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She Was Fired, But Never Told
A fun one: "An employee at Network Commerce Inc. (formerly shopnow.com) found out that she was fired when her company cellphone was cancelled, network account was disabled and building keycard wouldn't work. This article from The Stranger talks about the somewhat callous attitude that this particular dotcom has taken towards its soon to be ex-employees." Now, with readership as diverse as ours, I'm sure there are a few good stories out there about getting fired from a dot-com.
As others have commented, even if you've never done it, it's not exactly hard to figure out that it can be a delicate thing firing/laying off an employee. No one will disagree with that - I've been down that road myself (on the being-fired side, but it was at a company with high turnover - everyone either quit or got fired, that was just how it worked. A friend was fired the same day, he worked sales and did a good job - no good reason was ever given). But we're saying it's pretty damn poor to fire or lay off a person, and be such a damn coward that you can't tell them face to face, or at all.
At least you had the self-respect and the respect for the employees being let go to tell them directly. That's something.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
You can't lay off somebody withhout a RALLY good reason(violence, stealing etc.). Doesn't apply to top management though.
You can lay off people if you have economical reasons, but you can't hire anybody for 9 months to comparable jobs.
Even if you are kicked out, it is not effective immediately, you have 1 to 3 months period before your job ends. This doesn't apply to very grave cases.
It's good that we have these laws, but as you can see it is difficult to get rid of people once you have hired them, so companies think very carefully before hiring somebody permanently. The US way is the other extreme. In my oppinion the optimum would be somewhere between the two.
I should do this. I used to work at Sam's Club. They had a little kiosk in the tire department that had Winzip 7.0 shareware installed. That's commercial use.
As someone who lives and works in the same city as you, I say: forget it! I very much like the laws as they are now, thank you very much! I have no problems with the employers thinking real hard before hiring someone permanently. What's wrong with that? If they hire you, it means they trust you, and it also means that they won't kick you off so easily. It's all just positive. Or is this the typical Finnish sindrome of the "grass is greaner in America..."? If it's the syndrome, please, control yourself! We are in a public forum! :o)
Sigged!
Funnily enough I had a situation somewhat like this happen to me. I was sent inter-state, they accidently cancelled my hotel room and I had to pay for it (they compensated me in the end, that isn't the point).
:) Never mind, we eventually found that. Of course it wouldn't have mattered, the ISDN line had a fault in it anyway. The cabler was very quick in finding the fault, might I say.
:)
They did not take me off the support mobile. Ever tried checking servers from a hotel room? No? You don't want to.
I got out to site later than I expected: I had to take a support call for a site. Getting through the PABX of the hotel I was staying at proved impossible, when I contacted my immediate manager I was told to "do my best". Basically after a while I forced to give up.
I got out to site and I found that all of the Cisco switches and routers had been sent up completely unconfigured. Nicely done! They had also sent up the Linux server without even ANYTHING installed on it! Unfortuneately for me I had to deal with angry management as they not only sent it up unconfigured, but they neglected to let anyone know that it was arriving on site and it arrived on there doorstep unannounced.
After configuring the switches and routers I did not get everything configured correctly. Considering that they knew that I was inexperienced in this stuff (never having really touched the things before) and I didn't really understand the concept of access list control.... well, enough said.
Anyhow, I got down to install the actual router. Of course no one could find the NT 1 unit for the ISDN line
Of course once this is all done, I try and get the router configured. Just plug in the modem to the router's aux port! Sure, if they had actually remembered to get it installed
OK, now problems with the switches. Not much can go wrong with a switch, right? Well, yeah, sort of. It wasn't actually the switches that were the problem it was the fact that they forgot to send circuit breakers or cables for them. I had to buy them from the local electronics store with my own money. Yes I was reimbursed. As I've said before, that isn't the point!!!
Anyway, this was the problem with this company. No I don't want to name it. You see, they offered me 4 weeks pay and a good reference after this. Apparently wasn't "fast enough" (funnily enough I never actually received that reference ). You figure it out whether I accepted the offer or not!
Considering the so-called skills shortage in the IT industry you would expect that companies would play a little fairer. I suppose that there are bad companies out there in any industry, though!
One good thing. I am now learning my Cisco stuff now (up to routing protocols at the moment). Damn, Cisco is actually pretty interesting, it's just a pity I didn't know too much about them during this experience.
It's not like he's passing bad cheques dude. The judge would throw it out.
How we know is more important than what we know.
heh.. are you in Australia? Then I think it's a good bet. I never knew the nicks that these guys used to post on Slashdot.
How we know is more important than what we know.
German? He wasn't German...He had a speech impediment!
int break_spirit()
{
crush_nutz(left_nut,right_nut);
return(1);
};
--Life may have no meaning, or, even worse, it may have a meaning of which you disapprove.
But let's say you sue a failing dot com. What can you hope to gain? You won't get paid anyways... or if you do, it will be pennies on the dollar.
Of course, you could alternately sue for one hundred trillion dollars, so if you ever did get paid, it might still be enough to buy yourself a pack of gum.
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
I had the very unconfortable experience of being on the otherside of the spectrum. The guy I replaced, was fired the day I started working.. it was rather interesting coming in my first day, being show my cube while the guy before me was packing his things up.. What was even better was I ended up helping him carry some of his boxes to his car...
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Generally pay-in-lieu of notice is acceptable to everyone involved. As a company, you're buying security by getting disgruntled types out before they can throw the "rm-rf switch" on the main servers, and as a staff person, you're getting a long term paid job-finding-vacation.
--- http://foo.ca
Have you been in a cave for two years? Yahoo has already cratered in the market, but the paychecks are still coming through and they are still meeting their numbers every quarter. Ebay too.
Of course I'm not arguing that these companies are sitting pretty, but they are in no dnager whatsoever of going under, not even close.
In fact, you could argue that things are going according to strategy - both of these companies should comes out of the downturn with most of their competition wiped out, allowing them to raise fees for advertising and services without fear of losing customers (immediately). This happens in any competitive market - eventually two or three players emerge who gradually push prices back up for services or merchandise once the competition is pushed out.
until they see their name in
Speaking of updating computers around the office, I think they forgot their webserver: http://www.networkcommerce.com/careers.asp.
Heheheh...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I used to work for $(MUMBLE_SALT_PILE_MUMBLE), and they were actually fairly nice to me, as such things go. During one of their countless 'reorganizations', they gave me six weeks' notice, as there was a deliverable they needed me to finish. Everyone else had to be out of the building that same day.
Despite the fact that I was staying on, the IS department (IS&T, Information Services and Telephones, which we constantly referred to as "isn't" behind their backs) froze out my account. No big deal; I still had an open 'telnet' session to the build machine, which I kept open until the account was reactivated.
I was a good little drone, and although I publicly flamed IS&T for spending time farting around setting up a PointCast proxy rather than focusing on keeping essential services running solidly, I finished my deliverable, and left only with those things that rightfully belonged to me.
I would have sworn they would be F*ckedCompany.com material by now. But, remarkably, the company is still in business, focusing on its core competency (spending lots of money creating derivative products).
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Not true....
I worked for a company who uses LINUX exclusivly. I got fired one day, and was never even told the real reason why. They probably didnt even have a reason anyway.
During my brief employment at CompUSA, I witnessed an interesting ritual. About three weeks after any new hire was brought in, one of the employees would take his magnetic time card and toss it in the nearby "Comments" box. Now, keep in mind that usually the hire was a young male in serious need of a reality check and an attitude adjustment. It would not be long before he stormed into the Manager's office and demand to know why he had been "fired."
The manager would, without a word, go to the break room, unlock the comment box, and place the card in the hand of the hire, who by now couldn't pronounce the word "sorry" if his life depended on it.
The manager never seemed to mind - I suppose the shakeup was just what most of the victims needed.
One of the cool things that I have learned is that there are websites out there that critique IT companies in local areas... Here in Chicago, we have http://themayreport.com. The may report allows ex-employees (or anyone for that matter) to give opinions of the companies they work(ed) for. All the comments are available for posting on the web, and if the person so chooses, they may have it posted anonymously...
I think this gives a great way for people to do their own research (even if its based on hearsay) of what ex/current employees feel.
Sarcasm is the recourse of a weak mind...
--
In the real world, our data is stored on a central server (dual 300mhz Ultrasparc 2 w/ anA1000)... Which I backup when I can (no autoloader), but we're horribly understaffed as I mentioned before (as most places are ... once again, in the real world I usually end up doing OTHER peoples work : Teaching secrataries Latex, Photoshop, Word, Access, Illustrator ... Correcting Proposals, answering programming questions etc etc ...
I spend 30 mins a week doing actual administrator things, and the rest is wasted away...
And the thing about the research is, its not even OUR research, the length of most research projects is a year, and we get X dollars to do research on project Y in time T ... If some guy strands us because he got offered a real job (again, our fault:) we're still liable for that research he was supposed to be doing, and we'd better have a paper ready to publish at the end of the contract
So your correct, if we weren't in crisis mode all the time (which my boss chooses to be in -- we have the money to hire more people) then backups would happen 3 times a week and everything would be cool. But we are and its not :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Big company mergers usually involve some payment to the people being dumped, if they're done in crude ways that involve dumping people. Might as well take it. That's separate from the issue of printing up more resumes and heading for the phone.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I work for a dot.com serving a niche market. We know we have a small market so we keep our expenses down and our growth plans reasonable. We run our start up like a mom and pop operation. I'm the CTO and my daily tasks include taking out the garbage. It's the way busineses have grown for years. As far as the stock market goes I always heed the advice of J.P. Morgan, 'know the value of 4.' If someone thinks 4 is 3, buy. If someone thinks 4 is 5, sell.
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
hehhehehe... spoken by someone who's obviously never believed the "options-in-place-of-salary" bait that was all too believable not that long ago.
--- http://foo.ca
In one of those friend of a friend stories along these lines, the friend was a senior Unix systems architect for a large publically funded entity. He told them he wasn't coming back without a 25% raise. One week later, it was done :-)
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
Could you uh... point us to the Slashdot URL to that posting of carnal desire if you can? ;-)
No, I can't.
It was posted to sid=trolltalk and was deleted sometime in October.
--Shoeboy
There was a story about somebody that did this. He wasn't actually doing the collect-the-check part, but he needed a place to do some work, so he invited himself into an office. He picked out a desk, and they eventually provided him with a computer from which he went about his way, doing his work with his free office space.
Yeah... that idea is very similar to an episode of "Seinfeld." I wonder if the article's author watched it...
i don't remember hiring anybody named 'ph33r' or 'eleet'.... i'll have to remind them that they shouldn't have blank passwords. darn users.
I don't understand why, in my mail handling /etc/aliases file, all the research, engineering and top management e-mail addresses are listed as follows:
username: username,covert_operations@bigcompetitor.ru<sigh> I guess the old IT guy who was finally fired just had a different way of handling incoming mail than I have. You know, when you inherit a system from someone else...
<grin>
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Lots of .com's don't tell their employees about new hires either, until they see their name in /etc/passwd one day...
No, it's just a coincidence
This article makes me feel much better about things. I had been worried about all the "dot-com" failures and such. The story suggests to me that some of those failures are of those companies that were doomed by incompetents in the attic from the start. These jerks seem able to gain access to OPM (other peoples' money) over and over, only to fail over and over. These morons should just go get jobs and quit messing with their employees' lives.
Years ago I worked in a Distribution Center for the GAP. I was one of the ppl in the MIS staff there and got to work in a somewhat relaxed land of mainframes and cubicles. This one operator didn't fit in too well with the crowd, took a few too many sick days and showed up late a few times (he was commuting over an hour). one friday he called in sick, the boss said ok no problem and hung up, promptly called security had his key card deactivated, all access to everything removed and told one of the other operators to box his stuff up and take it out to security. no notice no call no you're fired. He got to drive an hour the next monday to find out he couldn't even get in the building. That's a little corse.
Really? What constitutes a 'mass layoff' then? My company has ~30,000 and we have had "RIFs" (Reduction In Force?) a couple times where lots and lots of people were told 'today is your last day'.
Plus, seems like if you give people 60 days notice, you are pretty much guaranteed to get zero work out of them and you might even see some sabotage?
I mean, it would suck to come into work and find out you don't have a job, but that seems to be the way it works. I've never heard of individuals being notified in advance that they were going to be laid off. I've seen where companies make an announcement that they are going to lay off x-number of people, though.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
If you think you work for a .com right now, you should probably assume that you don't have a job anymore either, and just haven't found out about it yet.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
ouch
JDW
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
Yup, no justice..
-- Help settle a Dispute
(Subject line says it all.) They can get in a LOT of trouble for failing to pay up.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
And when was this, pray tell? There was a passing reference here last week to Matewan; every American needs to be aware of what happened there in 1920. I happen to be a libertarian who believes that unions have largely outlived their usefullness, but there was a time when firing was done at gunpoint.
