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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i'm the most senior employee at my company, largely because of turnover in the industry, and i hate job hunting and i get paid pretty well. we have three products, i'm the only person who has ever seen the old product in action and one of two people who knows how the middle product works. everyone else of our many employees works on developing or selling the new product, which has a healthy and growing market share. a decent amount of our yearly revenue comes from recurring licensing on the older two products, which are entirely my responsibility to support. the total revenue from these zombie fees more than covers my salary You Goons are living the loving dream. Someday. I'm actually in something like your guru position right now, only I have actual work and responsibilities that go along with it, and also I'm hella underpaid. At least, until a couple weeks from now; put in my notice, leaving for a government job with 70% higher pay.
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Feb 4, 2021 18:24
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i'm the most senior employee at my company, largely because of turnover in the industry, and i hate job hunting and i get paid pretty well. we have three products, i'm the only person who has ever seen the old product in action and one of two people who knows how the middle product works. everyone else of our many employees works on developing or selling the new product, which has a healthy and growing market share. a decent amount of our yearly revenue comes from recurring licensing on the older two products, which are entirely my responsibility to support. the total revenue from these zombie fees more than covers my salary This post had me actually cutting up and laughing, great story lol
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Feb 4, 2021 18:32
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Outrail posted:Hired some people and had an onboarding meeting last night. ".. And our safety and hr policies are still 'in development', so for the time being don't do anything that would get you in trouble at your last job. And don't discriminate against anyone. Also don't do anything unsafe. Being unsafe is against the rules. Any questions?" "Uh yeah, can I discriminate against people who aren't safe?"
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Feb 4, 2021 19:44
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Sk8ers4Christ posted:I work for county government. That alone should tell you the amount of bullshit my job entails. Literally every single decision you make has to go up the chain of command. If I want to purchase a new binder, the request has to go through several people in different departments, and it still might get rejected! I understand the need for the oversight, since our revenue mostly comes from taxes, but it can get extremely irritating. Some of my coworkers have just said "gently caress it" and spent their own money on supplies, because they don't want to wait a month to see if the county will order them more Bic pens (and god forbid someone involved in the approval process goes on vacation). I work in state government, I understand your pain. Right now I am bashing my head in over a painting project. I oversee the maintenance of a playground. Playground structures that have rust need to get repainted if the rust is just on the surface from the protective paint flaking off. Ok, easy: wire brush the area to confirm it's only surface rust and remove easily flaking paint (of course with a cloth down, don't want paint flakes in the playground surfacing), and spray paint the exposed metal. I have been told no due to lead concerns. The structure was built and installed in 2011 from a certified, still in business play structure company. I have all the documentation from purchase and install...including the lead free certification. And I can't just wear my respirator (that is fitted properly), no, we have to do full mitigation and disposal protocols...on something confirmed to NOT contain lead. I can encase the problem points-which means it will be very difficult to confirm surface rust, so I may just hide a larger problem or best case scenario, I end up repainting annually as the surface wasn't properly prepared. Which will waste a boatload of time and spray paint, plus closing the very popular playground every year.
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Feb 4, 2021 19:50
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Pinus Porcus posted:I work in state government, I understand your pain. Right now I am bashing my head in over a painting project. I oversee the maintenance of a playground. Playground structures that have rust need to get repainted if the rust is just on the surface from the protective paint flaking off. Ok, easy: wire brush the area to confirm it's only surface rust and remove easily flaking paint (of course with a cloth down, don't want paint flakes in the playground surfacing), and spray paint the exposed metal. I'm pretty sure you could take paint/material samples to a local laboratory for lead testing as verification. It's common, and would probably be cheaper than exhaustively, carefully repainting every year.
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Feb 4, 2021 19:57
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Volmarias posted:"Don't be a dick. All of the policy hangs upon this one commandment." At the risk of doxxing myself, here's a screen grab from the screen saver I have to put up with (it's from our corporate values).
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Feb 4, 2021 20:12
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InternetJunky posted:At the risk of doxxing myself, here's a screen grab from the screen saver I have to put up with (it's from our corporate values). How can I trust this person when there are no funko pops behind him.
