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> Flexibility works one way there A former boss put it like this, "Sure we have flex time! You can arrive any time before 8 and leave any time after 6."
by sevensor 8y ago
> Flexibility works one way there
A former boss put it like this, "Sure we have flex time! You can arrive any time before 8 and leave any time after 6."
- FireBeyond 8y agoDilbert cartoon: Catbert: "Alice, the experts say you need to balance work and home life. You worked 80 hours last week... that's less than half of the hours in a week. Give us some balance, you selfish hag." Alice: "This conversation took a nasty turn."
- commandlinefan 8y agoLet me guess, he laughed when he said it like he was super funny, too, right? Like when I used to ask one former boss which of the ten tasks he'd just assigned to me was highest priority he'd say, "yes!" and laugh like he'd just told the greatest joke and then run out of the room (seriously) before I could pin him down on an actual decision.
- chaostheory 8y agoimo this is endemic in areas with poor job markets where there's really about 1 or 2 large employers. It's not just time to leave the company; you need to leave the whole area as well.
- ChuckNorris89 8y agoThat's pretty much how it's like in most cities in Europe apart from the few large tech hubs. If you burn yourself with a couple of bad managers you might not have anywhere else to go without leaving your family behind and being accused of job hopping so employees just have to put up with it. At my second to last job I put up with a manager that had severe anger management issues and would swear at employees and throw things at staff. I left over 2 years ago. Since then he's been promoted. The company had also won several "Best place to work" awards in the past.
- bartread 8y ago> and being accused of job hopping As someone who has done, and still does, a lot of recruitment over the years I think people maybe worry about this too much. What I mean is perhaps best illustrated with some examples: - When you're fresh out of college/uni, it can be hard to find a job you really like, so in your first few years you might change job several times. No big deal. - You leave a job you've been in for several years where you may have been happy and productive for quite a long time, but perhaps you're getting bored, need a new challenge, have been enticed away, or whatever. But then your next job turns out to be not so awesome, and neither is the one after that, so again you change jobs two or three times in a short period. Again, no big deal. - The company your with restructures/gets taken over/relocates/makes redundancies and, without necessarily wanting to, you find yourself in a position where you need to find work fast. Again, you might not find a job you really like out of the gate and, again, no big deal. These things don't bother me as a recruiter. What does bother me is a 20 year career where I can see you've changed jobs every year or two. It bothers me even more for management and leadership hires: I start to wonder if you're actually any good at anything, or whether your main talent is schmoozing and jumping ship just before the shit hits the fan (or just in time to take all the credit). I want some evidence of periods of stability in your employment history, because this shows me that you're capable of committing to something for the longer term, which is when you can really make a positive impact. You're expensive to hire, and when I have hired you, I'm going to invest in your development and success (whatever that means for you), so I'd like to see some return on that investment. DISCLAIMER: I'm fortunate to work in a tech hub that, whilst not large as a place, certainly has a lot of options in terms of companies to work for (Cambridge, UK).
- sjjshzvuiajhz 8y agoWhat would you think of a candidate who job hops every year or two, but usually gets promoted after finshing a project before hopping to a bigger/better project?
- TomMarius 8y agoIn case of Europe, thankfully it's so dense and EU actually does invest in people transport (even outside the union). USA seems to be out of luck, and probably will need more regulation than the EU.
- formalhaut 8y agoUnfortunately, this is how poverty spreads. Because choices go down, companies choose to engage in substandard behavior because of captive populace. And those that can leave, do, thus slowly sapping the area of money and population. I've seen a few places in the Midwest that did have potent industry. But through similar reasons, most of the people who positively contributed to their community are now gone.
- commandlinefan 8y agoI'm in an area with lots of employers, but 20 years ago I did some job-hopping (four jobs in four years between 95 and 99), and that STILL comes up as a negative in job interviews. If you bail on too many bad managers, you can find yourself locked out anyway.
- kevstev 8y agoAt this point you should just have a >20 years ago section on there (I would label it "prior history" myself), and include projects you worked on. That's over 20 years ago. Unless you worked on something you really want to highlight, just fudge them altogether. I am guessing you don't work in tech in the US though? I was a bit worried about doing a third "three and out" while looking, and 10 years prior in finance, it may have been an issue, when I was looking at tech companies, no one even batted an eyelash. One HR recruiter even quipped that these would be relatively long tenures in the startup world.