He resigned and went over-seas. A couple of months later he checked his local bank account to find 2 months worth of pay.
Someone had forgotten to process his resignation, so he was still an official employee.
He was too honest for my liking though, and he sent an email to his former boss to let them know.
--
Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I remember about a year ago working at a wanna-be-ISP where employees where horribly mistreated.... My first day on the job, the guy who hired me didn't show up to train me because he had quit. everyday after that, i was left to deal with angry customers of his solo-project ISP which he was running using our POP's. Needless to say, that is just the beggining. Once that calmed down, then came the whole payroll issue, which was even't an issue considering it didn't exist, well, at least not in the mind of the CEO. After the company accountant manipulated a few things, she was able to get us all paychecks, (thank God). soon after, I decidedc to put a little more faith in the company'as future and try and get things organized that needed it. so I worked my normal 8-5 at the ISP, went to Bi-lo from 6-12, back to the ISP from 1-8, and then back to bi-lo at 9-3. Didn't ask to be paid for it, but didn't even get a thank you, either. a couple of months went by, and i just got fed up and told the CEO that he needed to start backing off and treating his 5 person crew with some respect, or he could just piss his company away.... I quit 1 week before the T-1 lines were disconnected. Now, unless i am salary, i only work what i am paid to work....and i am COMSTANTLY looking for something better...... P.S. Fuck venture capitalists for ruining our economy by making shithole companies look like they are worth a shit. After VC's start the daisy-chain gang-bang on our economy, the average joe-stock trader puts his dollars in, and next thing you know, the economy collapses, and the middle class are now poor because the rich gambled our economy away..... Fuck you stock traders, you will always be no better than the bum on the street. neither of you actually break a sweat, both just sit and expect money to fall in your lap.
One layoff I went through, our department (R&D) was gathered in a room, names were read, and all of those whose name was read went to a second room. In that second room, we found out that the people in the first room were being laid off that day. When our entire department was laid off about a year later, I was on vacation when my manager called me at home to tell me that he was sorry to say our department had been whacked and I could come in and basically do nothing so I could get a couple more vacation days on my severance check. I told him "Nah, think I'll hang out in the pool instead. See ya Monday!" I think he took it harder than most of the people reporting to him. Of course, having a 3-month severance package didn't hurt either.
I did fire one with cause. He was perpetually drunk and though we'd cycled him through the warning system and suspension several times, he never came around. It hasened his beginning a real trip to AA and a better life which was excellent.
There are good ways to do this, especially firings for cause. I always try to put myself in the shoes of the person sitting across from me. That should mostly avoid the guy coming back with grandfather's shot gun looking for humans (which happened to an acquaintance I know). It takes just a tiny bit more time but everyone feels better about it over the long term.
Now if the current folks that work for me would just understand that we'd all get along a bit better. :-)
--Multics
P.S. of the 15 I laid off I still, more than decade later, get Xmas cards from 9 of them. Proof in my book I did what I could and they believed that.
... but unfortunately. he was not allowed to doublecheck the "printer"...
Say no to software patents.
I use to work in a tech capacity for the California State Government, and the way they fired me was the biggest insult to me ever. The decision was made to fire me about 2 weeks before it actually happened, I was told by my superviser that nothing was really wrong, just that his bosses were really watching the tech people closely, and to just lay low for 2 weeks and everything would be ok. Well, by doing that the State, at least according to their lawyers, "gave me my 2 week notice." I had no clue anything was wrong, I just did my work and went home. Apparently, however, everyone else in the office knew that I was fired and treated me as such. I was a persona non grata, it was the most embarassing thing I have ever experienced, everyone knowing that I was fired when I myself didn't. As for security issues? You have to love Government security, as of yesterday (a month after I was fired) my security pass still worked, my Novell acount was still active, I still had as much access as I did before I was fired. Good stuff.
check out www.freedabeef.com, it's "shibtastic"
On the smelly stuff theme.
A friend of mine dumping her boyfriend in a particularly umpleasant fashion, bought a substantial amount of frozen prawns and sewed them into the curtains, the mattress, the underside of the carpet and similar places.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
First they fired my assistant, which pissed me off immensely but didn't make me leave. Then they tried making vague implications to all my coworkers that I was psychotic, which merely got them laughed at. Then they tried to convince me that I was psychotic, which was surreal to say the least, but I wasn't buying it.
Then they accused me of falsifying my timecard, but I produced a log in which I had documented for each day not only how long I had worked but what I had done and why I had overtime every single day. They never admitted they had made up the accusation, but they stopped trying to use it as an excuse to get rid of me.
Then they accused me of doing poor quality work, so I produced memos from all the department heads saying what I wonderful job I was doing and how grateful they were that I had helped them to so substantially increase productivity in their departments.
Then they turned off my account on the server, which meant that as a systems administrator I couldn't do any work, and hoped I'd just *assume* I had been fired and leave. So I officially asked (in writing) if the disconnection of my account was intended to indicate that I was fired, which resulted in my boss throwing a screaming fit at me loud enough to send the whole staff running to the phones to call their headhunters, but no firing.
So I inquired politely what they would like me to do on company time, and was told to sit at my desk and do nothing, do not touch the server, do not do any work, do not read anything, do not talk to anyone. That got *awfully* boring quickly, so I wrote a memo to my boss in which I ever so politely pointed out that as he had rendered me unable to do any work, I was not creating any value for the company, and if he would like me to be able to do something to contribute I would need access to the server. Within an hour he fired me for "insubordination" for "ordering" him to give me access to the server. They gave me enough severance to buy a new suit and pay a few months rent, but it didn't matter because right after I put my resume out Harvard phoned to hire me for a contract job without an interview. (Always nice to have a job negotiation begin with "you're hired, can you start today", don't you think?)
As I was walking out the door I heard the scream of the alarm indicating the server's UPS shutting the server down due to overload because the boss had plugged a laser printer into it. (The manual specifically said not to do that...) I thought it fitting that the server I had built, which had never once gone down while I worked there, died as I walked out the door. I heard from former co-workers that a month later the boss had a nervous breakdown and had to give up computing forever and became a waiter in a coffee bar.
"
Ahh, I see. The government should pay for your higher education so that you can get a higher-paying job than a grade-school graduate...
"
Ahh, I see, The govenment should pay for you to go to school so that you can get a higher-paying job that an illiterate person.
Maybe, we should allow people to become educated because we regard education as an end in itself?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Imagine, at my company nobody gives a hoot whether your wallpaper, screensaver or anything is porn. Nobody was ever fired for such things, either.
And my company is a 50k+ employee company, so not some little startup.
Sigged!
People should never underestimate the power of a protest/parody site to give helpful perspective to a .com (or .net). For example:
Company: HarvardNet
Parody: HarvardNetSucks.com
Not to be rude, but a Project Manager... Hmmmm tell me what you are doing and how long it will take. I will document a timeline for the project and drag you into meetings for hours on end so that we can discuss the project and the timeline. Then I will go into management meetings to discuss how my project is progressing relative to my original timeline and assign blame when it is not.
Then I will call more meetings with the project resources and explain the dire straights we are in because we are nowhere close to my original timeline. This cycle will repeat until it reaches a crescendo where I will inform the resources that we have to "pull out all the stops", "drop everything else" and "give this 110%" eventually the resources will have reached the project goals. I will then hold a kick-off meeting and take credit for the work of the resources on the project. I will also get a mention in the company newlsetter the following month but be quoted saying that I couldn't have done it without my team.
Management eating their Project Managers is as natural as Gerbils eating their young; it's disturbing but a part of the natural order of things... (present Project Managers excluded - you're doing a great job keep it up.)
Smithers, fire that project manager! Gantt chart indeed.
So... basically... you're telling me that I could have a slashdot story if I wrote about that? I don't think so. I think we all know where slashdot like's their news articles to come from..... (Well maybe not, but it sounded good at first.)
Before I rip your bung-hole a wee bit, let me give you some acronyms, abbreviations, and slang regarding who I am ... E-6 in less than six, item 11 has three nuke NECs(MOSs), item 12c > 8 yrs, item 12g > 3 yrs, item, item 13 has 8 awards, item 24 = Honorable, item 26 = KBK, item 27 = RE-R1
Read "Conduct Unbecoming" for details on military fuckjobs. Primary focus is on fags/dykes in the military but it gives you a feel for how awful military life can be.
Visit this website for some details on military work Fun Time Navy
Also visit FTN
Also visit Soldiers For The Truth for a current event perspective of what is wrong with the current military after eight-years of pathetic Clinton-Gore leadership (i.e. WAR-CRIMES)
Here is a VERY SHORT list of what I saw during my approx nine-years in the Navy, making me "Glad I'm now a civilian":
incompetant medical care (told to return to serving food as a recruit with an active case of pink eye and broncitis)
co-worker almost made blind by contaminated and expired navy-issued eye medication - ends up with EXTENDED shore duty and eventual medical discharge
sorry ... I can't talk about the whole ANTHRAX thing ... I escaped in '98
tricked into investing in US Savings Bonds vice Index Funds (read "Random Walk Down Wall Street")
obviously ill co-worker forced to stand vice sitting on floor while waiting in line to see a health tech (note: you are LUCKY if you get to see a nurse or a doctor ... sure glad Clinton-Gore Health Care got defeated ... wouldn't want to force a dog through government health care)
ship-wide food poisoning due to no soap in bathroom adjacent to kitchen
over 48 hours with no sleep or food
even though I am white I began to appreciate how American blacks felt under slavery because I was an Enlisted person
received medal for going to Somilia - was 4 miles offshore (hot showers, hot food, TV, Air Conditioning, clean sheets, ....) while the Army died due to the Clinton-Gore failure to send M1A1s and AC-130s to support the troops
Maintain a questioning attitude
I believe Juanita
Hmm... maybe that's why it's called firing.
Look at their books (if you're a shareholder) and you'll see that they can make profit anytime they want.
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
Convergys? Which part, the former CBIS or former Matrixx Marketing? (that would be easy to believe, the bozos).
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Once upon a time (2 years ago) I was hired as the first intern for a small networking startup. (actually, at that point I was the second overall employee, but whatever). After nearly two years of huge growth the company nearly went bankrupt and laid off nearly 2/3 of its 700+ employees, including me. At that point my internship was done and I was only a part-time employee, so I wasn't too bummed since my class work is a bitch.
Well, they decided after a few days that I was cheap and usefull enough to hire back, so I went. About 8 weeks later, same thing. More layoffs, then after a nice week of unpaid vacation I was asked back. Sure, why not, its christmas...
Now, other than silently musing if I'll be fired each pay period, things seem to be settled. I figure at this rate I'm likely to own the company in 10 to 12 months!!!
--Calvin A. Hobbes
My fiancee works as a web designer in a contract position with the state. She has received many kudos for her work, and is very well liked in her office.
At one point, her contract was coming up for renewal. One Friday after work, she opened up a non-descript envelope in the mail, containing a 'status update' printed on a tractor-feed self-duplicating form. The form had several checkboxes indicating whether or not your contract had been renewed or terminated.
Imagine her horror when she discovered that 'terminated' was checked, with no explanation. She had the entire weekend to fester over how cold-hearted this was, having no options other than to leave a voicemail for her boss politely asking for some sort of explanation.
Her boss called her on Monday and was even more surprised about the termination notice. She made a few phone calls, and came back with good news...
Apparently, many other contract employees had received similar mailings that Friday. It turns out was not fired at all--it was a simple misprint. The form was laid out with the 'fired' checkbox directly above the 'not fired' checkbox. The forms had apparently slipped in the printer, causing the printed 'X' to land in the wrong box.
I'm *sure* there's a usability/form design lesson in all of this...
"We fixed the glitch, so se won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it shouldwork itself out naturally"
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
...and mine.
I was contracting at a networking company doing internal helpdesk and new installs.
I'd been there 5 months and they were talking about making me perminate.
One afternoon, my boss asked what my todo list looked like.
He pointed out 3 items that needed to be done by 5pm.
At precisly 5pm, he calls me into his office.
He asks if I got them done.
Sure!
He then tells me "my services were no longer needed" and does the whole walk me back to the my cube, watches me like a hawk as I pack, then walks me out the door. No chance to say goodbye to anyone.
Another company had a round of layoffs that we (who survived) aggreed was triming the excess folks.
Our VP visited the group and read a letter from the Pres/CEO saying no further lay-offs anticipated.
Guess what, the next week 90% of our group was layed-off.
JohnO
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
My manager let it slip then asked me to keep quiet about it.
Been through a couple layoffs at Apple. Read about what I think about Apple's management. But don't think I'm still a fan of Be, Inc. - read about what I think we ought to do to all operating systems vendors.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
I was working at a startup company about a year ago when they started delaying paychecks to everyone...but we weren't fired and we would get paid back wages. After 2 missed paychecks, all of the employees of this company decided that we had done enough volunteering, and it was time to get a new job. I had a much better job in less than a week too.