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Feb 4, 2021 20:17
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Hasturtium posted:I'm pretty sure you could take paint/material samples to a local laboratory for lead testing as verification. It's common, and would probably be cheaper than exhaustively, carefully repainting every year. We can, however, I need approval to spend the money to have it tested. See the previous posters' experience with getting budget approvals for hand sanitizer. We aren't that bad, but cheap fix tends to win out over proper fix. More than likely this will turn into an annual argument until they decide they want me to shut up and pay to have it tested
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Feb 4, 2021 20:34
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Thanatosian posted:
I'm about halfway between the OP you were replying to and you. I've turned into somewhat of a go to answer person over the years I've worked here. I basically have free reign to do whatever I want with hardware, purchases, whatever (within reason). I was also severely underpaid, until the summer of 2019. I got tired of putting up with poo poo, being a go-to person, but being paid dick, so I went and found a different job, and put in my 2 weeks. My boss kind of panicked. He asked me if I would sit in on interviews for my job, I said I would, so they posted it right away and started getting people in. The first guy they interviewed had zero technical knowledge and seemed like a complete idiot. My boss told him the salary range, which was (as an example) $20-$30/hr. I started below this bracket but had worked my way up to be on the lower end of it over the course of a couple of years. My boss said something to the effect of "I'm thinking if we hire you, we'd start you at the higher end of that scale" which was like $5/hr more than I was making. I was pissed, my boss noticed. Second guy wanted 100k/year and a company car. Afterwards, I joked with my boss that I would stay for 99k. Multiple other people just didn't show up for the interview. Two days before I was going to be leaving, they hadn't found anyone worth a drat. On a whim, I texted my boss and asked him what he thought a package to keep me around might look like. He came back with a 25% raise and quarterly company wide profit share. I ended up staying and I'm still here currently. I made a nice chunk off the profit sharing bonus in 2020.
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Feb 4, 2021 21:06
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InternetJunky posted:At the risk of doxxing myself, here's a screen grab from the screen saver I have to put up with (it's from our corporate values). This is the face of a man who wouldn't hesitate to steal your sandwich.
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Feb 4, 2021 21:17
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Pinus Porcus posted:We can, however, I need approval to spend the money to have it tested. See the previous posters' experience with getting budget approvals for hand sanitizer. We aren't that bad, but cheap fix tends to win out over proper fix. And by then the whole play structure will have rusted through, because they wouldn't let you check if it was only surface rust! It kind of astounds me the shortcuts they take to save money, which will only end up costing them more in the long run. This is definitely not unique to government employers, but it is astounding that, with the amount of people involved in the decision-making, no one sees the issue. Somewhat related. All our county commissioner meetings are recorded and publicly available. I don't think they expect anyone to watch them, because the amount of hatred and resentment the board members have toward each other is extremely palpable. Don't think I have ever seen such passive aggression in one room before.
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Feb 4, 2021 22:46
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Thanatosian posted:There was a goon in one of the IT threads who does overnight support for a law firm, who gets paid okay but not great, and who mentioned that he only fields a handful of calls most nights and during a software review for the IT department it came up that FFXIV was on their installed software list, someone asked why, and the response was "oh, it's for Goonsly" and that was good enough for everyone to move on to the next topic. I'm the IT guru at this place I currently work at but was hired on as the "marketing assistant". Previously they'd hire outside IT contractors to fix all their poo poo but realized it would be cheaper if I did it. I threatened to leave until they paid me more. Now that it's been several years they forgot how much they were spending on IT consultant fees and are trying to find out how to make my position "make money". It's nice being the guru but I can tell they just view me as a huge expense. The owners think that if you buy a "state of the art" you won't ever need to buy anything again. They bought a "top of the line" (actually refurbished and 6 years old) server and are pissed when I tell them well now we need a new network firewall because the old one is capped at 100Mb/s. Also trying to buy a new PC for sales staff when we "just bought new ones" (owner brings his kid's lovely laptop with Fortnite still installed on it as a replacement). CPU is so old it can't even run the programs we need. "But I spent $500 on it!". Also gently caress SAP for nuking their support site. It's great when you search for an issue, find the exact solution and the post just says "Reference this SAP Note 21321312" and it redirects you to a closed Support Page catch-all site.