- zaphod12 8y agoOh man, I know what you mean - it's kind of crazy. When I'm at a company for more then 2 years, recruiters start joking that I'm an old timer and must be dying for a change! I'm all for moving when the time is right, but I like my job and looking for a new one is stressful!
- joejerryronnie 8y agoIn the Bay Area, it’s the opposite. Interviewers almost look negatively on being at one employer for too long.
- dba7dba 8y ago>>> four jobs in four years That does look not so good to me tbh. 2 jobs in 2 years would look ok to me. But I guess it depends.
- cableshaft 8y agoI was going to say why are you including jobs from 20 years ago on your resume, but you probably live in a place where they want CVs, right?
- jecxjo 8y agoI worked in an area where the nearest competition was hundreds of miles away. When the engineering staff would question upper management and HR during annual meetings about competitive wages they would always state that we were extremely competitive for our location. After working there for nearly a decade and a half I moved to another state, about 300 miles away and my pay nearly doubled. Doing my exit interview I stated that the reason I was leaving was because management had this goofy view of the world and it was the reason why we struggled finding talent. They felt that because there was no physical competition in the area they could pay a fraction of what their competitors in the field pay and still retain talent. They also felt that it was appropriate to create a convoluted scheme where you could never really get a promotion, just be given more responsibility w/ almost no increase in pay. (You can only move up a level if you have 1 or fewer "needs improvements" while the managers were told that all employees should have no less than 2 "needs improvements" as they should have things to work on over the coming year). Most people I talked to about that whole situation would offer the "well why didn't you just move" advice not understanding that the pay was just enough to pay for room and board, college loans, and then choose to put the last few dollars into a 401k or into savings to escape that job. I opted for the former hoping I would work my way up to not have this problem. I made the wrong choice.
- jorblumesea 8y agoIt seems like a really backwards view to see your company as the "only game in town". Physically, it might be true, but you're competing with remote only companies, and regional competing cities. You're also indirectly competing with hubs such as California or Seattle where jobs are plentiful. This is a really interesting comment, thanks for sharing.
- PeterCorless 8y agoExactly. In Engineering, you are competing with Silicon Valley and NYC as well as the scrappiest folks in Sao Paolo, Lagos, Novosibirsk, Chennai or Zagreb. The best coders with the best management team wins. But only if they get paid to stick around long enough to reach production. Otherwise folk walk. Human expertise and intellectual capacity has a value; you've got to be willing to pay what the market demands.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoI thought you were going to say time to take the other undervalued workers and start a competitor.
- sevensor 8y agoI think they teach this at management retreats.
- cestith 8y agoLet me guess... retroactively the one that had the least work done turned out to be the highest priority when it came time for your review?
- hinkley 8y agoAgile coach I know noticed that when you turn the question around and ask on a scale of 1-5 how pissed they will be if you don’t get each done, you get some 3’s and 4’s which lets you prioritize things that are all priority 5. (I like severity as a sorting mechanism too, which is 3 dimensions of data then)
- noir_lord 8y agoI had a boss (previous) say everything is higher priority than the last thing I asked you to focus on. In a year at that place no one finished anything. Literally, they had 18mths on a project with less than a 1000 useable lines of code and a team of five. I wrote a similar system on my own in 3mths doing it after work and weekends for a customer as a side gig.
- ryanmcbride 8y agoMy first tech job had a CEO who was just like that. He required all engineers and QAEs to be in the office before 9 and stay until after 5 so that we could answer the phone, because we were also the entire helpdesk. He would usually call the office right at 9 to see who was there, because he was usually still home.
- hylaride 8y agoReminds me of a startup I once worked for. It was failing and the CEO (who had money from a previous company) had the VP of sales take a photo of the emtpy office at 6pm to complain how we weren't "all in". This despite the fact that our pay was late and he was on a month-long trip to his vacation home in the south of France (we were a north american company).
- ryanmcbride 8y agoIt's remarkable how often companies expect their employees to be completely loyal and do a bunch of work for free, while also treating their employees like free labor and cutting them loose at the smallest disagreement. I've started steering very clear of any company that talks about how important loyalty is, or how the employees are all 'like a family'. Biggest red flags for toxic management imo.
- ben509 8y agoIt's remarkable how often it works.