I know an ISP that asked took an employees company car, and sent him home at once. His workplace was 200km from the main office where he was left without his car, so he had to take public transportation home.
The only problem with that is, that it is illegal acc. to danish law. We need at least 90 days written warning, or we can sue their a.o. And since the car was part of his contract (very usual over here - cars are $25.000 and up), they cannot take his car with less than 90 days notice either...
I don't work for a dot com; I actually work for a more respectable, quite "large" company.
Their tactics? I've seen it twice:
1. Shuffle the person(s) into a room.
2. Confront them about a meaningless violation of policy (i.e. something that should be a slap on the hand) which has no bearing on why they're being "fired".
3. Give employee option of A. Early Retirement (you must qualify), B. Resignation, or C. Termination.
It was kind of funny the first time I saw it happen: one employee came to work and the secretary took his badge and told him to leave -- then she had to make up some weird story about how it really wasn't him that she needed to keep out of the building.
After someone gets fired, management scurries us all in to a room (usually 1 day after) and then tells us what the employee chose, making it sound like their choice. They NEVER say that the people in question were fired.....
blah. Sometimes I catch myself looking over my shoulder, making sure I'm crossing my t's and dotting my i's.
:(
Karnal
You don't need to do anything so traceable....here are some ideas that are sure to offend and hard to blame
Shit in the toilets, don't flush
Shit in the drinking fountian
Shit in a bag, put it with lunches in fridge
Shit in bosses in-box
Smear shit under bosses desk
Make some shit brownies, leave (in nice box) for boss
Make some shit pudding pops, put in freezer
Paintball outside of office building
Shove plastic lighter up bosses tailpipe, with bent hanger, till it drops in muffler
Poison bosses pets
Run hose through bosses mail slot, turn on
Pull fire alarms
Copy building keys, leave around town with address tags
Buy a load of nasty-pulp books, print "Gladly donated by 'Your Coumpany Name'" inside cover, salt childrens section of libary with these
Limburger cheese in vents
Stop-A Stop-A Stop-A
Bend HD15 pins together on monitor cables
HD magnets under mag-media carts, cases, drawers
Call piracy hotline and dime them out, even if SW is all reged.
Switch around cables between switches, hubs
Poke pins in cat-5 clip tops off
Post bad info, true or not, on company in NGs
Kiddie porn sent to boss @ office
Sign boss up for every site on web using his work e-mail
Just a few...
Its standard policy if someone tells us their leaving to lock their account and start up the taper that minute (though if they tell us they're leaving they've probably already done whatever they were going to do).
Though this still isn't an endorsement of those jerks mentioned in the story :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
This is a huge thing companies never think of. If I was fired, this is the first thing I would do to get revenge.
I can't believe how many companies try to cheat the system to save a buck. For example, Using MSDN as a license to use all Microsoft products like you bought an unlimited license. Installing development servers with the production server licenses....cuz they want too much money for the product. Using shareware in a commercial setting where it is expressly prohibited.
Don't fuck me or you are going to be ass-reamed by the SPA. I haven't done this yet....but I really look forward to doing it one day.
-jas
http://packetnexus.com
I am inspired. I am gonna try this myself.
This too shall pass.....
(1)Remove a ceiling tile
(2)Toss a piece of meat up there
(3)Replace ceiling tile
I do work for a dot com, however, I've encountered none of these problems. In fact when my company decided to let go of some people, I'm poud to say that they handled it with dignity and compassion. They really made efforts to make the termination as easy as possible, much more than they had to do, or indeed was ever expected of them.
Personally, all this negativity about dot coms going under, ticks me off. It's always assumed that if you work for a dot com you are working on borrowed time. Anyone with half a brain can see that this is a stupid claim. There will always be dot coms, business on the internet is not going away. There will always be internet businesses, and yes many are failing now, but that's a resulty of it being a new field, with relatively young, inexperienced people running the companies. This will change over time, dot com businesses are becoming more savvy by the day, and many will survive. They failres we've seen over the past year or so are the companies that were ineffectually managed. Companies that had no product and used vaporware to get investors for example. With the tremendous rate of growth of dot coms it's no wonder that such a high percentage are failing. But that is more a result of the weeding out of all those who were in it for a quicck buck. The companies that truly have something to offer business will remain.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
...when you pour your heart and soul into a company, get things done under budget and ahead of schedule, and everyone agrees that you are nearly invaluable, then you get canned because they can't afford your salary anymore. What sux worse is finding out they hired over 80 employees since you were canned at higher wages. Of course EVERYONE can read that scenario and guess the reasons why but the light at the end of this tunnel is being hired by a fortune 500 company to basically have fun and get paid nearly one sixth of your salary MORE to do it.
Such is life...
Oh and save your money for the rainy days like the AC said up top.
... there is nothing that has not already been thought
Being treated like that really hurts really hurts to the viewpoint of the exmployee getting fired.
.com workers who are reading this comment gets fired, I want you to remember this article here on slashdot and how everyone thought it was so funny.
Have any of you been fired before?
I was the angriest I have ever been in my life when I was fired. Being a tech worker I was treated like nuclear waste and was really embarrased and humiliated by having security escort me out in front of everyone. What hurt was being treated like I was a percieved threat after the blood, sweat and hard work I provided for that company.
The non tech workers are not fired fired that way because its cold and too humiliating. I felt like the people staring thought I was stealing or into extortion or somthing really bad when a security guard comes in. That just put fire into me. At least my other co-wrokers didn't know ahead of time. That would of made even more angry and betrayed.
WHen one of
Its not funny at all.
So being blind is meant to guarantee you a job for life? Why the hell shouldn't a blind person be treated like anyone else?
The equal opportunity and disabled american laws mean a blind person can not only get a job as easy (or easier) than anyone else, but can also require the company to spend extra money to accomodate their disability.
So, what's your personal firing priorities? Should we fire the people with families to support first, or the blind people, or the people without much savings?
Doh!
The IRS was responsible for that, not the company.
You're thinking Dogma.
I don't believe you. Mercantec is in Illinois, eastern timezone (IIRC). You posted on Saturday 2:05am.
On the other hand, the phone number you give does prompt for a conference ID.
Ryan
What's the big deal? I was fired from corel in this exact same fashing. In the morning, I couldn't log onto the network, and no one was saying why. Eventually, on manager came to see me an escort me out (about 1 hour, I believe, after I arrrived at work). They have a very, very aggressive firing culture at Corel - it made articles in the newspaper all the time. It really fostered fear and distrusted. This was 6 years ago. There was one person fired every could of weeks, they would send a mail saying 'We wish [...] the best of luck in his future endeavors. Eventually, a group of corel employee formed a company called 'Future Endeavor, close to Corel. They stopped sending the mails after a while when I was there, because it depressed the troops (DUH!) I am not making this up... Took me a few month to get the stress out after rushing for months at Corel and then getting canned. (I got fired because I insulted a coworker)
come to think of it, my friend was fired from regal in a similar way: he requested something like two weeks off for something or other, and they basically told him that if he wanted that time off, he was quitting. maybe they don't like to sound mean, so they don't "fire" people, everyone just "quits." either way, don't ever work there. it sucks.
----------
----------
"Rock over London... Rock on Chicago..." -Wesley Willis
Reread it: WARN allows sixty days salary in lieu of notice. I went to work for a company (Imonics) as a contractor in July of one year, and was hired as an employee in April. I was laid off, along with half the company of 450 or so, by the first week of September. So as a result of WARN, I received two months' severance pay after four months or employment. Can I get this deal at my next job, please?
No, they pour the money into advertising not infrastructure. And, do you really think they can make back that money at $30,000/user?
'Nuff said.
But leaving them in limbo for hours is really being an asshole. That kind of treatment of employees is sick and sadistic.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I worked for a small isp in NYC, and did 100% of their system administration on several linux, bsd, sun, and winNT boxes. I was replaceing their previous sysadmin, because he was leaving for another job, and I also got zero training about their system specifics from him, which was annoying. I worked there for about 10 months, we were getting extremely busy, and the office was empty most of the time because the entire staff was out on client calls, so my boss decided to hire an assistant sysdamin, to handle server issues and etc when I was possibly out on a call, vacation, sick, etc. Which makes sence.
Anyway, one day I recieved an EMAIL saying that they no longer need my service there, and thanks for working and blah blah blah. When I was busy training the assistant sysadmin about out system specific stuff, I got friendly with him. I found out after I was "let go", that he now had my position,(they were also paying him less, because he had less of a skillset, among other things) and felt he really bad. So, he found another job somewhere else, that was paying about 30% more, and now since he left, they hired a new sysadmin to replace him, which knew even less then my ex-assistant, and every once and a while for a month or so afterwards. I would get a phone call, or email asking about their system. So, well, their just out of luck.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
Well, if I recall correctly, 1999 was the year of more dot-com IPOs then ever before. So no, I don't think many of these businesses had solid business plans. They were jumping in on a hot market with something stupid plan and just happened to convince a VC that they could get in, cash in on a nice IPO, and the VC could get out before the company tanked leaving the rest of the shareholders who got in after the IPO to foot the bill. 1999 was a sickening year for the stock market and the tech industry raped it for all it was worth. Unfortunately someone had to lose money when these companies went belly up and the NASDAQ tanked and it sure as hell wasn't the angel investors! They were long gone by the time that happened with a fat return on their investment from the IPO. Analysts warned the dot-com bubble would burst and it finally did. I just hope too many people didn't lose their houses over it. I'm suprised the whole IPO ponzi scheme thing isn't illegal. :-P
Here's the trick a radio station used...
Nearly the entire staff were invited for dinner on a friday afternoon. After eating their scrumptious meal, they were informed that the station was sold and that they were terminated. While at dinner, all their passcards, logins, emails were shutdown. There was new staff in place monday.
Thanks for comin' out!
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
I have read something about advance notice law for the last 2 years.
Yes, WARN covered, but there're too many exceptions, and there's compensation in lieu of notice.
Also, in reality most local government officials don't know about how to determine any violation. There is a study that most local labor offices do not have any records of mass layoff (though WARN requires companies to provide information.)
And the problem is not those workers getting screwed. Even they are compensated, it's just plain cold to get back everything from the worker before telling the worker he/she is fired. In this situation, the worker can't make a scene.
A sig is redundant.
One time I was working at a particular company (I suppose it could be called a dot-com) and I decided I didn't want to work there anymore. I was just really disapointed with about every aspect of the company. Anyway, I just didn't go into work for about 5 weeks or so and eventually the boss called up and asked if I was quitting and I said "yeah".
So blind people should merit a "get out of downsizing free" card? I don't understand why you
make such a big deal of them firing a blind person.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
was manager of the documentation dept. we had layoffs - it was tough - they had her fire over half her department ..... then they fired her .... (scum! but then this is the same company who's president was let go from his next job for embezzeling $750k) ....
i was the first eng. at a web-dev shop in san francisco, papermedia. after 6 months of working there and growing about 3x the original size yet still not doing anything interesting - I started looking. I found a company that looked awesome, Collab.net, so i dropped my resume to them and only them. I even felt like a bit of a traitor for doing it. I had a phone interview with them soon after and was very impressed with them and scheduled an in-person interview.
I was nearly burnt out at the job i was still at, doing all the sysadmin work - some tech support - and doing a lot of the programming, and told the company I was taking my first 2 days off. On the evening of my first day off (a thursday) one of the two owners said there was an all-hands meeting the next morning and i had to come in for about 30 mins at 9 am i think. Well at 10am was my in person interview with collabnet. So I got there at 9am with no worries since both places were close from where i live in downtown.
well they laid off about 15 people myself included. after their lil spiel about how sad they were and how this wasnt personal in any way but a financial neccesity they asked if anyone had any questions. I asked what time it was, and when they told me and asked why, I replied, "I'm in a hurry because in 30 minutes a have my second interview with a much better company."
I filled out a few small papers, got a shitload of severence and left.
I'm now *extremely* happilly employed @collabnet.
Who's stabbin who?!!
Some principle. When a photo lab I worked for fired my 21 year old female coworker because she was in the hospital, not only did I walk out, but I left a bunch damage in my wake. (She had a kidney shut down and had to go to the emergency room; this was not because of drugs or anything.)
I fucked them over good. Destroyed all of their invoicing data, sabotaged two film processors, wrecked the security system, and kept the shop keys. Showed them good that I don't put up with shit from bosses, landlords, or other random assholes. The shop closed within a week thanks to me.
--
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
I used to work at a remote location for a defense contractor and one of the home office guys was publicly terminated. He went to work and his supervisor and a couple of security guards came to his cubicle and ordered him to clear out his desk and leave within fifteen minutes. This was a layoff, not a firing. The security guards stayed to ensure the former employee complied. A friend of the terminated employee (the guy who spread the story to all the remote locations) was so peeved that he began to follow the supervisor around and document everything the supervisor did, hoping to get some dirt that would result in the supervisor being fired. The supervisor told the disgruntled friend that a letter was going into his personnel file about all the company time he wasted sneaking around behind the supervisor with a notepad. The disgruntled friend took a swing at the supervisor and got fired for cause.
