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Scientastic posted:We have a similar one when I’m interviewing people: “How would you find out about your customer’s research area?” People say a whole range of things, like they’d Google it, read research papers, check out LinkedIn etc. They must have been fed some amazing lies.
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Jun 11, 2021 15:59
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Dr.D-O posted:Y'know what's dumb poo poo? When a supervisor/boss makes some task seem really important and time-sensitive, setting really early and crunchy deadlines. Then, when they get the results of said task, they don't look at them for over a week. Yeah. The way some people deal with trying to have some measure of control over the chaos and uncertainties in their (professional, but also sometimes personal) life is to just export all of their chaos, anxiety, deadlines, etc. on to other people. Basically a type of FYGM and ladder pulling. When I worked as a teacher I had a coworker who did this by treating everything outside of her class as non-existent. Refused to answer her phone for any reason (even when it was things like “hey you need to send little Timmy to the counselors’ office. His legally required speech therapy session is right now.”). Expected email responses immediately but never responded to yours. Never let students into the room after class started, but also never let them out early when required. Would assign big projects during “no homework” weeks (I.e. during weeks with testing). Would hide limited science equipment in her room so it was always available when she needed it. Just absolutely toxic behavior.
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Jun 11, 2021 16:18
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A buddy of mine works in a dept which develops firmware for hardware the company makes and acts as the customer contact to help them use it. They're the first people to develop software for it so they need to get the hardware quickly. Without the firmware the hardware can't do anything, and the customer can't do anything. The first batch of hardware is ready from manufacturing. Where does it get sent? Direct to the customers. All of it. Management have instructed manufacturing to send the first prototypes to customers so they can say they delivered early, leaving the firmware team physically unable to do their job. The next batch is due in a month*. Now customers are asking this team how to make the hardware work and they have no answers because they have never even laid eyes on it. Management is asking them why the firmware is not done, why are the customers complaining. The hardware team are asking them why they need hardware anyway if they're software developers. Current status of the team: the work requires 10 people, they had 4 to begin with. One person has quit, one has been hospitalised due to stress induced illness, one is working 18 hours per day, and one is now sending me screenshots of vtubers on a daily basis. New hires pending: 0 * There is a global shortage of parts so lol
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Jun 11, 2021 17:15
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Spatial posted:A buddy of mine works in a dept which develops firmware for hardware the company makes and acts as the customer contact to help them use it. They're the first people to develop software for it so they need to get the hardware quickly. Without the firmware the hardware can't do anything, and the customer can't do anything. I've been informed by reliable sources that this is how all embedded work is carried out.
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Jun 11, 2021 17:24
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Zarin posted:This may not be the thread for it, but as someone who kinda prides themselves on being able to keep up with change, etc . . . is there a way to, uh, not lose neuroplasticity? And/or attempt to retain it? From way back, but I'm going thru the thread as my contractor job gives me all the time in the world, unless there is a deadline, then none of the time in the world. But I've heard learning an instrument helps. Especially piano.
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Jun 11, 2021 17:47
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Zarin posted:This may not be the thread for it, but as someone who kinda prides themselves on being able to keep up with change, etc . . . is there a way to, uh, not lose neuroplasticity? And/or attempt to retain it? My grief counsellor is in his 80's and is extremely sharp. From what I've been told, to avoid losing it don't stop using it.
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Jun 11, 2021 18:22
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Use your mind, stay active, and hope really hard that you've got good genes for aging.
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Jun 11, 2021 18:29
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Spatial posted:That happened recently at a friend's workplace. The had a company-wide paycut but only for people earning less than 75K. Also they froze pay increases for the last two years. Not even matching inflation, literally nothing. Jeepers creepers every post you've made about this place sounds awful and I really hope every single person below that line immediately updated their CVs and have been applying for every single job they can.
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Jun 11, 2021 19:10
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The Butcher posted:I worked at one in a city that only gets like a week of snow a year, so there isn't a lot of snow clearing trucks, and many drivers have no experience with driving in snow. So it was always a poo poo show of crashes and the roads getting utterly hosed. Like every googdamned street across the city in google maps will be deep red. The week before I left the urgent care that did the dumbest attempt at a retention raise ever, they didn’t shut down til 5pm for this really bad snowstorm (the one right around thanksgiving of 2018, if you’re from the northeast US you probably remember it). It was so bad my 25 minute commute took me 4 and a half hours. Even if I didn’t have another job lined up I was ready to bail at that point.
