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Croatoan
Jun 24, 2005

I am inevitable.
ROBBLE GROBBLE

Krispy Wafer posted:

At my yearly review my manager talked specifically about how much the company values its employees and is trying to retain talent and then gave me a 21 cent per hour raise. What a way to find out I'm not considered talent.

Man that's the loving truth. My company announced 2 years ago that they were going to implement a 5 year plan to become a "Employer of choice" to attract and retain the best talent. Annual reviews came out 3 months later and everyone was capped at a 2% raise increase oh and they restructured paid time off so now everybody gets less time off a year. Yay!

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Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
A few years back my megacorp offered a very generous voluntary severance package to nearly everyone in the company. I can't speak for everyone else but it was nearly half of my salary in a good job market so... twist my arm, guess I'll gtfo. I remember thinking at the time that they'll screw themselves over if it turns out to be a popular option. So much internal knowledge and experience could be gone in a flash.

Aaaand it turns out it was mostly the high performers who took the money and ran. I later heard from HR-related sources that their conclusion was "Well, we're never doing that again."

How Rude
Aug 13, 2012


FUCK THIS SHIT

Trabant posted:

A few years back my megacorp offered a very generous voluntary severance package to nearly everyone in the company. I can't speak for everyone else but it was nearly half of my salary in a good job market so... twist my arm, guess I'll gtfo. I remember thinking at the time that they'll screw themselves over if it turns out to be a popular option. So much internal knowledge and experience could be gone in a flash.

Aaaand it turns out it was mostly the high performers who took the money and ran. I later heard from HR-related sources that their conclusion was "Well, we're never doing that again."

It astonishes me how few corporations follow best practices. They all do literally the opposite of what my capstone corporate management class taught me (I'm an Accountant).

Legit baseline adequacy requires you respect your workers as human beings. Building resentment on your workforce is going to skyrocket turnover, and turnover is EXPENSIVE.

Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer
IBM had that problem. Both my mom and aunt retired from there so I grew up surrounded by all things IBM. But from 2000 I only met one IBMer who was still with the company. Everyone else took a package and left. Some of them needed to go, but enough were valuable that having a former co-worker come back as a highly paid contractor became a running joke.

IBM still has a lot of employees (350k to be exact), but most are overseas. They hollowed out their domestic operations.

ReidRansom
Oct 25, 2004


A lot of the old tech behemoths seem to have gone that way. Xerox, for example. There were some externalities they had to deal with, sure, but most of their misfortune was brought about by themselves, and pissing all over their employees was part of that.

uli2000
Feb 23, 2015

That's almost the exact same as Vegas, thought I think the Gamestop and Games Workshop are a bit father apart, there's a Kohls or something like that in between them.

Krispy Wafer posted:

Occasionally someone will figure out the value of employee retention. Wal-Mart used that as one of their reasons for boosting pay, which while still lower than it should be, forced every other big retailer to do the same.

The problem, as Haifisch already said, is that cutting pay, manpower, or benefits show up on the bottom line immediately. There's an objective, quantitative, measurable result. Keeping employees happy so you're not training new staff every 6 months has a better impact on long-term expenses, but is subjective and not as easy to track.

So you'll see a poo poo company scratch it's head and wonder why a Publix or QuickTrip can keep people for years and the answer is it takes years of good policies. You can't just flip a switch and expect everything to get better. Companies that try, like that UK game store, see only the short term benefits which aren't usually enough to make good policies permanent.


The top 10 companies to work for usually has 3 or 4 privately held companies. The publicly held ones are dominated by big tech firms, which I think are still not entirely governed by the same forces most companies deal with and should probably not be representative of public companies. The bottom 10 companies to work for are all publicly traded firms except for Dillards.

There's something to be said for private companies.

I think Costco is one of the few publicly traded non tech companies usually near the tops of these lists, and the key to their success with their employees is that the CEO tells shareholders to gently caress off when they demand stuff. Of course, that can't last forever.

uli2000 has a new favorite as of 18:58 on Jun 13, 2019

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



Also Costco actually pays their people

Slanderer
May 6, 2007

Krispy Wafer posted:

IBM had that problem. Both my mom and aunt retired from there so I grew up surrounded by all things IBM. But from 2000 I only met one IBMer who was still with the company. Everyone else took a package and left. Some of them needed to go, but enough were valuable that having a former co-worker come back as a highly paid contractor became a running joke.

IBM still has a lot of employees (350k to be exact), but most are overseas. They hollowed out their domestic operations.