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Feb 4, 2021 23:19
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It really just takes a couple of people that don't feel like doing their jobs or treat people with respect that poisons an entire jobsite or organization. What baffles me is how ruthless and cutthroat businesses appear to be, but in every department and at every level, people are just loving around and being stupid lazy and petty. Would it not make sense for someone important to cut out every weak link mercilessly and just have talented people who give a poo poo and are paid well enough to commit? I know I expect a lot from people, but surely this makes sense? Why do we so often just put up with mediocrity?
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Feb 5, 2021 00:33
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That's called stack ranking and it's cancer on any business that practices it. It makes pettiness, infighting, and favorites being favorited so so much worse.
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Feb 5, 2021 01:04
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Charles Bukowski posted:What baffles me is how ruthless and cutthroat businesses appear to be, but in every department and at every level, people are just loving around and being stupid lazy and petty. Would it not make sense for someone important to cut out every weak link mercilessly and just have talented people who give a poo poo and are paid well enough to commit? I know I expect a lot from people, but surely this makes sense? Why do we so often just put up with mediocrity? You are essentially wondering out loud "why is human society? Should not be better???"
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Feb 5, 2021 01:05
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Charles Bukowski posted:It really just takes a couple of people that don't feel like doing their jobs or treat people with respect that poisons an entire jobsite or organization. This is what a lot of actually mediocre people think, tbh Not saying they're right, just that whoever you are thinking when you say this, they would probably think the same thing about you. People who think they are hot poo poo are the absolute worst people to work with
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Feb 5, 2021 01:25
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Charles Bukowski posted:It really just takes a couple of people that don't feel like doing their jobs or treat people with respect that poisons an entire jobsite or organization. every so often you'll get some goof who thinks he's that guy and if he gets humored that's usually the death of the company within a matter of months, because it turns out the important guys don't actually know how everything works
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Feb 5, 2021 01:30
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Get this. My work wants to "sell" services to "customers" in order to make a "profit". Crazy right?
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Feb 5, 2021 02:08
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My airline job just went through a several month long battle about water bottles. As a background, our airplanes had a case of 1.5 liter water bottles on board, and the pilots usually take one a day so we have something to drink, and there was another case that the flight attendants would use to fill the water cups for passengers. When Covid hit, we switched to giving passengers individual mini water bottles, which was followed by a memo telling the pilots to quit taking the big water bottles, because somehow having us go through six times more miniature bottles was cheaper. It turned out that the "cheaper" excuse was actually just creative accounting, since we were given the small water bottles "for free" by our parent airline/holding company, but the large ones were billed to our airline, so the company as a whole is spending substantially more on the stupid miniature bottles, but since the losses go to the parent company, it's all fine.
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Feb 5, 2021 02:10
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ikanreed posted:Get this. My work wants to "sell" services to "customers" in order to make a "profit". Crazy right? Only an idiot would buy that
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Feb 5, 2021 03:20
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Most of the work pcs are still running windows 98 and specced like a computer from 1998, which works about as well to vpn into as you expect. If you accidentally open chrome, you basically have to restart the whole thing.
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Feb 5, 2021 03:34
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Play posted:This is what a lot of actually mediocre people think, tbh My question was more "why aren't more business actually like that?" since everything is the bottom dollar. Oh, is it cheaper to release inferior products and have inferior people than to do it properly? I would probably be the last to refer to myself as "hot poo poo" at work, I just never want to create more work for others. I'd rather be out in the rice fields.
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Feb 5, 2021 03:54
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Sk8ers4Christ posted:And by then the whole play structure will have rusted through, because they wouldn't let you check if it was only surface rust! Save $100 to spend $75,000. No one sees the issue with it. We aren't funded by taxes, so at least the public can't bleat about their tax dollars ( that are totally being wasted, just not by my agency). I worked one job where the dude in charge actually spent money where needed, when needed. Except for the fact it was an industry I dislike working in, I still wish I was still there sometimes because it actually seemed sane.