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Jun 11, 2021 20:24
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This poor guy I'm working with has his display name listed everywhere as "Fnu [actual name]" because IT apparently can't deal with what he's called. (Oddly enough, even though "Fnu" presumably stands for "First name unknown," it's the reverse for this guy. He comes from somewhere where they don't do surnames.) Every single IM, every single email, is tagged with "Fnu." It would drive me nuts.
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Jun 11, 2021 22:03
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Gabriel-Ernest posted:This poor guy I'm working with has his display name listed everywhere as "Fnu [actual name]" because IT apparently can't deal with what he's called. Maybe it's Family Name Unknown?
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Jun 11, 2021 22:12
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Spatial posted:A buddy of mine works in a dept which develops firmware for hardware the company makes and acts as the customer contact to help them use it. They're the first people to develop software for it so they need to get the hardware quickly. Without the firmware the hardware can't do anything, and the customer can't do anything. I'm doing somewhat similar work. I can't even imagine trying to develop for hardware I don't have access to. And I assume this happens all of the time? And not a single piece of hardware can ever be sent to the firmware developers? How utterly insane.
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Jun 11, 2021 22:14
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They'll get it disasterously late but they will get it. And it'll be like two of them. But hey, there are only two people left alive on the team anyway! It's so dysfunctional I could post in this thread 24/7 lol e: It's always desperately difficult for people in the company to get development/prototype hardware because the company are such cheapskates. They will bawk at spending 10k on hardware for developers on a project with expected revenue measured in the upper hundreds of millions. This means there's never enough to go around and it constantly causes problems and delays, especially as prototype hardware easily breaks worsening the shortage also for anyone who doesn't work in this field, this is even more absurd because the more devices you have made the smaller the cost per unit is, it falls off very fast. ordering small batches repeatedly to compensate for shortages and emergencies is drastically more expensive in the long run Spatial fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jun 11, 2021 |
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Jun 11, 2021 22:38
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upper management and lower level employees appear to be involved in dueling glassdoor reviews where the employees bring up serious issues and someone higher up pretending to be a lower level employee posts another review trying to push back and deflect on the things being brought up. more recent reviews are specifically calling out the fake reviews for what they are. very entertaining stuff.
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Jun 11, 2021 23:50
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Pulcinella posted:When I worked as a teacher I had a coworker who did this by treating everything outside of her class as non-existent. Refused to answer her phone for any reason (even when it was things like “hey you need to send little Timmy to the counselors’ office. His legally required speech therapy session is right now.”). Expected email responses immediately but never responded to yours. Never let students into the room after class started, but also never let them out early when required. Would assign big projects during “no homework” weeks (I.e. during weeks with testing). Would hide limited science equipment in her room so it was always available when she needed it. Just absolutely toxic behavior. Having worked in manufacturing (floor), service (bar), academia, corporate office, and teaching, I can confirm that teachers are the craziest in average. They don't beat bar staff by a lot, and they don't beat them on median craziness, but those spikes really drive up the mean.
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Jun 12, 2021 01:24
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Atopian posted:Having worked in manufacturing (floor), service (bar), academia, corporate office, and teaching, I can confirm that teachers are the craziest in average. They don't beat bar staff by a lot, and they don't beat them on median craziness, but those spikes really drive up the mean. Teachers vs Nurses
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Jun 12, 2021 01:26
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The best advice I ever got as an aspiring teacher was to never talk to another teacher. I've never heard of a nurse getting such solid advice.
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Jun 12, 2021 01:29
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Alas, I don't have any nursing experience to compare. Although I have heard... Stories. A big driver of weirdness in teaching is that it's a field where best practice is debatable, results are delayed by at least a year while being heavily confounded, and the various other stakeholders frequently actually are out to get you. So in that environment, how can you tell who is an incompetent delusional antisocial paranoiac? You can't, so they don't get filtered like they do in most other environments. Atopian fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Jun 12, 2021 |
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Jun 12, 2021 01:30
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ben shapino posted:upper management and lower level employees appear to be involved in dueling glassdoor reviews where the employees bring up serious issues and someone higher up pretending to be a lower level employee posts another review trying to push back and deflect on the things being brought up. Don't post it unless you've got no way of being ID'd, but I really want to read these.
