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tomapot posted:How hard is it to put you mic on mute when you are on a Lync conference call / demo. Dude presenting has more patience than me. I was on one today where someone was loading their dishwasher in the background. Thankfully the person chairing it straight up called them out.
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Apr 4, 2014 15:50
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tomapot posted:How hard is it to put you mic on mute when you are on a Lync conference call / demo. Dude presenting has more patience than me. Global hotkey, win+f4 (do not confuse with alt) edit: Comedy option: Do.
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Apr 4, 2014 15:59
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Sarcasmatron posted:
This is actually really good advice. I'll have to remember it when I get into a company that actually has a HR department 
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Apr 4, 2014 16:04
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dogstile posted:This is actually really good advice. I'll have to remember it when I get into a company that actually has a HR department Arent you in some kind of socialist worker's paradise where you can simply think something's amiss and rain down the wrath of government regulators and nuns on him and force him to do entire rosaries of marx or something?
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Apr 4, 2014 16:07
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dogstile posted:Final straw broke. My boss just had a word with me about how i'm not supposed to ask any questions, if I don't know, I just pass it on. I can't ask any other first line guys what they've done at all, I can't ask the second line guys what they've done at all, etc. All we can do is look at worklogs and use the solutions list now. The solutions list that isn't populated with anything because nobody is assigned to approve solutions and the worklogs which aren't getting filled out because we're not meant to fill them out while on a call, yet when we put the phone down it instantly rings. Are you working for my old boss? He was a complete dickhead about lunch scheduling. At first it was because "nobody would be here to answer the phones" then it became clear that he just didn't want any two of us conversing about work on lunch - talking in a place where he couldn't hear the conversation. I know it sounds silly, but this guy was all about keeping control of all communications. He monitored chat logs (for the company provided chat system), email, and of course had a pet in the support team that would tattle on us if we did anything he wouldn't approve of. My advice, get the gently caress out. like today. just quit your job.
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Apr 4, 2014 16:07
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slightpirate posted:My advice, get the gently caress out. like today. just quit your job. I'm spending this weekend convincing my girlfriend its the best thing for me. Wanna make sure i'm gonna go home after quitting to a supportive environment, i'm so loving stressed out that i'm shaking. I've literally never had that happen before. Paladine_PSoT posted:Arent you in some kind of socialist worker's paradise where you can simply think something's amiss and rain down the wrath of government regulators and nuns on him and force him to do entire rosaries of marx or something? He went ahead and revised the lunch thing and i'm not sure I can do anything for them simply being an rear end in a top hat about things. Unless there's some law here about being told to do one thing and then getting told (by the same guy) that you're being unprofessional is a thing. Same thing with changing my job role to just answering phones. Like, they're being pricks and they're making me feel miserable, but i'm not sure there's any laws I can actually use.
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Apr 4, 2014 16:28
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dogstile posted:Also, my boss sent out an email to support telling us that we can't go on lunch if two other people have gone on lunch. Breaks are half an hour long. In two hours, this means that 8 people can go to lunch, after that, he doesn't want anyone to go on lunch. The kicker? We have way more than 8 people on the new "first line". Where I live, you're legally required to have a 30-minute break for every 6 hours on the clock. Check your labor laws, they might be breaking them.
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Apr 4, 2014 16:31
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dogstile posted:I'm spending this weekend convincing my girlfriend its the best thing for me. Wanna make sure i'm gonna go home after quitting to a supportive environment, i'm so loving stressed out that i'm shaking. I've literally never had that happen before. Where are you? In Ontario, loss of "job prestige" can very easily be constructive dismissal. Having the guy tell you one thing then chastise you about it is probably the same.
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Apr 4, 2014 16:31
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Is the lunch schedule babysitting just a thing that managers do to feel powerful? I had one job where I worked 100% independently, in that my being there or absent had no effect on any other position, and my position had no effect on anyone else. I had my list of stuff to do, and it just needed to be done before I left. My supervisor still tried to dictate when I could take my lunch breaks. It makes a bit of sense when you need coverage windows, but poo poo, my job was the farthest thing possible from that.