Any other Defense Contractors out there?
A company I worked for "forgot" to take out my health care payments for about a year. When I pointed this out to them (stupid, stupid, stupid!) they wanted to take it back... all at once! It was like 3 paychecks worth! Sure, I don't need to pay the mortgage/put food on the table/keep my broadband....
Computer geek for hire. Reasonable rates. Email me.
Now it would probably be much easier for my boss to get rid of me and get in some kid out of college to replace me. And looked at harshly he may be right. I been working very hard for a long time and have two young kids who wake a lot at night, I just can't work 12 hours days any more Just get some kid in who will do it and not complain.
After 15 years working my ass of in IT, you know what, I might just end up flipping hamburgers for a living. And I think a lot of ex-IT guys might be working beside me.
There are some risks you run when you sign on with a dotcom.
yeah. they might discover your alcoholism.
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Almost the same thing happened to me, except I was one of the people on an e-mail list who got termination reports to turn off access to a certian system. Looking down the list one day (I didn't usually, macros usually handle it) I see a familiar name. Apparently my last day had been the day before (but they still hadn't disabled my e-mail or network login!).
Took MONTHS to get it resolved. Teach HR not to fat-finger employee IDs!!! (Worst part was, there were 2 systems. The data was right in one but when the person RETYPED it into the second system, I got automagically fired!)
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
First of all, remember that being blind isn't her choice. Bad things happen to all sorts of people, including the best. Next time, you might be the person who gets hit by a drunk driver or gets damaged by some freak accident.
The poster 'PaxTech' never said that blind people should get a "get out of downsizing free" card. Read what was said and you will see what was said. They fired a women with disibilities who had worked there for 13 years. I am not 100% about this, since I didn't see this personally, but chances are she worked hard and made some money for the company. One day, they fire her and don't even have the decency to help her get her property, which belongs to her and is probably needed for her daily survival, home.
Disabled people should not be imune from critisism. But they should be treated with decency, mostly when they are a long term and faithfull employee. Maybe the company did have a good reason to fire her. The least they could have done is ensured that she had all the help she needed on her way out. That is how a blind person should be treated fairly.
-theman2
You're 100% correct. If guns were illegal, it would be completely impossible for any one to get guns and no gun crime would ever happen.
It worked for drugs!
I can go one better than that. I got paid by cheque, late, and when I went to cash it, it bounced! When I told the boss he say "Holy shit!" and immediately got on the phone to the accountant. He didn't even know that he had spent all the money. All pay cheques were delayed for a week whilst they secured more money to burn.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Everyone is talking about getting fired -- how about when it is *you* that want to leave but can't do it because when you give them your notice, they came back and ask you to stay.
This happened twice to me -- in one case both the CEO and one of the board-advisors talked me into staying (stupid me I staied -- but hey they offered me a good bonuce.) I am no longer with this company as 6 month down the road they are near bankrupt status.
So, has anyone experienced such pressure? You want to leave but they won't let you go?
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Not saying it's right, but you can't go around pissing people off and not expecting occasional retribution.
---
seumas.com
I assume everyone has seen Office Space? :)
I hope she got to keep her stapler!
[...]
Gee, that must have been a real bummer of a day. What with all that other stuff that happened.
...and wasn't there a Michael J. Fox movie along the same lines where he got a menial job in the mailroom and then bluffed his way into a corner office or something? (seem to recall that he was doing his uncle's wife without knowing who she was or something)
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Speaking from experience, employees sometimes have their security clearance (keycards, network login, etc) revoked before being informed of their termination to reduce the risk of retribution to the company.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Although I was short employed with Telocity, Inc. (that is the NASDAQ symbol "TLCT" [amuzing]) I found my termination to be rather amuzing.
My position was as a Security Analyst, the direct interperetation being "Someone who analyses security", saving the company from a IPO Web Deface Hack and implementing security policies that previously did not exist.
While doing a "screen lock" check, jotting down the workstations that were not locked, I came across an office in HR, on the screen - open - in Word, was my termination letter. I printed out a copy, and took it to my Exit Interview that I found out about two hours later, along with my badge and cellphone. Needless to say, HR was rather - stunned. My boss was impressed, smirked, and stated "Hey, I hired him because he was good.", while the HR bitch just stared at me.
Funny thing, they didn't pay any of my relocation which cost me out of pocket over $7.5k and gave me none of my hiring bonus.
My boss (only other person there who did security) was terminated a couple weeks later. Leading to the "passive/reactive" approach to security.
I cannot confirm nor deny the allegation or allegations you may or may not have just made
Probably not. No offense, but companies usually treat temp workers like shit and definitely do not give them the same priviledges as normal employees. Were the other employees salaried?
Iwork for a company that gets its staff from a temp agency. They hire most everyone after 30 days. Last week they had a "meeting" where *everyone* (including temps) were told they could leave early with pay. Today I picked up my check and i was shorted for that time. The temp agency says they don't know anything about it. I double-checked with a coworker that said he asked the supervisor that day if temps were included, and his answer was "yes". Can I force the company to pay me for the time they "promised"? There were about 70 people there at the "meeting", so I'm sure I could find people to back up what was promised.
the equal opportunity and disabled american laws are to give the blind people (most of whom never did anything to deserve blindness) a fair chance to succeed in a world where everyone else can see. It seems that the original comment was attempting to show injustice in the way she was fired. She is blind, so shouldn't they at least have the decency to spend the pittance needed to ensure she had help moving out?
a blind person can not only get a job as easy (or easier) than anyone else
what the fuck does that mean? Do you think that anything is easy for a blind person? Imagine being blind. Now try to imagine brushing your teeth. It would be much harder, right? Do you think that being a little flexible on the work conditions and the qualifications make it easier for that blind person to get the job than you? They might be able to get it with less qualifications but I guaruntee that they spent a lot more effort than you.
On a personal note, I left my University employment for the summer for an internship at IBM. They guaranteed my position, and that of the three others leaving for internships (Intel, Motorola, Alcatel). My personal mailbox is my univeristy account, so it was kind of annoying that over the summer I, and the other three guys, would receive email to those account because we were still on their group list. About a week before school started they stopped coming.
When I returned they informed us that they needed to re-interview us, and then only took one of us back. No, it's not personal, but they could not name one person working there at the time who was better qualified than I. They told me this when I showed up to work the first day of class (8am). By Three I had had two interviews. Within 24 hours I had an offer (for more $$, no less), and started 48 hours after being let go. The kicker is that it's in a sister group to the department that fired me.
The manager who let the three of us go left for some startup a month later. No one in his group (who he had hired) was qualified to take his place, so they merged our departments. Now my manager is over his old group, I get the pick of assignments. All in all, I came out on top.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
"And you knew that if someone was one of the "disappeared" that you did not ask about them, or you might get the same fate."
1984 anyone?
i have misplaced my signature.
I was fired from there a year or so ago, the way I found out was an outside recruiter called me and said to pack my bags. An hour later someone from HR came down to escort me out the building. Email was cut off, couldn't even send mail telling my friends I was canned. Everyone in that company ran around like a chicken with their head cut off and yelling. Dwayne (CEO) yelled at his direct reports. They yelled at their serfs, etc etc. Thank god I was a contractor and was paid hourly. Everyone in IT was working 80 hour weeks if they were salary. People would sleep at their desks. And for what? NWCK is at $1, and their options are at $7. Eventually all the good people got out of there and the only people left are yes men/women and those that sleep with their bosses.
But.. but... they took my stapler!!
-antipop
This is a six-year-old story (times change - people don't). Our former security/IT manager who regularly wrote up people for note using their key cards was promoted to production vp. The pete principle kicked in and one day the finance vp took him to lunch. When they got back to the office, the finance vp claimed to have forgotten his key card so the production vp pull his out but it does not work. After a while the security guard opens the door. Finance vp tells production vp to see the human resources vp to reem him out about his card not working. Security guard escorts production manger to HR where he finds all his belonging in a box and a severance agreement.
There are some risks you run when you sign on with a dotcom.
This is one of them:
Saturday September 16th, 2000
5:30 am:
I wake up on my kitchen floor with a severe hangover and no memory of how I got there. Further investigation reveals that I have no memory of the previous 12 hours. Fuck.
6:00 am:
After downing 3 cans of Diet Mountain Dew and 8 Excedrin I stagger into the shower.
6:05 am:
36 fluid ounces of Dew and 8 partially dissolved Excedrin tablets wind up in my toilet bowl. This brings back a memory of the previous night - a memory of vomiting in a computer case at work to be precise. Fuck Fuck.
6:10 am:
I realize that since the cleaning crew only works Sun. - Thurs., my gift to the company is going to sit there for a couple of days unless I go clean it up. Fuck Fuck Fuck.
8:30 am:
I arrive at atomfilms on a vomit scrubbing mission.
9:15 am:
After dragging the case up to the roof, I hose it down and leave it to dry.
9:30 am:
Since I'm at work anyway I ought to check email.
9:45 am:
I unlock my workstation and find myself staring at the "Comment Submitted" page at http://slashdot.org/. "That's funny, I don't remember posting anything on slashdot last night," I think to myself. Then it occurs to me that I don't remember doing anything last night and that it isn't very funny.
10:00 am:
I work up the courage to read what I posted. It turns out to be an expression of carnal desire for our young, female (god be praised) sysadmin. Fortunately I posted it on a small, out of the way website that only server up 1.5 million pages/day and is only read by young sysadmins and their friends. I begin praying for the sweet release of death.
10:05 am:
It dawns on me that I'm an atheist - so I switch to merely hoping for the sweet release of death.
10:06 am:
I recall that our young, female sysadmin's hobby is competitive target shooting and that she has more firearms than the armed forces of Malawi - 12 to be precise. I begin hoping to avoid the sweet release of death.
10:10 am:
A sudden rush of paranoia drives me to check my "sent items" folder - there I see a message to our young, female sysadmin. The message has 34 lines. Lines 1-3 contain a delicately phrased and badly spelt expression of tender affection. Line 4 explains that the aforementioned affection should lead to the two of us knotting an coupling like frogs in a cistern. Lines 5-30 outlined the techniques and approaches that should be utilized in our impending bout(s) of carnal riot. Line 31 presented my conviction that these activities should be carried out until the bed collapsed in a pile of splinters. Lines 32 and 33 advised that our offspring would have to be named after confederate generals - even the girls. Line 34 was my signature. Betting odds began to favor my meeting the sweet release of death.
10:30 am:
I send an apology. Since the thing I'm most sorry about is my failure to use spellcheck, It's not the most touching thing ever written.
10:00 pm:
I send a dozen yellow roses with a carefully worded note expressing my heartfelt sorrow at having failed to use spellcheck.
By monday I was unemployed.
This is all 100% true.
--Shoeboy
It happened when I was in tech support. We always "punched in" by typing a code into a computer time clock. One day, the computer gave me a wierd error I had never seen. I told my manager about the error, and she said, jokingly, "maybe you got fired". I was in good standing, so we could both laugh about this. I guess she knew that the error was associated with termination, but she figured it was just a glitch and that it would resolve itself. The problem persisted, and I reported it to her again. Well, then she realized it wasn't going away and did something about it. Sure enough, I was "fired" by accident. They even paid me for my vacation hours and zeroed out my leave balance. Getting a severance check was nice, but I lost my leave which was OK because I didn't have much saved up anyway.
Anyhow, stuff happens. I took this accidential "firing" in good stride. Starting termination mechanisms before the employee is actually informed is just COLD though.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
My buddy and I worked at Spiegel as Unix admin, I quit, so they fired me right after I gave notice. He still worked there, a couple months later, I go in to the building with him cause he needed to pick something up....They fired him because I was a security risk! You would think there would be laws against lamness like that. BOYCOTT SPIEGEL.COM! lol Paul
huh?
But she said they WEREN'T making a profit, even with nearly 115 million US dollars in revenue for FY 2000. (Revenue != profit, revenue == income.)
Not to disagree with you, day traders are frequently morons who try to play the stock market like the lottery, and aren't interested in getting into it for the long haul.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
At my previous employer (not a dot-com, an FI) I transferred departments + locations. When I recieved my 1st paycheque after the change, I noticed it said 'vacation pay'. I knew something was up, but the next day when I received a letter about my termination, I was really confused.
Turns out some stupid new HR person couldn't figure out the different between transfer and terminate. Took them over 6 weeks to clean up the mess, and in the mean time I was getting benefits cancellation notices + other junk. Complete asspain, but I found it highly amusing how incompetant the HR folks were.
Any relation?
--- http://foo.ca
Thanks for reminding me.
One throw away comment and something like 15 responses going "uh, actually bind does hold the net together."
Slashbots crack me up at times.