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Jun 12, 2021 01:31
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Outrail posted:Don't post it unless you've got no way of being ID'd, but I really want to read these. i really wish i could, there's like layers to this stuff to unpack, but it's probably not a good idea.
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Jun 12, 2021 04:12
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Zarin posted: . . . is there a way to, uh, not lose neuroplasticity? And/or attempt to retain it? Shageletic posted:From way back, but I'm going thru the thread as my contractor job gives me all the time in the world, unless there is a deadline, then none of the time in the world. Learning a foreign language also helps keep the mental synapses functioning. Hell, anything that challenges your cognitive abilities to input and retain new information is mentally beneficial. See also: most dangerous words in management
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Jun 12, 2021 04:59
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hooliganesh posted:Zarin posted: Can't say I'm real interested in music anymore (I played drums from grades 5-12), and I feel like I'm frustratingly awful at new languages, but . . . hmm. My real big hallmark of work-stuff is that I'll spend tons of time and effort to learn something new that I need to build out/streamline/automate a process, so that I can then perform that work/task for the rest of my tenure with just a button click and a few quick maintenance steps. And enough documentation so that if it needs to be adjusted/I need to remind myself how and why we're doing something, I can figure it out again. I wonder if that's overall good (learning new stuff, putting things together in creative ways) or bad (setting it up so I can be lazy as gently caress in the future) for neuroplasticity. . . . for what it's worth, whenever I get something running smoothly and efficiently, I get bored and end up looking for somewhere else that needs help with stuff, and give whoever my replacement is a sweet turnkey solution to their next desk.
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Jun 12, 2021 06:25
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I work (for one more week anyway) at a tech, design, art, film and game development school that is about to start blocking all external USB storage devices in favour of onedrive. Can anyone spot the blindingly obvious problem our IT department apparently missed?
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Jun 12, 2021 09:29
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In my VeryLargeGlobalCorp we're constantly being reminded by IT not to click suspicious links and to immediately report and delete emails from suspicious addresses. Cue HR sending out randomly targeted wellbeing surveys with a bit.ly link from a shared mailbox without any info whatsoever attached (you can look up the address on our domain, but there is no info about ownership, organisation, names or anything else available). Literally "You've been selected at random to participate in a wellbeing survey: bit.ly/blabla" from hrsurveys@verylargeglobalcorp.com. IT also likes sending out reminders to update our iOS devices from an even more anonymous address with even less info attached, and with the "read more" link embedded in the text. Other than that, it's a really good place to work. But I'm just waiting for the news that we've paid some Russians a bunch of bitcoins.
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Jun 12, 2021 13:05
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A company a friend worked at did the HR thing you mentioned and had to send out a follow-up to stop reporting it as phishing. They then sent out another which was again, flagged for phishing. A third time it was sent with follow up and notice and clarification you would get in trouble for flagging it for fraud. Some very, very pissed senior people fired back with reply-alls showing the company handbook and highlighting how it violated policy/matched up exactly with fraud. After yet more arguing and some apparently tense meetings and a huge re-investment to do it correctly, the overall participation was sub 10% and it produced no useful data
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Jun 12, 2021 13:20
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No matter how they insist to the contrary I always assume that those kind of "anonymous" employee surveys: 1) Are not anonymous and in fact carefully tracked 2) Will never result in improvements for the employees and only ever be used to cherry-pick data to support decisions that have already been made / the status quo. You don't need a survey to tell you employees want more money, better benefits, and a less odious work environment. If you're sending out a survey, it's because you want to "prove" you don't need to change anything because your employees are just so happy already, or you're hoping for some magical suggestion that doesn't involve spending more money. It's like your friend with the long running terrible relationship who keeps asking you for advice. She knows the only "advice" is DTMFA, but she doesn't want to do that; she's just hoping there's some magical solution OTHER than DTMFA that somehow hasn't occurred to her, or that you'll tell her that actually, everything's fine, don't listen to the haters. Imagined fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Jun 12, 2021 |
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Jun 12, 2021 14:02
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Imagined posted:If you're sending out a survey, it's because you want to "prove" you don't need to change anything because your employees are just so happy already, or you're hoping for some magical suggestion that doesn't involve spending more money. "Wow maybe he's really come to an acceptance and actually going to work on these issues." And so we honestly answered. Turns out he was only interested in a "yes" response to the single question "would you like to manage others". He couldn't help revealing this in an all hands meeting and scoffing "So lots of you want to be technical leads but you don't want to manage anyone. Yeah that makes sense."