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Apr 4, 2014 16:33
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Sarcasmatron posted:a good HR department HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA [gasp] AHAHahahahAHAHhahAHAhaHahAHhAhahaAha [gasp]   oh god, you kill me. Seriously, if you find one of those, buy a lottery ticket, because you've found a unicorn. Seriously, I have seen some decent HR before my company got borged. HR Recruiter kept sending us awful job candidates, and he was rather upset about it. he actually met with us to discuss why his candidates kept getting rejected. He got a lot better after that. He was laid off right after the borging, because all recruiting was done centrally after the acquisition. In other complaints, my schedule is WIDE OPEN today, except for one thing. I have had 3 project managers attempt to schedule meetings at 11am which is when my lunch is (and i have a dr appt today during it)
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Apr 4, 2014 16:37
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Lum posted:(As for heels, I have fairly large feet and have been wearing them for so long that a 3" heel I don't even notice and flats feel weird) Uh, sounds like the tendons in your ankles/calves are shortened from wearing heels too much. Same thing happened to a friend of mine and she had to go into physical therapy.
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Apr 4, 2014 16:45
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Re: Time to leave a job. I knew it was time when I started fantasizing about stabbing someone. I had never had thoughts like that before and found it to be quite bizarre. I think the cold medicine I was taking during that time had something to do with it.
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Apr 4, 2014 16:51
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Sarcasmatron posted:There's been a lot of back-and-forth on this. From someone who has had to train managers not to suck: I thought I had mentioned it, but I'm long gone from this place and all this stuff is war stories, not something I'm dealing with right now. I like your suggestions, though, and I'll have to keep them filed away in case I run into a situation like this again. Unfortunately I doubt it would have worked in this case. First, the reprimand was a way for him to crack the whip and get me more firmly under his thumb. I was in precisely zero danger of being fired because I was the only developer in the whole place who could handle the boss's pet project, and nobody with any talent or ambition would want to move to the area (terrible rural nowhereseville) for what they were willing to pay. I knew it. They knew it. The official reprimand was an intimidation tactic, which was the only way this boss knew how to interact with people, and it did nothing more than demotivate me piss me off, and cause me to quit more quickly. So I wasn't too concerned with heading off actual repercussions. The big one though is that this guy was untouchable. He had been hand-picked by the board to make some changes (not strictly cost-cutting, but he had put stars in some of their eyes with his rhetoric) and he was the only one who was interpreting what he himself was doing for the company, so of course he made it sound like he was doing some great poo poo. A number of the people who had to work under him had made official complaints about some of his behaviors with HR, which were not investigated, and even took one right to the top, to the effective head of the organization. They were told, "I'm not going to listen to any complaints about him." He didn't listen to complaints and dismiss them, he refused to entertain complaints. They were told flat-out that nothing was going to be done, nobody was going to talk to this guy about his lovely behavior (which doesn't include reprimanding me for being late, it's other more obnoxious day-to-day poo poo), and that he was not going anywhere. In their eyes he walks on water. Going through HR is the right way to handle situations like this, I'm sure, but in this case they would not have helped. Either they were powerless because of orders from the board, apathetic, or incompetent (except for the benefits coordinator - she was an angel who would twist herself into a pretzel to help you, even if you were the one who hosed something up. That company didn't deserve someone like her). Had I gone to HR or anyone else with an official complaint, the boss would have taken it as an assault on his authority and indeed on his very identity. He would have found ways to make things even more unpleasant for me. So I gave up on that place, and I left when I was ready. -- I've kept in touch with my co-worker, who loved my work and flat-out told me that he'd love to give me a good reference if I ever needed one, without me even asking and before I even talked about leaving that company. Apparently since I left, my old boss convinced the executives to merge the IT department and Facilities department (you know, the guys who pull weeds and drill holes in the wall), because those things are related. Of course, my boss was chosen as the director of the merged department (he doesn't know poo poo about facilities, he wanted more people under him in the org chart, the end). They didn't change the rest of the structure - for example, they kept the old Facilities director's job intact, he just got the displeasure of reporting directly to my boss. The old facilities director had worked for that company for 11 years. Within three months of working under my boss, that man and his wife both quit. Maybe he didn't like being dragged into weekly four-hour meetings that started at 10:00AM and did not have a lunch break nor lunch provided (four hours because my boss said they'd be four hours, not because they had four hours' worth of stuff to talk about). Maybe my boss just strutted into the other director's office and waved his dick around too much. Maybe it was unrelated to the consolidation (hah). All I know is, after 11 years, he quit after working under my boss for three months.