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Feb 5, 2021 05:05
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Charles Bukowski posted:My question was more "why aren't more business actually like that?" since everything is the bottom dollar. Hiring people is expensive. You have to interview people, and then you have to onboard them. You make a huge investment, and when people flame out, you lose money on them. So you want to find the right person. Which takes time and money. Firing people is difficult and expensive. First off, a lot of companies above a certain size will have a barrier between a manager and their ability to fire someone. In one of my jobs, loss prevention had to be involved. And if they weren't, then they wouldn't defend you if anything came up. So for example, unemployment hearings. Basically, if the employee was found to have quit or been fired for cause, then you don't have to pay anything. On the other hand, if you just fired them just because, you might have to pay some premiums, at least that's how it worked in NJ when I worked there. But to get that approval to fire someone, you need documentation. You need to show where the employee either failed to live up to the standards or behaved inappropriately, and then you need to document that you spoke to them. That needs to be reviewed, because businesses don't want to get sued for discrimination or retaliation. You know, an employee accuses me of sexual harassment, so I fire her for rocking the boat. That's highly illegal. Most bad employees are generally good enough to avoid too much scrutiny, but not bad enough to warrant actively firing them. And paradoxically, by firing all your bad employees, you make it harder to keep the good ones. Because when you see a lot of people getting fired or leaving, you tend to not trust your future in that organization. Why stick around only to get canned. Then there's politics. Bad employee A is liked by their manager, so they get a pass.
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Feb 5, 2021 05:13
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Various Artists posted:Most of the work pcs are still running windows 98 and specced like a computer from 1998, which works about as well to vpn into as you expect. what in the gently caress tasks are they performing, are these like manufacturing / old-rear end robot control systems or 
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Feb 5, 2021 05:52
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:for this feat of monumental heroism and prowess, i get a companywide attaboy email and a personal shoutout at our next all hands meeting Lol great story. Reminds me of a similar but kind of opposite situation from my first job out of college. About 10 years ago I was an entry level analyst at a tiny consulting firm, and one of our offerings was helping clients run large workshops. I got tapped to do some of the grunt work for these workshops, and soon after that our CEO bought an ARS system so we could add interactive real-time polling into our PowerPoint decks for these workshops. It even came with about 50 little infrared remotes that we’d hand out to the clients to vote with. The software was pretty janky but didn’t require any technical skills. I think I just happened to be the young guy standing near the CEO when he wanted to set it up for the first time, so he asked if I could do it. From then on I was the sole keeper of the ARS system, and that made me indispensable. I got included on every workshop so that I could run the polling, and started getting included in more of the higher level planning meetings so I could give input on what kind of questions and visualizations would be feasible (i don’t think we ever did anything but a basic column chart). If we needed to fly to a client’s offices for a workshop, I’d be entrusted with the carrying case that contained the USB receiver and all the remotes, and receive texts from the CEO thanking me for packing it in my suitcase and taking care of the system. During a workshop if there was some new info that came to light in the morning, I’d offer to work over lunch to update the polling questions for the afternoon, which really just meant doing 5 mins of updating text on a PowerPoint slide and 55 mins of having lunch by myself without getting tasked with the other, more inane work like transcribing post-it notes and flip charts. The clients would be dazzled that the polls were able to be seamlessly updated to reflect new content from the morning. This went on for a few years, and while I was generally a good employee overall, i am 100% certain that my completely arbitrary, solitary responsibility for the polling system led to me being favored by the CEO and promoted multiple times. When I left the company, i onboarded another employee to the system. she was intimidated because she didn’t have any technical training and assumed that since I was the only person allowed to use the system, it must have required pretty serious training. It probably took 20 mins to get her 100% up to speed. The look on her face when she realized the scam I’d been running, but that she’d now get to keep it running, was priceless. I like to think she got another couple years out of it before free browser/smartphone based poll apps were widely available.