IBM actually has the exact opposite problem. For years they've been illegally targeting older employees for layoffs so they can replace them with younger (cheaper) ones. They've been trying to disguise this illegal action by coercing those employees into taking voluntary retirement packages (with a lot of legal baggage attached) and simply lying to federal regulators by misclassifying layoffs as voluntary retirements (it's not voluntary if the options are "resign or be fired") to try to avoid penalties for age discrimination.

Here's the big story about it from last year, and there have been some updates since:

https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/

EDIT:

quote:

Among ProPublica’s findings, IBM:

Denied older workers information the law says they need in order to decide whether they’ve been victims of age bias, and required them to sign away the right to go to court or join with others to seek redress.

Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the departures went toward hiring young replacements.

Converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firings. The moves reduced the number of employees counted as layoffs, where high numbers can trigger public disclosure requirements.

Encouraged employees targeted for layoff to apply for other IBM positions, while quietly advising managers not to hire them and requiring many of the workers to train their replacements.

Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.

Slanderer has a new favorite as of 20:11 on Jun 13, 2019

FrozenVent
May 1, 2009

The Boeing 737-200QC is the undisputed workhorse of the skies.
Having worked a a “top ten employer to work for”, let me assure you those titles are bought and paid for.

Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer

Slanderer posted:

IBM actually has the exact opposite problem. For years they've been illegally targeting older employees for layoffs so they can replace them with younger (cheaper) ones. They've been trying to disguise this illegal action by coercing those employees into taking voluntary retirement packages (with a lot of legal baggage attached) and simply lying to federal regulators by misclassifying layoffs as voluntary retirements (it's not voluntary if the options are "resign or be fired") to try to avoid penalties for age discrimination.

Here's the big story about it from last year, and there have been some updates since:

https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/

EDIT:

Oh sure, every year my mom would complain about IBM's latest effort to crack open their pension treasure chest. One year the plan was to take away their pensions, but boost their 401k's by X amount every year and that would somehow compensate. IBM's reputation with older employees is abysmal, but a lot of the people I've met who left did so during their prime working years in the 1990's. IBM didn't care who they got rid of then, they just wanted to unload people.

They got really good at targeting the older employees by the 2000's. I get it. IBM is an old tech hardware company that has managed to survive and even thrive in the services realm. That's not easy and had they continued doing business as usual they'd be dead or far smaller now. But they've survived by becoming a miserable company.

vyst
Aug 25, 2009



FrozenVent posted:

Having worked a a “top ten employer to work for”, let me assure you those titles are bought and paid for.

Same, We're #1 in one of the publications and we're leaking like a sieve in terms of SME Employees

vyst has a new favorite as of 22:00 on Jun 13, 2019

Queen Combat
Dec 29, 2017

Lipstick Apathy
Sieve, or do civs have poor bladder control?

BOOTY-ADE
Aug 30, 2006

BIG KOOL TELLIN' Y'ALL TO KEEP IT TIGHT

FlamingLiberal posted:

Also Costco actually pays their people

Yup, in my area the lowest paid that I've seen is around $19-20/hour starting out - being in a place where cost of living isn't absurd helps too, so that wage can actually pay for quite a bit.

Rick
Feb 23, 2004
When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

FrozenVent posted:

Having worked a a “top ten employer to work for”, let me assure you those titles are bought and paid for.

I have worked at 2 in the top 25 and even though they were poo poo jobs as far as they could never be meaningful or fun, they tried really hard to treat us well so I look back on those jobs more fondly than my "good" jobs.

But I could see how that was not enough for some people, and in the end it was too much for me in one of the jobs, which lead to me quitting it.

Ichabod Tane
Oct 30, 2005

A most notable
coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.


https://youtu.be/_Ojd0BdtMBY?t=4

Croatoan posted:

Man that's the loving truth. My company announced 2 years ago that they were going to implement a 5 year plan to become a "Employer of choice" to attract and retain the best talent. Annual reviews came out 3 months later and everyone was capped at a 2% raise increase oh and they restructured paid time off so now everybody gets less time off a year. Yay!

I got dinged in my bi-annual review for things that are demonstrably untrue. Gonna totally eat poo poo for my bonus.

vyst
Aug 25, 2009



Queen Combat posted:

Sieve, or do civs have poor bladder control?

Oh poo poo, good call.

Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer
Every company has poo poo jobs. Facebook ranks high on those lists and they give their contractors literal PTSD.