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Jun 12, 2021 14:34
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Cheesus posted:After a particularly bad two year transition, our CTO sent out a survey that was surprisingly open and seemed to suggest an acceptance of issues that had been brought up to him in that period and never acknowledged, let alone addressed. lmao they never care and are never honest
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Jun 12, 2021 17:52
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Imagined posted:No matter how they insist to the contrary I always assume that those kind of "anonymous" employee surveys: They said our HR surveys were anymous but they were obviously tracked with a unique URL per user. I logged into our SurveyMonkey account to confirm this (I have a legitimate reason to access it) and raised it with the HR director. They changed the SurveyMonkey password, didn't give me the new one, and kept doing tracked surveys and saying they were anonymous.
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Jun 12, 2021 18:14
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Mzuri posted:In my VeryLargeGlobalCorp we're constantly being reminded by IT not to click suspicious links and to immediately report and delete emails from suspicious addresses. I'd consider a "wellbeing survey" from HR to be suspicious regardless.  Yeah this: Xaintrailles posted:They said our HR surveys were anymous but they were obviously tracked with a unique URL per user. I logged into our SurveyMonkey account to confirm this (I have a legitimate reason to access it) and raised it with the HR director. They changed the SurveyMonkey password, didn't give me the new one, and kept doing tracked surveys and saying they were anonymous.
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Jun 12, 2021 20:34
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Xaintrailles posted:They said our HR surveys were anymous but they were obviously tracked with a unique URL per user. I logged into our SurveyMonkey account to confirm this (I have a legitimate reason to access it) and raised it with the HR director. They changed the SurveyMonkey password, didn't give me the new one, and kept doing tracked surveys and saying they were anonymous. Oh no no they're not tracking you, they just need to be able to send out reminders to anyone who hasn't replied, without knowing who that is, it's just a "send reminder" button!!
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Jun 12, 2021 20:50
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We get pop up surveys at my job that are obnoxious. I always answer honestly, especially the “how close are you to taking a poo poo on your desk and quitting” ones. The other EHS Specialist at my old site was like “dude you don’t really think those are anonymous, do you?” I just told him I know they aren’t as I sent another “this place sucks and I hate you all” response.
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Jun 12, 2021 20:56
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drat, I'm so glad I got our head of HR fired for stealing oxycodone.
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Jun 12, 2021 21:26
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Ugly In The Morning posted:We get pop up surveys at my job that are obnoxious. I always answer honestly, especially the “how close are you to taking a poo poo on your desk and quitting” ones. The other EHS Specialist at my old site was like “dude you don’t really think those are anonymous, do you?” I too have done the same thing and yet they still won't let me go.
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Jun 12, 2021 21:55
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Smik posted:I too have done the same thing and yet they still won't let me go. There was a follow up question when I answered the “how often have you thought about leaving your job” question with the “constantly” option. It was “why”, and had you pick from like five things with a box at the bottom of your reason wasn’t there. I just wrote in “not having this be a “choose all that apply” was a serious oversight”.