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Feb 5, 2021 07:19
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Charles Bukowski posted:It really just takes a couple of people that don't feel like doing their jobs or treat people with respect that poisons an entire jobsite or organization. eddie lampert acct spotted
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Feb 5, 2021 07:30
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Various Artists posted:Most of the work pcs are still running windows 98 and specced like a computer from 1998, which works about as well to vpn into as you expect. Code Jockey posted:what in the gently caress tasks are they performing, are these like manufacturing / old-rear end robot control systems or I'm actually kind of impressed by this, honestly, in the same way that I'm kind of impressed by the NYC subway system manufacturing their own parts to replace hundred years old ones. Not replace with something newer, replace with the same thing, but they're the only ones who will make it now.
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Feb 5, 2021 08:36
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Doesn’t Netflix do the “fire the bottom x%” thing? Or they used to?
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Feb 5, 2021 09:55
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:Doesn’t Netflix do the “fire the bottom x%” thing? Or they used to? Microsoft infamously did it for years.
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Feb 5, 2021 10:14
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Still do. Netflix of all companies is particularly brutal / notorious for "transparent firing culture" where managers fire employees and then there are dept all hands discussing why that person got fired. You also won't progress up the ranks if you don't fire people. It happens to everyone, including senior directors, VPs, etc. Amazon also has the PIP culture, where again if you don't PIP and or fire team members, you won't progress. There's literally a hard quota per year.
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Feb 5, 2021 11:24
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:Doesn’t Netflix do the “fire the bottom x%” thing? Or they used to? I think Amazon corporate employees did too. And even worse, IIRC all of the employees did weekly polls where they rated their direct coworkers. Obviously it resulted in tons of traumatic drama, backstabbing, and just nastiness for everybody
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Feb 5, 2021 14:37
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So you're saying my team can get the most efficient workers fired to increase our own chances of promotion? Isn't that a huge loophole? Did somebody watch survivor and thought 'yes, this is a viable business model'?
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Feb 5, 2021 15:25
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Volmarias posted:I'm actually kind of impressed by this, honestly, in the same way that I'm kind of impressed by the NYC subway system manufacturing their own parts to replace hundred years old ones. Not replace with something newer, replace with the same thing, but they're the only ones who will make it now. You kind of got it. It's this custom call center software that they made themselves. It's absolute jank and I'm pretty sure it was done in visual basic.
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Feb 5, 2021 15:57
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Outrail posted:So you're saying my team can get the most efficient workers fired to increase our own chances of promotion? Isn't that a huge loophole? Did somebody watch survivor and thought 'yes, this is a viable business model'? It's because of the name brand appeal, you think that you would be well paid at a company that is the hottest poo poo. It's usually not the case in software development, because hundred of competent people are knocking at your door that is just fresh out of uni that want a dream job. Normally you don't just fire the weak link, because you get insane poo poo like stack ranking which is loving poison to the mind. Most of the time if the person show up and do the work, that's good enough. Believe me, even the stupid stack ranking system can be abuse by incompetent and fail forward by just giving more work to competent people and appearing to do more by doing so.
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Feb 5, 2021 16:04
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Working for a company everyone has heard of can be pretty dire. Professional sports are like that. Not quite the same level of turnover but insane hours and comically low wages because it’s “prestigious.”
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Feb 5, 2021 16:19
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*cough* I quit last month btw, and it was so much worse than in the letter (which I sent in November).
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Feb 5, 2021 16:52
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Tetramin posted:I think Amazon corporate employees did too. And even worse, IIRC all of the employees did weekly polls where they rated their direct coworkers. Obviously it resulted in tons of traumatic drama, backstabbing, and just nastiness for everybody Yea, but now they are less likely to unionize cause they hate each other
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Feb 5, 2021 16:55
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Just got letter from HR today that they're trying to arrange vaccines for people here, as we've been working the whole time (manufacturing/front line and we actually make stuff for pharma studies). Also said that those who receive both doses of the vaccine and show their vaccination card will no longer be required to wear masks. It's my understanding that even if you're vaccinated you can still be a carrier, so this sounds incredibly stupid. But our HR lady also thinks the virus was created to make Trump lose the election so there's that.
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Feb 5, 2021 17:28
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Combo posted:It's my understanding that even if you're vaccinated you can still be a carrier, so this sounds incredibly stupid. But our HR lady also thinks the virus was created to make Trump lose the election so there's that. Why is always this person who seems to go into HR?
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Feb 5, 2021 17:43
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