- seanwilson 8y ago> It's remarkable how often companies expect their employees to be completely loyal and do a bunch of work for free, while also treating their employees like free labor and cutting them loose at the smallest disagreement. There's lots of other imbalances as well like how you have to tolerate being mistreated so you can get a good reference, and you have to actively avoid mentioning negative reasons you left a company in job interviews to avoid being labelled a trouble maker. Glassdoor was suppose to help with the above I guess.
- muttech 8y agoThat brings back bad memories of my first day at a new job. We had discussed in the interview that they were flexible with the time I got there. On the first day, one of the first questions I was asked: New Boss: "So, what time will you be here every day?" Me: "I thought we had discussed that being flexible as traffic can be unpredictable?" New Boss: "We are flexible on the time, but you have to be here by that time every day." I made it 6 weeks.
- mistercow 8y ago“Ok, I see. Noon, then.”
- tspike 8y ago"Not a team player"
- anaolykarpov 8y agoWouldn't it have worked to say "I'll be here no later than 11:00 AM"?
- muttech 8y agoI actually responded with "Let's say 10AM then." That was "too late - we need you here sooner - how about 9AM?"
- victor9000 8y agoThis was the policy I implemented with my team and everyone thought it was pretty reasonable. It's basically pick your schedule, but stick to it. Otherwise scheduling meetings becomes unmanageable. That being said, I was also very clear about the policy during the interview process.
- screaminghawk 8y agoI'm pretty happy with this as well. I work 7-3, but I work those hours every day. I've walked out of meetings that have gone past 3 and no one has complained. It's been a great experience
- newsreader 8y agoSomething similar happened to me. I asked my boss for a raise and his response was "a kick in the ass, that ought to raise you up a little". My reply: I quit on the spot -- no two-week notice, I just left.
- allenu 8y agoWow, any more details? That must've been cathartic.
- philbarr 8y agoIt's great to be able to do this but you need to have back ups first. So find a new job whilst "jokingly" suggesting to your boss you need a raise. Then you actually ask for a meeting and a raise and when he/she laughs you off as you knew they would you resign on the spot and go to your new job you had lined up. With the hope that he/she will see their mistake and not treat the remaining employees that way. The problem with this strategy is you can never go back.
- tyfon 8y ago> The problem with this strategy is you can never go back. Reading all these stories about bad managers and stuff, do managers and employees take things personal in the US? So if you leave for a better deal you actually will make personal problems between employer end employee? Whenever someone under me quits for a better deal or another job that I can't match I tell them "good luck and thanks for the time you shared with us, if you change your mind, welcome back". Same with salary negotiations, I usually ask them to give me "ammunition" that I can use against the higher-ups to get them raises, that is job offers at other companies, lists of stuff they have done and statements from other departments. Usually I manage to get them 5-10% raise but sometimes even more. People work so much better if they are happy about their situation from what I can tell.
- yellowapple 8y agoSounds like you're actually a decent supervisor, unlike the examples presented in this thread.
- lowercased 8y agoColleagues at first job (fast food place): "Steve, I need a break!" Steve (manager/owner): "I gave you a break when I hired you!" Has stuck with me lo these 30+ years...
- nsxwolf 8y agoJust like how every company offers work from home after 5 and on weekends.
- throwaway5752 8y agoTo be fair, no employee ever checks Facebook or posts on HN during work hours (ahem)? It cuts both ways.
- kortilla 8y agoThat presumes there is something work-related that needed to be done during that time. If you’re meeting your expectations, taking a 10 minute break to take a shit at work doesn’t mean you need to work 10 minutes at home.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wiz21c 8y agoWhen you're an employee, you're paid for the time you spend at work. The productivity is not part of the equation in the contract.
- Lucadg 8y agoAt my first job in Italy we used to stretch the lunch break a bit. The boss put a paper on the wall with a reminder of the official working hours: 8:30 - 12:30 / 13:30 -
- conanbatt 8y ago"Do I get vacation time?" "Work is a vacation. From poverty"
- mark-r 8y agoI heard a variation on this when it comes to owning your own company. You're the boss, you can work half days if you want - you even get to choose which 12 hours that will be.
- ab_c 8y agoThis reminds me of my former workplace where even though they tout having a "balanced work life culture", one of the VPs outright said that employees who "only work 8hrs/day" are lazy and entitled.