--Shoeboy
I think the Internet bubble burst is just starting. Many will die, a few will survive. The stock market may tank more (at least the stocks... and there's the supposed Economic Slowdown (TM) looming).
And we can watch it all with a front row seat at fuckedcompany.com. God I love that site.
IANAL (yet), but according to the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification act, companies with more than 100 employees that do mass layoffs are required to give sixty days of notice before people are laid off -- presumably so things like this don't happen. How large was this company? Is there anything to prevent employees of smaller companies (or companies experiencing smaller layoffs) from getting screwed?
http://freshmeat.net/projects/charities.cron/
your emailbox posted to alt.sex.hamsters,
Ohh! That's what I'll do to a user who gets fired for using their Internet access for off-topic purposes. Good idea, I hadn't thought of it.
Oh, cjones...
Man, I'd occasionally take a glance into /var/spool/mail/cjones because the boss had some suspicions and asked me to keep an eye on her. She was scary. Ugh.
Normally, you see the occasional personal e-mail go through on someone's account. Cool, no big deal. My boss would care, but I'm not willing to start a federal case if someone's daily tradition includes a one-line e-mail to his wife asking what she's gonna serve for dinner.
cjones' daily tradition included a very in-depth conversation on the sexiest Backstreet Boy, or why some people cringe when she breast-feeds her son in public (she was over 300lbs, fat and doughy).
Ugh... thinking about that literally makes my scrotum crawl.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
This eerily resembles things the management in Dilbert's company does. Of course, employees aren't being catapulted from the building with pink slips taped to them, but they may as well have been.
I have never heard anything that extreme but that proves why the Dilbert strip is so succesful--it is almost real enough for people to think "I could see my PHB/HR director/company doing that..."
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
I worked at a company that was so fucked up it could quite easily have been a dot com. They hired people just so they would look like they were growing so a major investor would keep giving them money (which they then blew). My job was very secure at this company and basically consisted of reading slashdot and playing The Sims. Many times I got in trouble for showing up late and my most common response of "so am I fired?" went unheard. It was a great time in my life and I was going insane following the office politics and I only hoped that things would return to normality eventually. Unfortunately, I had managed to get a friend of mine hired when I joined the company. He was not nearly as valued as I was (he spent the majority of his time warezing and was constantly getting bitched at for using too much bandwidth) and not nearly as good as avoiding the bosses. So finally one day his "three month trial period" was up and he marched into the boss' office and demanded his pay rise (off the trial period wage). They didn't want to give it to him, probably because all he did was warez all day, but they didn't want to fire him either. He came back and told me he was going to call a meeting and do everything in his power to get fired so he could get a payout and go get a real job somewhere. Well I knew this was going to be more amuzing than Sims/Slashdot so we arranged a little plan. Just before the boss' showed up in the conference room he dialed my extension and put the conference room phone on speaker phone. I then pressed the "mute" button on my end, creating a one way connection that was better than a hidden microphone. A bunch of the guys then crowded around my desk and listened to him abuse the bosses, telling them nothing but the trueth: that their company sucked and they had no idea how to make money. I quit a few months later. The strain of playing The Sims and reading Slashdot all day was just too much and I felt myself wanting to do some real work -- always a good time to quit.
How we know is more important than what we know.
We had the same sort of incident -- a member of our Help Centre staff went out for a smoke at 11:00AM and when he tried to swipe his security badge to get back in it wouldn't work. The guards cancelled his badge while he was standing on the steps. Since all his co-workers had known for days of his termination they all innocently told him to call his boss. Not a high-point in our Fortune 500 company's history...
I am pretty well versed in a lot of issues surrounding employment law and unjust dismissal (having had more than my share of bad experiences, and having dealt with a lawyer that _does_ happen to specialize in employment law). The way I see it, there are a few factors that could affect whether or not her rights were violated.
First, Was she dismissed on legal grounds?
Second, did she receive or will she receive the severance package required by regional employment standards commensurate with the period of time that she was working at that location? (Where I live, a one year service entitles a person to 2 weeks severance pay.)
And finally, has she already been paid, or will she be paid for the full day (or 4 hour shift, depending on employment policies in the region) when she showed up for work only to discover that she was fired (in addition to the aforementioned severance package)?
If the answer to all these questions is yes, and as long as all monies owing (including vacation pay) are paid within 48 hours of the time of termination, her rights have not been violated.
However... The fact that the employer would ask her "how she found out she was fired" and want to know "who leaked the information" could easily lead to the employer losing his rights to run a business altogether. If I were in this girl's position, I'd rat on the guy and watch his company crash and burn. I wouldn't have anything more to gain, of course... but it would be sweet revenge.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Given the sorry record the boys at /. have for accurate reporting, a better question would be: Is this even true?
Ah, this would be a person who is flaming Taco about not reading the linked article in a given story yet doesn't check the linked article himself. Very funny.
It's people like you that have made me just about give up looking for real discussion on Slashdot. But then, I suspect that's probably the reason idiots like you post anymore; too pathetic to stop reading yourselves, so you'd rather drive everyone else away.
Jay (=
The movie was Extremly funny.
I've looked for at at Moviez sites but never been able to actually find it, does anyone have some links to disant Moviez sites they could clue me in on?
Leader of free world... :)
__
L.
At least I know I'm still going to get a pay check...
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Every programmer worth their salt makes enough to save some on the side - if you don't have enough money saved up to last you six months of lean living in the event of a layoff, either your expenses are too high, or you're a moron. Either way, you screwed yourself.
Pink slips happen, and anyone with a brain can see it coming by at least a month.
Getting fired sucks. Working for a dotcom is no different then any other company. Cause any company can run out of money. It just that DotCom's are pissing it away faster then anyone.
Welcome to the new Economy...........
From now on, my first question when I'm on a job interview will be "Um, how do you fire people? Just curious!"
The only time I've ever been fired was from a big company.
:-)
I was hired in Europe, but the team didn't know exactly what its job was. The boss left the first week I was there, and it went downhill from that point on. The new boss was an american, who decided to "repurpose" the team into something we knew very little about. The idea was that we would be travelling to America quite often to work on projects because Europe didn't have the facilities. Suddenly a group of hardware engineers with very little programming experience were writing java servlets to do network management.
Since I was the only European with a permanent green card, I got stuck working full time on the east coast of the U.S. 11 months after being hired, and after 6 months of stressful hell and living far from my family, I was summoned back to Europe by the American VP. There I was told my performance wasn't up to their standards and to shape up or find another job. Since I had only 6 more weeks until stock options started to vest, I kept my head down and flew back to the U.S. Sometime during those few days of travel, my boss was replaced with another American, who didn't know a thing about European working laws, and decided to fire the team.
The company HR group in the U.S. has a policy to eliminate the bottom performing 5%-10% of every group each year, to clear out the slackers. This violates European work laws, but the Americans don't care. A group of 4 European engineers fucking up royally exactly equalled 5% of the division, so the decision was easy.
Nobody told the new manager about how expensive it can be to fire Europeans. I flew back to the U.S. and found out I had been fired, not from the manager, but from the security guys who came to clean out my desk. (note to stupid managers: when you have security experts working on your team, they will make friends with the local security folks) The manager just assumed the European HR people would do the dirty work for her and I would never return, but I had returned to the U.S. before the paperwork made its way across the pond. European HR assumed the American manager did her job on her end, and just mailed the required notices to my home, so I didn't see the letter for months.
With the help of a lawyer who could walk into the HR offices in Europe, I got some major concessions from the European HR, such as an additional 6 months pay on top of the guaranteed 3 months severance pay, and 50% stock options vested.
The fun part is that I was still in the U.S. with a corporate apartment paid until the end of the next month, and a company car, and an open ended return ticket to Europe. Once I was assured of a large severance package when I returned, I took off and drove all around the U.S., a nice little vacation on the company.
Even better, the whole severance package costs came out of the budget of the manager who fired us, nearly killing her budget for the whole next year. I hear she is still running around inside the company, sowing fear and fouling up projects left and right.
And even better, I still get contacted by the big company to do various odd contracting jobs for them, American companies don't count getting fired as a bad thing
And as for the comments from other about how bad it feels to be fired, I second that. I was very depressed after being fired, and quite angry, even with the nice little vacation at the end. Being fired from a big, respected company makes you feel like shit, even if you can rationalise how it is mostly their fault. If I could play corporate politics better, I probably would have been more alert to the deteriorating situation and avoided it. But I'm an engineer and a geek, and politics doesn't interest me, I leave that to the PHBs.
the AC
Any relation to any large, monopolistic, networking company is purely coincidental. And since their stock tanked recently, I'm very pissed at them.
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I actually did this - take a computer instead of actual money. My boss at the time was about $60,000 in debt.
Since he couldn't pay me, I told him I was taking the computer I worked on. Poor man didn't have a choice and began to cry. Being a callious bastard I didn't care at all.
My suggestion to people is that they get out before they are pushed out.
Signs of impending doom (in rough order of severity):
"We don't have enough money to pay you this week"
"Downsizing" of any kind.
Company isn't making money.
Company is aquired by another company.
You are bored or have no work to do.
Surprisingly it is companies with employees that are busy, positive and that are productive that are making lots of money which tend to be successfull. The ones which are loosing money hand over fist, with employees that are not usefully employed or with low morale seem to collapse. I know this is a rather radical theory - but its what seems to happen in my experience.
PS: Employee morale and productivity are determined by company culture - not the employees.
This reminds me of a George Carlin bit.
"Did you ever get a pink slip? I didn't. Usually a guy would come up to my desk and say, 'GET THE FUCK OUT! GET YOUR SHIT AND GET THE FUCK OUT!'"
Apparently, we don't even get that anymore.
While I was working there I did a few things to piss him off. One was hiding his cellphone in a place he couldn't find it in his office and some coworkers and myself would call it and watch in the window while he popped up and looked for it. That was hilarious. We did a number of other things. He had installed some remote control software on his computer so I opened it to a bad webpage. Nothing pornographic because he was always worrying about things that were not politically correct and would probably have fired me if porn automatically popped up on his PC. There were a number of other pranks me and my coworkers did, even on each other. But to answer your question:
What I did when I quit that was the biggest form of revenge, was simply to leave and not give anyone documentation on what I did. I wanted my boss to know how difficult it would be to replace me, which I believe may be one of the reasons I never got a promotion. So, I don't know what else happened but I heard that the company has even more problems than when I worked there. I'm so glad I got out with a portion of my sanity and was not completely burnt out yet.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
After noticing that the fool left behind in our network department always typed "cls > dir " on the novell server console I made a dir.ncf file with the following content
remove dos
down
exit
Apparently the server "crashed" during a midday backup that was initiated from the server console...
Once upon a time, I worked for a fscked-up little company called Ultimate Data Systems (UDS) in Wilton, Connecticut. I was working as a Programmer/Analyst, and doubling as a SysAdmin because they didn't actually have any SysAdmins on staff.
Saying that UDS was not well managed would be somewhat akin to saying that there was a tiny bit of controversy about the latest US Presidential election. As an example, the week that I was hired I was assigned to three different departments, one after another. The first two months I was there, they reorganized the company every two weeks, like clockwork. I didn't really care, since I only took the job as an interim step -- my previous company decided that they couldn't afford to pay little things (like my healthcare and salary) but they still wanted me to keep working...
I could tell lots of sad tales about UDS, but the saddest was that after working there for 6 months, they decided to layoff a third of the employees and move the company from Connecticut to Texas, presumably for some sort of cost savings. They notified everyone by holding a late night conference call, and announcing 3 rounds of layoffs, with the first 12 employees to get the axe the next morning. The next round would be in a month, with a third round a month later. In the meantime, the new company president (who coincidently lived in Texas) was coming in a couple of days to talk to the entire company and explain ALL of the transition plans to everyone...
Yeah, right. As it happened, the new president DID show up and hold a meeting; he just didn't explain anything. He tried to tell everyone that inspite of the upcoming layoffs, and the upcoming move, everyone would still have a place with UDS, even if they didn't want to move. The asshole spent 20 minutes trying to sell that load to the entire company ... and this being 1992, and the country still in a recession, these people were actually hoping that he was telling the truth.
For myself, while I was hoping to stick around for a couple more months so I could pad my savings account, I wasn't hurting for job prospects (no family to support, no mortgage, etc) ... so I did the only thing I could: when the asshole asked if anyone had any questions, I asked him questions. Every question that anyone in that room could have wanted to ask, I asked. And I didn't take "I don't know" for an answer. Which departments would move, which would stay, what order, what time schedule, what about working from (now) remote areas, what about salaries and relocation expenses, and anything else I could think of to ask. I don't think anyone else asked a single thing in that meeting.
Afterwards, the asshole made time for private meetings, and oddly enough, I was first ... heheheh. The really odd thing was, he just asked me questions, and I explained that I wasn't planning to move to Texas (I don't look good in boots and a Stetson). Then he had more one-on-one meetings with other people, left someone else in charge of the office and went back to Texas.