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Apr 4, 2014 17:02
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UFOTofuTacoCat posted:Re: Time to leave a job. Sorry for the double post, but I had a similar experience that caused me to finally put in my notice. I snapped at someone in an unseemly fashion, someone who I have a lot of personal and professional respect for and certainly didn't deserve that from me. I spent the next hour in a mild shock, because I hadn't realized I was in such a poor state of mind. I put in my notice the next week, and the elevation of my mood the instant I made the decision was remarkable.
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Apr 4, 2014 17:09
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Che Delilas posted:I've kept in touch with my co-worker, who loved my work and flat-out told me that he'd love to give me a good reference if I ever needed one, without me even asking and before I even talked about leaving that company. Apparently since I left, my old boss convinced the executives to merge the IT department and Facilities department (you know, the guys who pull weeds and drill holes in the wall), because those things are related. Of course, my boss was chosen as the director of the merged department (he doesn't know poo poo about facilities, he wanted more people under him in the org chart, the end). They didn't change the rest of the structure - for example, they kept the old Facilities director's job intact, he just got the displeasure of reporting directly to my boss. There is a guy in a similar position where I work. He's in charge of "operations" which means IT, building security, facilities, etc. Bonus: He's almost always a total d-bag. One of my co-workers found a monitor that had literally been sitting around unused for something like 10 years. He plugged it into his desktop and had three monitors. He's a frontend web developer so he actually uses all of that space. Operations D-bag sent a nastygram to our group director saying people were not allowed to bring in their own equipment. My co-worker pointed out it had an inventory tag and everything. Then, the argument was he can't have it because "then everyone will think they can have one." So, my group director, being the awesome guy he is, goes over this d-bag's head and requests third monitors for our entire department and gets them approved. We smile over our three monitors whenever the operations d-bag strolls through our department. Then, there was the time there was a meeting to discuss the data model for a new asset management system that we were all going to be using. As developers we would have to tie in to this new system and also help migrate data into it, etc. etc. We were pretty confident in assuming the naming system that was being used to tag assets would continue to be used because it had all of these ridiculous requirements. It had to be human-readable, and when files were named with it, it had to sort in a certain way on the file servers, and so on. Well, Operations D-bag gets the bright idea to completely re-vamp this unique identifier for the new system that's coming in. Forget the fact that we have images, video files, and who knows what else all depending on this identifier. My co-worker who was in the meeting (along with our group director) calmly and diplomatically explains how terrible this idea is and why. After the meeting, D-bag takes our director aside and tells him he needs to get his employees in line because you don't just poo poo on an idea like that in front of everybody. You send an email and then you talk about it behind closed doors where no one can have their feelings hurt. My boss explains, "Well, we have an open door policy in our group. We trust each enough that if there is an opinion that it can be shared with me any time and we can have an open discussion about it. You can run your group however you want, but there was nothing out of line about what was said. It is a dumb idea." Hilariously, the Operations D-bag used to be in charge of our group, but after he solicited a $3m contract for one of our websites, which ended up being a complete boondoggle that we re-implemented from the ground up for like a tenth of that cost, I guess they wanted someone in charge of our group that could, I dunno, actually manage. I feel bad for the IT guys though. We requested that a bunch of our machines get re-imaged and the poor IT guy about had an anxiety attack when he couldn't get the machines to re-image over the network. I suggested using an external USB drive and the poor guy spiked his bootable Flash drive and almost screamed at me. So, we just re-imaged everything ourselves. No blood, no foul.
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Apr 4, 2014 17:41
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I worked at a place until I had stomach pains and hoped that it was another kidney stone, so that I would have to go to the hospital and could miss work. Now I work at a wonderful company where I shoot rainbows out of my kidney instead of rocks. Nth-ing the "get out, now" suggestion. If your job makes you physically uncomfortable, it's time to go.
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Apr 4, 2014 18:36
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UFOTofuTacoCat posted:Re: Time to leave a job. My touchstone for that has always been the time I rolled past a really ugly wreck on the freeway and my first thought was "That lucky bastard doesn't have to go to work tomorrow."