Still, you be marginally confident working for a top rated company is going to be better than a bottom feeder one. Usually things like benefits and PTO weigh on those scores.

Mustached Demon
Nov 12, 2016

Krispy Wafer posted:

Every company has poo poo jobs. Facebook ranks high on those lists and they give their contractors literal PTSD.

Still, you be marginally confident working for a top rated company is going to be better than a bottom feeder one. Usually things like benefits and PTO weigh on those scores.

Contractors don't usually get those nice things. That's why they contract out the cheap work.

ryonguy
Jun 27, 2013

Krispy Wafer posted:

Every company has poo poo jobs. Facebook ranks high on those lists and they give their contractors literal PTSD.

Still, you be marginally confident working for a top rated company is going to be better than a bottom feeder one. Usually things like benefits and PTO weigh on those scores.

*panting*"poo poo i heard a CEO had his dick out and I had to find my chapstick, he leave yet?"

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



FrozenVent posted:

Having worked a a “top ten employer to work for”, let me assure you those titles are bought and paid for.
The principle of privately owned businesses being better than publicly traded is still sound. Yeah my boss may believe in bigfoot and go on regular hunting trips, but I get annual 8% raises.

Rick
Feb 23, 2004
When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Mustached Demon posted:

Contractors don't usually get those nice things. That's why they contract out the cheap work.

One of those places was Intuit and I was a contractor and they treated me very well. Like obviously we weren't getting the benefits, but as far as on-campus perks we got access to everything employees did, with the exception of the Gym which we had to pay $5 a month to use. Tech training, dirt cheap but very good food, a free arcade, unlimited catered coffee, wellness stuff, etc. Honestly the job was so dumb and I was hired to do something that should have been automated, and in fact was before the end of the contract (that they still honored to the end anyway even though we were no longer needed) but I've never been treated better at any job, straight up.

Rick has a new favorite as of 08:07 on Jun 14, 2019

Gann Jerrod
Sep 9, 2005

A gun isn't a gun unless it shoots Magic.
The ThinkGeek website is shutting down, with a remnant surviving on GameStop’s website.

quote:

On July 2nd, 2019, ThinkGeek.com will be moving in with our parent company GameStop. After this move, you will be able to shop a curated selection of unique items historically found on ThinkGeek.com via a ThinkGeek section at GameStop.

This news combined with GameStop’s current woes makes me wonder if it’ll last the year.

Queen Combat
Dec 29, 2017

Lipstick Apathy
AhahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHA gently caress YOU THINKGEEK

MarcusSA
Sep 23, 2007

Gann Jerrod posted:

The ThinkGeek website is shutting down, with a remnant surviving on GameStop’s website.


This news combined with GameStop’s current woes makes me wonder if it’ll last the year.

Lol!!!!!!

Beachcomber
May 21, 2007

Another day in paradise.


Slippery Tilde
Do we hate Think geek because they sell overpriced garbage to self-identified autists who think that their stuff is a substitute for a personality or is there another reason?

Tehdas
Dec 30, 2012

Beachcomber posted:

Do we hate Think geek because they sell overpriced garbage to self-identified autists who think that their stuff is a substitute for a personality or is there another reason?

I dunno, when i see thinkgeek, my brain keeps wanting to translate it to mindgeek.
They don’t belong in this thread.

anonumos
Jul 14, 2005

Fuck it.

Beachcomber posted:

Do we hate Think geek because they sell overpriced garbage to self-identified autists who think that their stuff is a substitute for a personality or is there another reason?

Leave the autism out of it. Think Geek sells overpriced garbage to self-identified geeks looking to fill out an empty personality with overpriced garbage advertised as geeky.

Fried Watermelon
Dec 29, 2008


My ex-gf bought me these Star Wars bookends that were like $150 canadian dollars for a xmas or bday gift:

https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/e56f/

Which was odd because I already had bookshelves for my books and this just added clutter. Hell if you thought I enjoyed Star Wars so much, why wouldn't you have gotten me like Star Wars books instead?

Pretty sure she got the gift idea from Big Bang Theory

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Fried Watermelon posted:

Which was odd because I already had bookshelves for my books and this just added clutter. Hell if you thought I enjoyed Star Wars so much, why wouldn't you have gotten me like Star Wars books instead?

Maybe she assumed you wanted to continue liking Star Wars.

Though it would feel pretty weird to use those for pretty much anything but Star Wars books. It's like that home theatre setup, it'd feel hella weird to watch anything but Star Wars on it, maybe Star Trek if you're feeling perverse.