The next morning, as soon as I came in, the new vice president came to tell me the bad news ... I was being laidoff. I laughed and told him that I rather expected it, and that I didn't blame him for it. He didn't know what to say after that, so I started cleaning my desk out and went around and said goodbye to everyone. They were all sorry to see me go, but not sorry that I asked all those questions.
I moved to Northern Virginia, got a good job, and made a good life for myself. As for UDS ... they eventually folded and are only missed by their creditors.
Are you moderating this down because you disagree with it,
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
This isn't new. I was working in London just as the yuppy thing was teetering into recession at the very end of the 1980s. Lay-offs were starting. Highest marks for creativity went to the Financial trading house that wanted/needed to unload a bunch of employees and were worried that their feelings for their soon-to-be-ex staff might be reciprocated. Answer? They called a fire drill. When everybody was out of the building, security guards passed the personal effects of the chosen few out through some windows.. Gotta love Thatcher's Britain...
Some of the guy's at our office (web hosting) took all the porn customers because the new owner of the company didn't want to be involved in "that kind of business". They did this while they were still working at our company and made a fortune. They also did hardware sales, networking and consulting -- all in their spare time. One of the guys was fired (or quit, depending who you ask) and went to work for one of the clients that they had taken from the company and then quit there and started running the office. Recently they sold the hardware sales part of the business to our company! They also took a lot of the customers that were not porn related.
How we know is more important than what we know.
that her manager simply wanted to tell her in person rather than over the phone while she was away on business, and the machinery got ahead of her. How many of you have seen the wheels of HR grind interminably, in spite of the best interests of the company or the individuals?
I still think this sucks, but I've heard and seen much worse than what appears to be an unfortunate mis-fire (no pun intended)...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
This is not intended to badmouth US, and expecially not to insult my colleagues in the US. However, I am so happy I don't face this sadistic behaviour of employers. I have 60 day notice, so if they decide to fire me, they have to let me know well in advance. Furthermore, I have 5 weeks of holidays per year. I think that's more than what is standard, for US. And, as an added bonus, we don't get fired for pesky little things like using the Internet for our own purposes, or even (shock horror) browsing sex sites. I hear that in US there is a paranoic atmosphere around employers monitoring what their employees do on the Internet. Well, fuck them! I have not sold my soul to my employer!
What I am stll dissatisfied of, and this is a commono trait with all IT workers, is that we, people in IT, don't organize well enough, don't network enough and protect our rights through unions and such. We are a bit too individualistic, and the employers can fuck with us however they like. Not good!
Sigged!
Thats not even counting the numerous businesses that are moving substantial portions of their operations to the web (like, say, every bank, bookstore, brokerage house, etc.).
Yes. I know guys who were brought in as consultants and recommended the company move all their web hosting to linux (we had some linux and some M$).. the boss declined and he quit because his recommendations were not being taken seriously (this guy was hired to work out how we can cut costs and improve uptime). He reported the company to m$ antipiracy and they came in and gave us all new licenses at a steep price.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I just submitted my ex-employer's open mail relay (which I'd told them about several times) to MAPS and ORBS.
Then I posted the server's IP address to Usenet.
Wasting your time since 1997.
The fact that they were making a profit means little. Thanks to the day-traders' chaotic and typically senseless affect on the market and the last five years of "impress me now, back it up later" acceptance of Internet companies, people are not satisified unless a company is making ten times what they are really worth. This is the problem in an economy where companies are valued on unfounded expectations and promises rather than facts and a history of profits.
---
seumas.com
walk into the company (if they don't have security, don't try it if they have security) and take a computer. When you are asked why you are there, say you are taking property in lieu of payment and the property will be sold. Do it fast, you have to be in and out. No one will stop you. If they try, just say "do you want a law suit too?" I've had a lawyer inform me that I was within my rights to do this, but you may wish to confirm this.
How we know is more important than what we know.
By dousing the place in gasoline and torching it. Or calling your boss a goat fucking plonker. That's an effective resignation and should be counted as such later on. If the company would fire you like this, they're probably a bunch of goat fucking plonkers anyway. Doesn't matter though, there'll always be a good supply of desperate graduates willing to take up the death march for them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
First, it wasn't much of a company. When they fired lynn, I was the only person working at the shop. There was another location, and I had the feeling that they'd be closing the shop I was at. I knew that I was next when he fired her. The excuse that was used was rediculous, and what made it worse is that my boss demanded that I drop out of college to work full time for $7/hour. (a $2/hour pay cut) I said "no thanks, I'd rather be an engineer and make four times what you get out of these crappy shops."
The shop was already keeling over, I just made sure to really get it rolling down the hill. Now Bruce will think twice before playing months of bullshit with employees.
Naw.. he'll just interview better to make sure to get someone who's unskilled and spineless.
--
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
This is, per local story (which I have reason to think is mostly true) how Steven Spielberg got a foot inside Universal Studios -- just walked in the back way like he knew where he was going (not hard to do, as I can tell you), picked out a vacant office and set, and went to work. By the time anyone discovered he didn't belong, he'd established himself well enough that they didn't throw him out.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
When the European companies bought out the American
majors, they gave one month per year of service,
minimum six months!
Other companies do this, too, and weirder things. A few years back I worked tier-2 tech support at the HQ of a huge multinational corporation that makes big green tractors. One peaceful Friday, my trusty keycard wouldn't let me out of the damn building. Someone else let me out with their card. I didn't find out until the next Monday that I no longer had a job. And they couldn't fire me for some simple reason, like, "upper management doesn't like the idea of a 19-year-old doing all the technical work in a 100+ user zone". Oh no. It was "breach of network security". A year later a friend of mine who started work there said that I had become a sort of example of what not to do, and my exploits ranged from "hacking a server" in South Korea to telling off users. Of course, until that Friday, all my reviews/reports had been full of glowing compliments...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Proud of yourself aren't you? How many people that had nothing to with firing the girl, ended up out of job because you are an asshole?
--locust
moderators: go a head make my day.
The company I used to work for gave all the project managers cars.
Every so often the would put a list of cars 'for sale' on the company noticeboards. These were generally when cars were old and they wanted to replace them.
Anyway one of the project managers saw his car on the noticeboard and told everyone he was getting a new car.
He went into the finance division to ask about it and the reply was "Havn't they told you? Your being sacked"
They didn't actually do this on purpose, as we hadn't been told to lock his usernames yet. Just an administrative error, but still pretty disgusting.
Needless to say, he was not happy at all.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
The explanation I hear for this in a corporate environment is, "Why ruin their weekend when there isn't much they can do in the way of finding a job?". I guess that isn't *quite* true, though.
But why didn't you?
Sounds like you need some shock therapy!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
Well then, what do you owe your company.
Two weeks notice - HEH - just leave!
I have heard about people getting laid off and being escorted out after cleaning out there desk.
:-) )
That happened to my girlfriend once (she worked as a secretary, before giving up work (temporarily) to have our baby). She was given no notice whatsoever, just called in to see her boss, to be told that she was being made redundant, effective immediately.
She cleared out her desk, said her goodbyes, and was escorted out of the building. She did get her redunancy money, though, so it wasn't all bad, just a bit sudden (and she didn't like it there anyway; she was actually quite happy about it
The weirdest thing, though, was that her boss didn't know it was going to happen until that day; the order came down from above. She and a mutual friend who also worked there put it down to the evil machinations of one of the other secrataries, who had never liked her, was generally perceived as being a cow, but seemed to be adored by the upper managers...
Aren't office politics great?
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Almost the same thing happened to me. Me and a two other people in there (that remain VERY GOOD friends of mine to this day.) decided to leave the company to pursue our OWN damn goals. But as it turned out, the boss from the company that we working for was planning to sell out the company and make his money and can us. So, since we kinda outplayed him we cut HIM to the chase and left the company ourselves. We al sent emails to tell him that we quit. Damn dot-commers. What a waste. Now Im on my own and Im making 8 times more a month than what I was doing when I was employed.. Peace, D
Listen, Learn and Create... Drummer
i.... i ... i just came back for my.. ... ..swingline stapler.
[i'll... i'll... burn the buildin- down...]
---Melvin
Saving money for a rainy day is a noble idea. But sometimes it just don't happen like you plan.
Take my situation. I worked for a corporation called GST Telecom, a CLEC or Competitive Local Exchange Carrier in Vancouver, WA, which declared chapter 11 bankrupcy back in April, roughly a month after I had just put almost $1000-- into the employee purchase plan for some stock.
So, being the cautious type, I started looking for another job, & managed to get a new one by the end of June. However, when I left, I lost 24 hours of accrued leave (the acting CEO forbade everyone from taking more than 2 consecutive days of time off in a month), & lost several hundred dollars when I rolled my 401(k) over into an IRA. But since I was making a good deal more money, I decided not to whine about it.
A few weeks ago, my wife & I noticed that her retirement accounts had taken a $9000-- hit since September, so I started taking a closer look at her investments. And the annual report for one bond fund came in the mail yesterday. The fund manager admits that the fund lost money due to investments in the telecommunications field. And guess which telecom corporation was singled out for mention?
Right now I can see the humor in this, but I wonder when GST will take another bite out of my earnings & savings.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
First company I was at that did the same thing was a company called CollegeBoardwalk.com/LavaSpoon.com. The CEO (Crappily Experienced Officer) was a friend of a friend of a friend of one of the investors (they were owned by the same owners of GTInterActive and Perform.com). Anyways this CEO blew through 6million in VC faster than a girl named Monica and a man named Bill.
First he let go of two or three employees in which we all knew what was coming, then he re-hired them to finish on a promise things would continue but his underlying factor was he needed them to finish some book keeping stuff first and after it was done he fired them. (what a snake) While this was going on most of us were thinking he would work things out or something and decided to give it another week or so. Instead one day we come back to have everyone's belongings packed in boxes including personal stuff in which I had to fight to get my Sun Ultra1 and routers out of there. I mean literally threaten to bust this idiots ass.
Shit happens whether or not its a dot.com or other business. Its funnier online since it reaches a larger audience but its typical business.
Firestone Tire Spoof
360 degrees of Karma
Here are some thoughts next time you're fired rudely this way: - talk loudly and say "hey are you trying to piss me off on purpose? Do you know that some people who've been treated this way have gone postal?" (say it in a way that it ain't a real threat, but sounds like it) - upon getting a new job, install backdoors and think of pranks "in case" of that day
when she states:
I think I'm going to work somewhere more tangible next, like at a construction company or something.
I think the old saying that only Docs and Morticians (SP?) are the only trully secure jobs stands tough here.
IT work/System programmers (new development) work usually ranks about the same level as flavored coffee creamer on the list of company cutbacks when times are "tough"...
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
This isn't so bad, because it was justified, but it does show you how quickly people can be replaced. I was working as a temp in a IT department at an insurance company(I'm only 16, and my mom is a VP there, so I got my job that way.), and the warehouse guy(he goes to the company warehouse and is there to courier over anything they need, but its a good ways away from the main offices) submits an IS request that his machine is too slow and we need to make it faster. We decide to wipe it all and reinstall Win 95(this was an old IBM Pentium 133). To the surprise of me and my supervisor, when we boot up the machine, the wallpaper is porn. The history is filled with porn. The computer has lots of porn on it. We call his supervisor, show her, and she's pissed. This is the VERY end of the day, and after this I clock out and go home.
Next day I come back, my boss has done the format and reinstall of win95, wants me to install the other programs, and mentions to me that the new warehouse guy will be here in an hour for me to train him how to use the machine, log in, etc. My start time at the company was just about the earliest among everyone save for a few customer service reps and the maintence guys, and the replacement for the guy we discovered breaking company policy has already been found.
I mean honestly, don't do it while their sitting at their machine, but people's accounts and badges SHOULD be revoked BEFORE they are informed of their termination. Then nobody does anything rash, nobody causes a few million dollars worth of deletion or PR issues. Also it is significantly easier to illegitimately make yourself an account with a valid login than without...
Nah, you don't even need to be a shareholder to get information. Hell, you can get so much information due to required public disclosure that it becomes a matter of filtering out information. The SEC filings are a prime source for this. If you pull a symbol lookup on Yahoo! Finance for example , click on "Research", and then in the research section on the "More Info" line up at the top click on "SEC" to get 10-Q Quarterly and 10-K annual reports. (I'm a computational chem major but I have a business minor (need easy buffer classes, and believe me if you have half a brain you can get a 4.0 in business), so I had to use this stuff for some financial accounting classes.) There are other sources of this information, like EDGAR Online, who have everything, not just 10-Q/Ks.
WRT Amazon, here's a link to their last 10-Q from Oct. 30, 2000 and archived reports. This is dry reading, as they don't try to make it easy to read like the shareholder's reports, but this is the hard data that shows where the money goes inside Amazon.