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Apr 4, 2014 18:41
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JEsus christ recruiters are braindead. I'm looking to  and started getting some really braindead stuff. I have not touched windows since ~2000, yet I get tons of spam for windows jobs.I have made it clear i'm only looking to relocate to the pacific northwest or colorado area. Having said that, I still get tons of recruiterspam for jobs in maine, virginia, NYC, etc. Someone I know on linkedin has gotten so annoyed with recruiters, she posted the following: quote:**** RECRUITERS! PLEASE READ CAREFULLY! Dont waste my time or yours! READ THE FOLLOWING -- I am not looking forward to looking for a job if the recruiters are this bad. Jeez.
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Apr 4, 2014 20:48
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I'm a UI/UX designer, I also do mid-level front-end wizardry. Every couple of days I get offers from recruiters for backend dev positions. 
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Apr 4, 2014 22:17
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nitrogen posted:JEsus christ recruiters are braindead. How charming that your friend thinks recruiters will read or abide by any of that. Some recruiter sent me an email based on my linkedin profile asking if I'd be interested in a sharepoint dev position. The only thing I've ever done with sharepoint is curse at it under my breath when I can't find the thing I'm after due to it being a generally terrible system. She at least got the city I'm in correct, which is a lot more than most folks seem to be able to manage. Cold contacts from recruiters may occasionally result in a good job, but more often than not it's going to be complete garbage. Your focus really needs to be on direct applications and leveraging personal contacts.
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Apr 4, 2014 22:26
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The first line in my linked in profile is "if you're going to try to contract me, use the word "<word goes here >" so that I know that you're not a spammer." I'd say about half of then actually do it. The rest are marked as spam.
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Apr 4, 2014 23:20
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Just sign recruiters up for cat facts.
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Apr 4, 2014 23:39
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I get recruiters asking me to be Linux/Windows Network admins. I work as a systems engineer and don't touch Windows ever.
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Apr 4, 2014 23:46
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I have to say, kind of looking for a job while you already have one that pays the bills is a lot of fun since you can pick up a call from these people and just issue an ultimatum right off the bat.
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Apr 5, 2014 00:01
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I got a recruiter email the other day matching me with a six-digit salary senior Java developer position. I have no interest in dev and only know Java from taking a couple comp sci classes in college. My current job (IT/facilities/operations support guy, entry-level, small business, low cost area) just gave me a raise to $11.50 an hour. Come on dude, did you even read my resume?  e: It's actually even worse, because the recruiter in question comes by my workplace every month (for reasons unrelated to me) and has literally seen me working here. Even the worst recruiter couldn't possibly be that daft. Soylent Heliotrope fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Apr 5, 2014 |
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Apr 5, 2014 00:24
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Soylent Heliotrope posted:I got a recruiter email the other day matching me with a six-digit salary senior Java developer position. I have no interest in dev and only know Java from taking a couple comp sci classes in college. My current job (IT/facilities/operations support guy, entry-level, small business, low cost area) just gave me a raise to $11.50 an hour. Is Java on your resume? If yes, then an automated email got sent to you.
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Apr 5, 2014 00:31
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Soylent Heliotrope posted:I got a recruiter email the other day matching me with a six-digit salary senior Java developer position. I have no interest in dev and only know Java from taking a couple comp sci classes in college. My current job (IT/facilities/operations support guy, entry-level, small business, low cost area) just gave me a raise to $11.50 an hour. Yeah, I'm still constantly getting recruiters that are trying to hire me for a job at my current company. Either that or it's 3-levels deep contracting - <Company> contrating to Accenture who is contracting to Microsoft for example. It's some kind of special.
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Apr 5, 2014 00:34
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Urit posted:Yeah, I'm still constantly getting recruiters that are trying to hire me for a job at my current company. Either that or it's 3-levels deep contracting - <Company> contrating to Accenture who is contracting to Microsoft for example. It's some kind of special. I feel like that sort of thing could be very lucrative, at least?
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Apr 5, 2014 00:40
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Inspector_666 posted:I feel like that sort of thing could be very lucrative, at least? Hourly goes up with each layer of inception?
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Apr 5, 2014 00:42
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I only internal recruiters from major tech firms, that I'm not at all qualified for as far as I know--though I've gotten second round interviews at both. :humblebrag: Maybe it's because I'm young and Linux people are high in demand in that sector?
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Apr 5, 2014 00:44
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I had a recruiter promise to call me at 5pm today. Naturally no call came in (and I was actually looking forward to talking about the position). Oh well. One more position to scratch off the list.