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Jun 12, 2021 22:10
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A tale of corporate contradiction So the company makes demo devices to demonstrate hardware to customers, get it out there to let people experiment with it, and get it in the hands of small time developers and students. People are drastically more likely to use a product they know will work even if it costs a bit more. Plus it helps iron out problems with practically using it when you make the demo. But wait. Having staff to support people using these demos costs time and money. In fact the support guys are so understaffed they're keeling over in the aisles. Okay. Galaxy brain time - what if we intentionally make it impossible for people to buy it? If nobody has to support it, then we won't have to hire more people on the support team! Great! We're saving so much money! But we still have to release it since we need those good news emails for internal PR and bonuses and getting promoted... Oh! No problem, let's just increase the price to $5000 per unit! Only big customers will buy it AND the support cost will be minimal. Pure perfection! Now you might remember that these cheapskates would not approve such a purchase themselves. And indeed our typical megacorp customers are filled with similar morons so they sell like wet socks even to the people who have an immediate and direct need for them, let alone anyone else. Every once in a while you see someone move up to middle management who is some kind of regular human and comes to some awareness this is going on, and they have quite a reaction. I remember one such conversation during a general meeting when the new guy was trying to get his house in order:  "Okay so xyz-421. Four years in. How are we doing with these?" "Uhhhh... xyz-421? Pretty solid, had a successful release and not many problems came up." "That's good, but how many have we sold though? Give me a figure here, I need real numbers." "Umm... Well, I think we've sold around... six." "Sorry I didn't catch that, how many?" "Six" "Six? Did you say six? We sold SIX of these in four years???" "Yes. Six of them." "How is this possible??? How much are we selling them for? How many did we make?!" "About 5000 a piece. We produced around 1500 units." "[Audibly holding their face in their hands] Ohhhh myyyy godddd..."Was any improvement forthcoming? No. Nothing changed because to acknowledge failure means embarassing upper mangement and that isn't going to fly. After a few repeated incidents of saying the quiet part loud this guy was fired, and publically poo poo upon in the company-wide email that's normally used as a "moving to new opportunities" goodbye.
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Jun 12, 2021 23:50
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Ugly In The Morning posted:There was a follow up question when I answered the “how often have you thought about leaving your job” question with the “constantly” option. I'm returning to work since the lockdown is being lifted but head office is still trying to make everyone drink the kool-aid. Apparently we're supposed to be wearing T-shirts advertising the "new" way of doing things and to be "prepared to answer questions if people ask". The really sad thing is it used to be a decent place to work.
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Jun 13, 2021 02:02
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From my last employer: My company moved the clock-in from the company offices where union workers park to the jobsite (airport terminals) which is a 10-15min drive depending on taxiway traffic. The general manager thought he was cracking down on people milking the clock. People who finish early are going to stick around and get paid, whether they are on the jobsite or lounging around the office doesn't matter. Moving the location meant workers were now driving machinery and hazardous materials to the jobsite while off the clock, so they could punch-in. Now employees could be late to work because a company vehicle wouldn't start. That alone resulted in so many time card exceptions that the general manager said supervisors may no longer sign time card exceptions, they need his approval. The general manager just assumed that the increase in timecard exceptions was people trying to cheat the clock now that his clever plan has stopped them. Next month was a company memo about speeding on service roads because a number of employees had been cited. Gee I wonder why! Usually workers hitched a ride from the jobsite back to the offices and clocked out when their shift ended. Now they have to clock out first so they wouldn't clock out until another employee could drive them back. In that way this actually forced employees to 'milk' the clock because even if Joe's shift is over and he isn't working, Joe is still here against his will and he ain't clocking out until he has a ride back. This also meant we were now using 15,000 gallon tankers and poo poo to shuttle one dude back. And the guy dropping him off is wasting all that time on the clock. The entire thing was a monumentally stupid decision and the general manager never reconsidered. Anyways when we lost a bunch of contracts to a competing company some workers got jobs at the new company so they quit ours without giving notice. They would put our company vest on, clock-in since we had our clock on the jobsite, and then go work for the competing company while getting paid by both. But that's a whole other story.
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Jun 13, 2021 03:14
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Outrail posted:Don't post it unless you've got no way of being ID'd, but I really want to read these. do random glassdoor searches and you're bound to hit one in fifteen minutes, it's a really common practice
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Jun 13, 2021 05:20
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Imagined posted:No matter how they insist to the contrary I always assume that those kind of "anonymous" employee surveys: Yeah safe assumption that those surveys are not anonymous. I made the mistake of thinking otherwise and was referred to by name later when they started responding to feedback. 
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Jun 13, 2021 05:26
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