Mustached Demon
Nov 12, 2016

Rick posted:

One of those places was Intuit and I was a contractor and they treated me very well. Like obviously we weren't getting the benefits, but as far as on-campus perks we got access to everything employees did, with the exception of the Gym which we had to pay $5 a month to use. Tech training, dirt cheap but very good food, a free arcade, unlimited catered coffee, wellness stuff, etc. Honestly the job was so dumb and I was hired to do something that should have been automated, and in fact was before the end of the contract (that they still honored to the end anyway even though we were no longer needed) but I've never been treated better at any job, straight up.

The benefits are the nice things. Rest of that stuffs just fluff.

SO DEMANDING
Dec 27, 2003

Gann Jerrod posted:

The ThinkGeek website is shutting down, with a remnant surviving on GameStop’s website.


This news combined with GameStop’s current woes makes me wonder if it’ll last the year.

I remember when thinkgeek was a small independent company with a variety of linux T-shirts! :corsair:

This seems like a bad idea as I figure the only way gamestop will survive in any fashion will be to convert entirely into a pop culture store. Why remove any of the thinkgeek brand, do they really think anyone thinks positively of gamestop?

Whatever, hot topic or someone will probably buy the scraps when they finally go bankrupt.

RagnarokZ
May 14, 2004

Emperor of the Internet

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Games Workshop is its own story where they actually managed to pull themselves out of a tailspin after they changed their management from being what amounted to an insular corporate cult that literally didn't do market research at all.

Their liberal licensing policy when it comes to video games was a massive help too.

Whole bunch of Warhammer games, several of them actually good, was a giant help for them.

Detective No. 27
Jun 7, 2006

Didn't their liberal licensing policy happen because they refused to give Blizzard the license for a Warhammer RTS in the 90s so they filed the serial numbers off and made Warcraft?

Croatoan
Jun 24, 2005

I am inevitable.
ROBBLE GROBBLE
There's a physical ThinkGeek store at a mall near me. I wonder if it's gonna go belly up or convert to a GameStop. ThinkGeek has always been super overpriced bullshit. I do however own a cookie jar I got there like 10 years ago and still use it.

Sir Lemming
Jan 27, 2009

It's a piece of JUNK!

Gann Jerrod posted:

The ThinkGeek website is shutting down, with a remnant surviving on GameStop’s website.


This news combined with GameStop’s current woes makes me wonder if it’ll last the year.

Ouch for ThinkGeek. Probably a benefit to GameStop for whatever it's worth. But I seem to recall TG recently opening a bunch of physical stores. Guess they overestimated geeks' willingness to leave the house

Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer
I stumbled across a ThinkGeek store at the mall this week. There's already a GameStop there and another one a few miles down the street. I didn't go in, but it looked like a Spencers without the dick and weed jokes.

And oh lord those StarWars bookends are awful. Here I was thinking it'd probably be a death star or Millennium Falcon but no.

IUG
Jul 14, 2007


Croatoan posted:

There's a physical ThinkGeek store at a mall near me. I wonder if it's gonna go belly up or convert to a GameStop. ThinkGeek has always been super overpriced bullshit. I do however own a cookie jar I got there like 10 years ago and still use it.

Is it a Tardis?

Iron Crowned
May 6, 2003

by Hand Knit

Fried Watermelon posted:

My ex-gf bought me these Star Wars bookends that were like $150 canadian dollars for a xmas or bday gift:

https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/e56f/

Which was odd because I already had bookshelves for my books and this just added clutter. Hell if you thought I enjoyed Star Wars so much, why wouldn't you have gotten me like Star Wars books instead?

Pretty sure she got the gift idea from Big Bang Theory

I often wonder why people have book ends in TYOOL 2019. Either you have books and your bookshelves are like mine and have book filling out every last niche possible and then some, or you don't. There really isn't much of an in between anymore, that would justify a device specifically built to keep books from falling over.

Glad to see that you severed from a BBT watcher though.

TheKennedys
Sep 23, 2006

By my hand, I will take you from this godforsaken internet

Detective No. 27 posted:

Didn't their liberal licensing policy happen because they refused to give Blizzard the license for a Warhammer RTS in the 90s so they filed the serial numbers off and made Warcraft?

In short, yes

In long, lmao yes

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Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
I mean given Warhammer basically started as off-brand Lord of the Rings figures and then proceeded to found further franchises by wholesale ripping off Starship Troopers, Judge Dredd, Dune and Alien...

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