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Apr 5, 2014 00:57
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Inspector_666 posted:I have to say, kind of looking for a job while you already have one that pays the bills is a lot of fun since you can pick up a call from these people and just issue an ultimatum right off the bat. It definitely feels good to flip that power balance the other way around. Moey posted:Hourly goes up with each layer of inception? Yeah, but not to the shlub actually doing the work. Say Accenture signs a contract with Microsoft for $X/hr. Then they subcontract that out to Joe's Discount Consultancy for 0.66*X/hr, and Joe's actually pays the consultant 0.33*X.
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Apr 5, 2014 01:55
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Volmarias posted:I worked at a place until I had stomach pains and hoped that it was another kidney stone, so that I would have to go to the hospital and could miss work. sfwarlock posted:My touchstone for that has always been the time I rolled past a really ugly wreck on the freeway and my first thought was "That lucky bastard doesn't have to go to work tomorrow." I had a couple of ride-sharing work mates decide to point the car at a ditch and hit the gas to get out of work. Had to call a tow truck to get it out of the snow. They said it was money well spent.
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Apr 5, 2014 02:18
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dogstile posted:I'm spending this weekend convincing my girlfriend its the best thing for me. Wanna make sure i'm gonna go home after quitting to a supportive environment, i'm so loving stressed out that i'm shaking. I've literally never had that happen before. Back in the Dark Times when I worked for the Blue Beast, when I first started I was in the process of getting fitted for a mouthpiece, as I'd found out I have a jaw disorder that requires I wear one to sleep. When I'd first gone in, before hiring, they took my BP. After hiring and my first couple weeks, I went in to get the mouthpiece and they did a follow up, and shocked me by telling my my blood pressure had jumped 10 points since the last time I went in. Working that year in the Squad was one of the worst jobs I have ever had, and if I could have avoided it I would have. Working at a place you hate so much it's affecting your health is not worth it. Your health is more important than some d-bag manager.
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Apr 5, 2014 02:25
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Inspector_666 posted:I feel like that sort of thing could be very lucrative, at least? You would be incorrect, except for Accenture as stated. Example: I was working directly contracted to MS once. I was being paid ~$32/hr (actually salaried). I was being charged at slightly over $150/hr to MS, as an employee ranked in my company 2 levels above my actual paid level (effectively, I was mid-level in the company and was being presented to MS as a "senior" - the ranks were more complicated than that, but it was effectively how it was phrased). gently caress consulting AND contracting forever.
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Apr 5, 2014 02:30
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Supervisor switched over our ISP and didn't inform any remote clients or any of our remote locations. Monday was a giant clusterfuck of reestablishing VPN tunnels, taking calls saying reports weren't coming across. Doesn't help that because of the system we use at work there are operations that I can't perform so people call me and I have to tell them to wait for supervisor.
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Apr 5, 2014 02:31
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stubblyhead posted:It definitely feels good to flip that power balance the other way around. We have couple contracts where we're on the tail end of that formula. We are a little better off though, since due to our region, we can dictate our rate. We have plenty of calls where they tell us that they won't pay our regular hourly rate, then call back two hours later because no-one else in ~350 miles is capable of doing the work. The Fool fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Apr 5, 2014 |
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Apr 5, 2014 03:01
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I met a crafty fellow I met on a remote site once. In chatting I inquired about his lack of COMPANY uniform and he just laughed. Turns out he got into a fight with his boss and quit. He and his wife started their own contracting firm from their kitchen table. Company bosses rang his 'company' and now he has his exact old job with more money and more relaxed. That man is just living the dream.
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Apr 5, 2014 03:36
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Coworker/friend gave me the tl;dr -- not only is 40 per week (with no paid OT) insufficient, it also puts you near the top of the chopping block for November layoffs. I suspect he was trying to warn me. I need to work on my marketable skills stat. This place. 
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Apr 5, 2014 05:50
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dogstile posted:
While individual incidents are not against any laws if there is a pattern it can be constructive dismissal. You need to record everything. Open an external email account, ask for everything in writing (this alone should ring alarm bells in competent managers but will go over these clowns heads) and when you get them BCC or forward everything to the gmail/outlook account. If you can show many cases where you have an email to tell you X and then an email that you shouldn't of done X then you have them by the balls. Any sane company would then buy you off with a confidentiality clause (for both sides).
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Apr 5, 2014 15:41
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