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I would assume that (3) is out, but (1), (2) or both were probably invoked in this case...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
It wasn't a dot-com, but I know a guy who went to training in Japan for a week. While he was away, a layoff round was announced. He found out through E-Mail.
I worked for company where that was standard policy. Instead of telling you you were terminated you were dragged down to HR told that you would be escorted back to your desk by security, given a box, told to fill it with your stuff and then you would be escorted out of the building never to return. Rarely if ever were you told a reason in person. That would follow by mail.
Employees leaving without telling their managers. Heck, not even telling their teams.
It just happened to me. Came back to work after holidays and my colleague told me that the third guy in the team called him half an hour ago he's not going to come again. WTF!
Well, I don't really care anymore since I'm going to leave too in a week (I told them months ago) but it's kinda hard for the other one having to do the job all alone now.
My boss is probably going to sue that guy now.
Oh yeah, right. Secret of My Success. He was put in the mailroom and then figured out he could do his 8 hour job in like 20 minutes and then spent the rest of the day posing as a board member.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
"The non tech workers are not fired fired that way because its cold and too humiliating."
Maybe where you worked. But in EVERY job I've ever had, from mega-bookstore IT clerk to paralegal, EVERY fired employee, non-tech or tech, from store manager to copy guy to attorney to paralegal is escorted out. It's humiliating as hell, but in a country where access to firearms is cheap and easy, and where companies' vulnerability both to lawsuits and to technological sabotage is a fact of life, it just makes sense.
Doesn't mean it isn't a horrid practice. But I understand why it's done this way.
Tigris
& are told not to bother coming in. We have good labour laws in Oz & in the award I'm in they have to give a months notice, which is a 28 day payoff, & considering I'm in a trade where demand is higher than supply it means it pays to get sacked at least 3 times & years. One is alway re-employed before the day is out & it means one is in effect get double pay for that first month.
He got that job because that's where his character's uncle placed him. Said something on the lines of "just put him somewhere". Had that movie (well, my father did) but it seems to have been sent away somewhere. Don't even remember the name.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
But back to the post, I'd be suing the management. Not for money, but to make sure that they were not allowed to be managers again after decisions like that. I'd probably first contact the better business bureau, and reporting the company. At least then it would be on some record somewhere. Next I'd contact a laywer unless I have a legal friend (I do) and ask them what I could do.
The point is that you don't want people like this leaving this failing company only to arrive at the company that you work at.
So the question is who made this decision? They are the ones that I would take legal action against.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Witness the murders in Mass. He wasn't even fired, they were just going to garnish his wages for back taxes.
>I got paid by cheque, late, and when I went to
>cash it, it bounced!
>He didn't even know that he had spent all the
>money.
In most states, this is a crime that you could have gotten the responsible individual locked up for. If I ever get a check, even a paycheck that bounces for insufficient funds, the person who should have known not to write it will do 30 days in county. I don't care how expensive of lawyers they can afford, they won't help if I have the bad check in my hand and all my p's and q's are
correct in my case to the D.A.
In Phoenix AZ, "County" is a tent city in the middle of the desert, by the way.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Well, it was a story about this girl in Norway who got fired by a dotcom because she didn't want to go out and drink beer with the guys every night. She actually had a life, the rest of the firm obviously didn't, they were jealous of course, so they fired her. She got a new job instantly and they got some very bad press....
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I have heard of companies that once you turn in your notice they have you clean out your desk, but they tell you this. I have heard about people getting laid off and being escorted out after cleaning out there desk. I have also heard about people geting home and having a message on their answering machine saying don't come in on Monday your employment is no longer needed, but all these people were told.
This is callous, and I think I'd be suing, I am sure there is some ground for suit.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
... my department figured out we were being canned only after we got the next year's budget out of the company vice president's computer and discovered that our department wasn't listed on it.
The scariest part of that movie is when I realized that I *am* Michael Bolton.
Dancin Santa
My question is, how many times will you let yourself get screwed, while searching for the pot of gold? You don't get no stock options if you get fired in 6 months (or if the company tanks in 3 months). Repeat as necessary. But my company has never failed to meet my payroll.
Is it all about the pot of gold? Is that why people put themselves through it? Can everybody working at a dot com right now actually *believe* in the mission of that company? Hell, some of them don't even have a mission. Many are pretty blatant about saying stuff like "Hang out and make a presence of ourselves for a year, and then get bought out." Everybody agrees that the work is hell, you're treated like crap, and you'll be lucky to ever see your stock options mature. So why do it?
My favorite was when one of our engineers left because "a buddy of his" (Joe Random Guy he knew at college) was creating a startup. What was their planned revenue stream? Didn't have one. what was the technology? NT boxen (this guy hated NT). Was there even a product? Not that he could explain to us -- something about enabling other people's web sites yadda yadda. Was he at least going as an officer or something? Nope, just a senior engineer. In other words, there was no reason at all for him to go except for the promise of some money (this was one of the ones whose plan was to simply exist until someone bought them). Within a month he was contacting other people at the company and trying to get them to join him. Within two months he was gone from that company and had joined another dot com. Of course, the new dotcom he joined was something called Akamai, so he's doing ok. :)
Duane
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
....
back in '99 while working my ass off for a company something like that happened, to me, came in in the morning, and didn't get in.
Apparantly the boss had a bit of a boiling point one night and decided that I costed more than I was worth (yeah right, guess he was high on drugs and alcohol again), and one of his brownnoses put a nice letter on the doort telling me that I was "outta there"...
Oh did I mention that guy never paid the money he still owed me, nor did I get my stuff back?
I shelf that under "life experience" and take it as business, took me 10 minutes to find another job at a company who wanted me for some time.
Some peoples (and companies) are asses, no doubt about it.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
The site www.networkcommerce.com runs Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4/Windows 98
NT4/Windows 98 users include Rainbow Technologies, Gillette and Burger King
Microsoft-IIS is also being used by Intel, Rainbow Technologies and Halcyon Software
-- I don't have a cool sig.
Once back when I was an angst ridden teen, I worked at a fine retail grocery chain... I was fired with just cause. Well 6 months later someone from there called me and asked me if I could fill in for someone. Needless to say I explained that I was no longer employed there. I hung up the phone and laughed for quite some time on that one.
On another note, my current company actually told someone that quit that their reasons for leaving were invalid and that the person was selfish for leaving. This was repeated several weeks later with another employee that left. Its great to work for a company with turnover approaching 70%.
Food: It's whats for dinner
I saw a few waves of layoffs outside the clean room. About November, there were hardly any electronic techs left. Even so, I was surprised when my turn came. I had my head stuck under the laminar flow hood of my workstation, trying to sort out the little screws and washers I needed, when my boss tapped me on the back and told me to follow him. I followed him around the clean room, where we picked up a few more people. He parked us in a hallway for a few minutes, then informed us that we were being layed off, and there would be a meeting we would need to attend the next week, so we could get our severance pay.
I was surprised when I arrived at the meeting. There were about 200 people layed off at that meeting, including some whom I hadn't expected to be cut until long after I was gone. The saddest sight to me was the frail woman who had served as receptionist and had to use a walker to get around; she was layed off along with the rest of us. I later heard that a month later, another round of 200 layoffs cleared out even more of the clean room.
About 5 years after my layoff, I returned to Garland, and I swung by the building where I had worked. It was completely vacant and locked, and weeds were growing out of the parking lot. Eventually, I found that the laser department had been sold to Litton; I don't know what Litton did with them.
I have thought about going back into the laser field (I have an AAS degree and a certificate in Laser Electro-Optic Technology), but my first and only experience wasn't very good, and I believe that computer technology has more potential for my benefit than does laser technology.
A lot of companies give no advance notice of termination; this is for security purposes. You can expect this kind of treatment at any job for which the employee handles critical or vital material that they could easily destroy. I'm not sure how that applied to us laser techs, though; I could understand it being true for Accounting.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
The company I worked for had been slowing losing money and had already done a round or two of lay offs. Being the only one trained to do my position (system security analyst), I was told that my job was safe and I didn't worry too much. I knew staying with them was a risk. They were suffering from "dotcom syndrome."
I left the evening of Dec 14th this year and took that following Friday off to go visit my family in Memphis and spend an early Christmas with them. The trip was a pain in the arse due to the bad weather all around the country, so I finally got there and rushed to see everyone I wanted then rushed back home to be at work Monday morning.
I got to work that morning from my extremely short vacation and no one said anything unusual to me. I sat down at my desk as I did every morning and proceeded to try to login to the network only to find my account was disabled. I sat there for about 15 minutes before my direct supervisor called me into her office and told me that a bunch of people were laid off Friday while I was gone and I was one of them. It still took at least 30 minutes before the HR guy called me into his office to tell me the same thing. THEN they twisted my arm into signing some screwed up restatement of my non-compete and other assorted items in order to get my medical benefits through January 15th and my vacation pay. They screwed me good.
I hooked up with one of the other people laid off who had been an assistant manager of Customer Service who told me that they had indeed known I was getting laid off on Thursday before I left. She had been told that she and I and a few other people were going to be let go that Friday. She had already packed up her desk. I'm not that upset about being let go, I just wish they had told me BEFORE I left for vacation so I wouldn't have bothered to rush back to be at work Monday morning. I could have stayed and spent some more time with my family and friends back home.
--
Shadowcat
ealasaid@cybergoddess.net
kageneko@kageneko.net
"I can roleplay. I can frag. I can PK while you lag."
As you say, access to guns is easy. Access to telephones is easier. You can actually talk to your employees when they aren't on the premises to begin with, so you don't need to escort them out like they're plague criminals. Firing someone over the phone may be cold and spineless, but it is better than sending some poor security guy to do it, and making everyone feel like dirt.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
Thanks god I don't live in such circumstances.
Thanks god I don't have to treat my staff this way. They're working hard, and have earned respect - otherwise they wouldn't have worked for me in the first place.
You people who think that the attitude expressed in the article and in most of the comments is normal are making me sick.
Joachim
People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]
I would bet there is a direct correlation between companies that follow these kinds of practices and companies that tend towards failure. This seems like pure cowardice to me. Companies and employees owe each other both at least that kind of respect. Is two weeks or equivelant really too much to ask? I guess I'm just upset about people leaving without giving notice and being thrown into their projects on top of my own. Although, admitedly being fired without being told would be much worse.
-"You'll have plenty of time to sleep when you're dead."
The one time I ever got fired, the manager waited around until after I left, then paged one of the junior admins and had her come back in and run a backup. Which was asinine, since a backup would have run automatically before I came in the next morning anyway.
I had left something at the office, so I dropped by to pick it up. I noticed her running the backup, and asked what was going on. She just said "I dunno, Mark said to take a backup."
So I went across the street to Wal-mart and bought some resume paper, and came back to my desk and printed a few dozen copies of my resume. Then I called my other junior admin and asked if he knew what was going on, and he said "Mark was acting all funny and asking questions about the backups".
Sure enough, next morning they fired me. I had a new job for 37% more money lined up before I got to my car.
It was about a week later when they called me asking how to recover their backups. Seems they deleted the documentation on that, and none of the junior admins remembered how to do it. I managed to stop laughing long enough to tell them it'd cost them $165 an hour if they wanted me to come recover a backup for them, and that they'd pay from the moment I left my driveway to the moment I left their office.
-
hmm Did I work with you?
sounds familar.
and it wasn't a .com, but the most amuzing termination experience I had was while working as a salesman for a oil field services company.
I was asked to drive to the office (which I never did since I worked on the road or from home). When I arrived I found the place padlocked and a guy from the bank there to take my company credit cards and car. They wouldn't even give me a lift back to town. They did finally let me use a phone in the office to call a friend for a ride.
IIRC, that article appeared in The New Yorker and was subsequently proven to be dishonest at best and at worst a complete fraud, since a relative of the author worked at the same company for a while and the author visited while the relative worked there. It's not like they just showed and up and pretended to work.
Not only because I'm in Manitoba but because I can't believe people do not know that their employers act in such a fashion.
I was fired from a tech job on a trumped up security violation (i was continually show'ing the system's guys how stupid they were and was too young to realize the position I put myself in). Was escorted out of building and fought the dismissal. After a nice long meeting with a manager and an explanation to said manager on how NT profiles work, my status was changed to "quit" and I told them where they could shove their apology. But from the recent stories I've been encountering (including this one) it looks like I got the Royal Treatment! (Of course that was at least 5 years ago).
"Survival of the fittest Max, and we've got the fucking gun!" - Pi
This approach to firing/laying off people is pretty typical. ICL of the UK did it to all 500+ employees in North America this past October.
It wasn't quite as abrupt but it boiled down to showing up at work, being told you don't have a job; and then being told to clean out your office and leave the building.
I think the approach in the article is expected as the consensus among the ex-ICL employees was that the shutdown wasn't being done in a "professional" manner because (1) employees had been allowed into the building to be told of the lay-offs, and (2) they had been allowed back into their offices (and the network) after hearing the news.
