers (and architects) project work, and the other full timer has done almost all the manager stuff. Thank goodness for that, I *could* do it I guess but he's better at it and I really don't want it.

We were both really worried upper management would screw with us, micromanage us, give us a new manager we didn't like, etc. So we worked hard to earn our independence.

The other day upper management caved - they gave us both raises (unannounced, outside the normal review period) and promoted my teammate to (dept) team manager. Best possible result, I was very surprised. That never happens.

Now we just need our intern to graduate so we can hire him. He's done a great job and been amazingly productive for only working part time.
Maybe we're just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive. -Ennesby

If you know what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -Unknown
Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr
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Netpackrat
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Re: Does not follow...

Post by Netpackrat »

My employer’s IT department should be easier to tell apart from intentional sabotage.
Cognosce teipsum et disce pati

"People come and go in our lives, especially the online ones. Some leave a fond memory, and some a bad taste." -Aesop
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randy
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Re: Does not follow...

Post by randy »

Netpackrat wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 4:16 pm My employer’s IT department should be easier to tell apart from intentional sabotage.
So, are they KGB or GRU?
...even before I read MHI, my response to seeing a poster for the stars of the latest Twilight movies was "I see 2 targets and a collaborator".
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Netpackrat
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Re: Does not follow...

Post by Netpackrat »

randy wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 4:59 pm
Netpackrat wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 4:16 pm My employer’s IT department should be easier to tell apart from intentional sabotage.
So, are they KGB or GRU?
KAOS.
Cognosce teipsum et disce pati

"People come and go in our lives, especially the online ones. Some leave a fond memory, and some a bad taste." -Aesop
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randy
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Re: Does not follow...

Post by randy »

Netpackrat wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 6:45 pm
randy wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 4:59 pm
Netpackrat wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 4:16 pm My employer’s IT department should be easier to tell apart from intentional sabotage.
So, are they KGB or GRU?
KAOS.
At least it's not SPECTRE
...even before I read MHI, my response to seeing a poster for the stars of the latest Twilight movies was "I see 2 targets and a collaborator".
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Vonz90
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Re: Does not follow...

Post by Vonz90 »

randy wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 6:52 pm
Netpackrat wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 6:45 pm
randy wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 4:59 pm

So, are they KGB or GRU?
KAOS.
At least it's not SPECTRE
Hey, I work for SPECTRE, good company.
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Vonz90
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Re: Does not follow...

Post by Vonz90 »

There was a dead racoon in the field this morning and may 12+ turkey vultures gathered around it. Like an hour later I did not even see bones.
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Windy Wilson
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Re: Does not follow...

Post by Windy Wilson »

If jobs aren't being outsourced by closing the factory, they're being "Insourced" via illegals who can't negotiate on a fair playing field due to the intransigence of politicians, or via generous and fraudulent H1B visas so American citizen tech workers can be laid off and costs pushed down.
I was thinking that young people just entering the work force should not admit to having legal status for the first job they are hired for.
The use of the word "but" usually indicates that everything preceding it in a sentence is a lie.
E.g.:
"I believe in Freedom of Speech, but". . .
"I support the Second Amendment, but". . .
--Randy
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