OpenSourcerers
I received email that I was fired on 9/30/96, but they sent notice to their email account which they cut off and wiptes, then reinstated.
In some states, there are laws that required wages be paid while employed. Now, if you are not paid for two weeks, but not told that you are fired, then are you still employed? Are you due the wages (and multiples under the payment of wages act) until they are notified by certified mail? email? fax? armed guards and automatic weapons?
Fight Spammers!
The Secret of My Sucuess
"We'll take you to a train station and by you a ticket to wherever you want to go" said the finance director.
"Fine" said I
We duly proceeded - with the finance director driving MY car - to Reading (UK) train station whereupon the finance director got out. I pretended to fiddle with my seatbelt and when he'd got out I clamped the security lock around the gear leaver and handbrake (stick shift and parking brake for our USAnian readers) and stuffed the key into my y-fronts.
It was childish I know but I had the greatest sense of release when I chucked they key out of the train window fifty miles north.
Ian
The manner of his firing disgusted me. He was talking to his wife on his honeymoon flight about the inadequacies of the customer site he was working at, and was overheard by one of their own staff. They complained and managed to get him dismissed.
The fact that the statments he made about this third-party were 100% true had nothing to do with it.
Heh. This is something that I've never done, but I know first-hand what the effect on customers would be.
:)
:)
How to fuck an ISP: Forge e-mail from root@ISP.com to all customers. Make sure you have every e-mail address listed in the "To:" or "Cc:" headers, so that everyone can see it was sent to everyone. Tell everyone in detail that you have hacked their server, what it means to have root access, how none of them are safe, and how you have complete control over the system, their accounts and passwords. Tell them that the company will do its best to lie to them that this is all just a prank in a desperate bid to keep them as customers.
Probably around 80% of their customers will ditch them right there. Probably 10% will realize the truth, and another 10% won't believe you.
Also, you don't want them to get new customers again, so you need to send rumours about the ISP being hacked to your local newspaper.
Of course, doing this (and getting caught) would probably result in criminal charges. So don't do it.
How do I know it would work? I was working tech support for an ISP once when some bonehead sent e-mail to all customers that said (and I quote) "Hacked by X0rg." People called in by the hundreds afraid that they had been hacked and in general were quite confused. Being specific in the e-mail would remove that confusion.
---
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Besides that, it was still an Honorable Discharge, even though it was for medical reasons. I was offered a discharge bonus, and got to keep all my benefits, including GI Bill. Accepting the discharge was the best thing I ever did, as I am expecting to graduate college with an electrical engineering degree this year.
Besides that, when has a .com ever fired anyone for being fat?
Have you americans heard of any kind of employment security... In Sweden, according to our laws all employees have the right to between one and six months notice before being fired (depending on how long you have worked). During this time you have the right to a full salary and so on... even if the employer doesn't have any work for you...
I've been on the other side of this, and firing people really sucks. Over the last 12 years I've done it to three people for cause, and to three other people (at one shot) because of events beyond my control (reorganization).
There's no easy way to do it. On the reorg, it was done professionally and was completely out of my control. Laid-off people were met at the door when they arrived and escorted to their work areas where boxes had been set up for them to pack their things. Then they were escorted to a holding area where HR lectured them on their options. The rest of the employees were sent to a central meeting area where the layoff actions and reasons were explained.
On the cause side, I'm not proud of my first effort. The guy turned out to be incredibly strange. He interviewed well, but when he started work he didn't seem to understand instructions, and he couldn't communicate with the other employees. After a few weeks he became upset and sullen. Nobody could understand what he was upset about. He didn't seem to understand or to be able to follow verbal instructions. Finally I gave him written instructions on what to do one week, and reviewed his progress at the end of the week. There had been none. So I gently told him I would have to let him go. He did not seem to understand. I repeated this about 6 different ways, but he still didn't seem to understand. Finally after about 10 minutes of this I completely lost it and just yelled at him, "HERE IS A BOX. GO TO YOUR DESK. PACK UP YOUR THINGS. GET OUT. CALL HUMAN RESOURCES TOMORROW. GET OUT NOW. GO." This is literally true. It was as ugly as you could imagine. Everyone was horrified (although sympathetic).
The second two firings (done together) I handled better. I had taken over an Engineering organization for a turn-around effort. I gave everyone tasks, and most people responded really well with great original ideas and enthusiasm. Two guys didn't seem to "get it", though. A more experienced manager urged me to fire them immediately. He said that on a turn-around effort, the people that aren't willing to turn things around stand in the back with their hands up (figuratively), saying "Please fire me." But I didn't listen, and kept giving them more chances. Finally after two months it became clear that they simply couldn't (or wouldn't) do their jobs, and I had to fire them. I met with them individually, and explained that I couldn't keep them on because they had not been able to accomplish their objectives. It was unpleasant, but I felt that I had given them every chance possible, so I could look them in the eye without flinching. So I felt that I handled it OK from a human perspective. From a business perspective, though, I really hosed up my schedule by keeping them on the payroll, because all their work had to be tossed and re-done by others. I should have taken the advice of the more senior manager.
No matter which way you cut it, firing people is hard and ugly and messy. Also many managers are avoidant -- they don't *want* any contact with the people they are firing. I think the right thing to do is to go face to face, regardless of what happens. Even if the employees are angry, and they probably will be, at least they will respect you later for having the guts to talk to them mano a mano and explain in detail why they're being let go. And you can keep your self-respect too, for being honest.
Like anything else, one learns by doing. A lot of people become "managers" way before they're ready. It's not surprising that they fuck up the hiring/firing process -- where were they supposed to learn how to do it? Business school? Don't make me laugh.
Where do you work, are they hiring, and can I get a job there?
If they owe you money and stole your stuff then sue em in small claims court for the wages. But first contact the Gov agency in charge of wages and compensation. Then contact the local police department and file a stolen property report for the personal belongings the company stole from you. List as know suspects the boss.
Some people worked hard the whole year, and then, right at the end, were told that they were fired. Many of the people that got fired were good, but each company decided that sacking large numbers of employees just before bonus time was the best way to increase its profits. Real trauma resulted.
On Wall Street, these things are much disliked, but accepted with the jobs.
____________________________
"... the microkernel approach was essentially a dishonest approach aimed at receiving more dollars for research. I don't necessarily think these researchers were knowingly dishonest. Perhaps they were simply stupid. Or deluded." --Linus Torvalds on kernel research by Computer Scientists (in Open Sources)
Alanis was god
Why a A Canadian I must ask. That was the only part of the movie that offended me as a practicing Catholic.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Maybe it's being used over at that ex-NSA site mentioned previously. The actual article itself mentioned:
:)
"Paperwork in the guard shack is held in place by a stapler though no one has been inside the small building in years."
Hmmmm - they were right - very X-Files
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Terry Pratchett, the source of all true wisdom. to extend on this, that phrase is actually from an old chinese curse
May you live in interesting times We (and the internet itself) are living in Interesting times indeed
Trav
Leg Godt!
Look, I know and have seen that managers can be terrible and do bad things, but what you've done is unacceptable. How do you justify this? This kind of thing leads to more of an escalation between employer and employee. How the hell do you expect to get any more respect at your company by doing this?
Nothing is better than God. Chicken is better than nothing. Chicken is better than God.
At a place I used to work at a while back, we had a phrase of "They're taking a holiday..." - this meant that they were being fired. Back in the early days of the company, a couple of people had experienced the situation where, upon return from a holiday, they find a letter under their door which reads "Don't bother coming back to work..."
No shit - hell of a way to come home...
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Here in Louisiana the State Constitution says that for every day an ex-employer delays paying you, they owe you another day's pay, up to 90 days' worth.
I worked for a nephew of the Long brothers (Huey and Earl, governors of ill-repute) and he was a total jerk. I don't get along with jerks that well, and after a month of working there, I guess he got tired of me not sucking up and shorted my pay by $122.50. When I asked him about it, he told me I was fired.
I got my lawyer uncle to find a local attorney who took my case, and the jerk ended up having to pay me $5000 when the judge got through with him!
Don't mess with the little guy (at least in Louisiana)!
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Asswipe has got to be the worst insult of all time. Seriously, it's just brutal. There should be a new Godwinn's Law type thing in which the first person to use the term "asswipe" instantly loses the insult contest and is set about with a brick for being so stupid.
And, of course, there's the time I worked for a place for six months *after* getting laid off - when the company moved most of their HQ out of town, it was apparently easier for Payroll to bulk-delete *all* the employees, and only reinstate the few that were staying. I never got reinstated. The Payroll monkeys just pushed the "Override" button every two weeks when the system griped that it was having to send a check to a terminated employee.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Just as the employee can quit anytime without notice, so too can companies fire you on the fly without notice.
So whats the Worst thing you did to get back at your former boss?
1. Run up the toll free 800 phone bill?
2. Remotely reboot the servers?
3. Post the radius passwords on usenet?
4. Cut the t1 on the side of the building?
5. Use a pin and poke the t1 cable (let them find the problem)
6. Take his/hers customers?
7. Become their boss?
8. Sleep with their spouse?
9. Spam the hell out of their private email accounts?
10. Subscribe them to every mailing list you can find? (root@ webmaster@ sales@ info@)
11. Sugar in the gas tank?
12. IRS?
13. 1-888-NOPIRACY
14. Post those drunken party pictures on yahoo personals?
"Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny." -Kim Hubbard
LOL, long live the BOFH!
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
I worked with a guy that had root account access. Naturally, his job required it.
Imagine my fear when he told me what he and several coworkers did at a previous job:
They had some sort of *nix machines for their personal development boxes. They set up root cron jobs that would wipe the hd at like 9am monday morning. So if they weren't there to disable it... WOOOM!
Happily, he left the company on a good note... he was doing some contracting work for one of our clients and they offered him a position as manager of their brand new datacenter. We let him go, and I was thrilled that it was on a positive note.
But I cannot even begin to tell you how carefully I searched for backdoors, bombs, etc. Didn't find any, but I was really scared for a while.
Failure is not an option.
Failure is not an option.
It comes bundled with Windows.
The "Dot-Com Gold Rush" was a myth.
Exactly.
:P
:)
:P
I was once fired in a similar fashion (had a message waiting on my answering machine from my temp agency and a box of my stuff sent after me), and three days later I had a better job making more money.
That doesn't excuse what happened at the previous job. And no, I didn't see it coming. The alleged reason I was let go concerned coming in late and leaving early, which I certainly hadn't made a *habit* of, though someone really anal could have made it seem that way. Here's what happened:
About a week prior, there was a loud altercation outside my window shortly after midnight. About when I had decided I might want to call 911, someone rang my bell to ask if my car was one of the ones vandalized by this strung-out teenager who was punching people's car windows out. It was. Between dealing with the police and dealing with the broken glass, I was up until about 3:30. The following morning, I overslept (not normal for me) and had to drive very slowly because I didn't have a left front window. I came in about two hours late, and no one in management noticed. I was careful to make up the time, even though a co-worker told me "don't bother, they won't care."
The following Friday, I had to get to school (about 40 minutes away from work) to pick up a parking permit before the office closed at 5. I usually worked 7:30-4:30 with a one hour lunch, and in the past there had been no problem with my taking a half-hour lunch and leaving a half-hour early. I couldn't FIND anyone in management to ask, so I just decided to do so, and recorded it on my timecard.
It was the next Monday that I came home to that message. I told the temp placement person the whole story, and a few other things about how bad that place was (like being unable to find people to sign my timecards), and like I said, had a better job with nicer people and more money in a better location three days later. And when that one ended (I was working for accountants and tax season was over), it took about a month to get another one, but I did some freelance work for an old boss and ended up in a pretty decent assignment that I can probably keep till I get sick of it.
I'm still pissed that the place I used to work let me go in that fashion, even though it was very much for the best. Money was a complete nonissue, there. But I'd never been fired before, their reasoning was a bunch of bullshit, and the way they handled it was horrible.
They did me a favor, though. Who wants to work for a place like that?
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I'm so glad this has worked for you. Since you are volunteering that you made 50k I'm sure you will remember to report it to the IRS this year. For your convenience I'm copying this message to the IRS also. Good luck avoiding an audit!
-- Solaris Central - http://w
My mother used to work for the state Department of Labor. Apparently, a certain computer company that employed a lot of people in upstate NY had a policy of "no layoffs", so they basically manufactured reasons to fire people, then tried to get their unemployment benefits denied due to the alleged "misconduct".
:)
If this isn't illegal it should be. I know, I know, I live in an at-will employment state, but it still sucks. And I was almost offered a job at said company. I'm so glad it didn't pan out.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
It seems to me that the company could just make a copy of the user's home directory -- if they delete everything, who would care? They just saved IT staff some time...
Personally, though, if the staff has the nerve to lay you off in such a cold manner, I'd stand behind someone who deleted everything they owned. If the IT staff doesn't care enough to back it up, or if their boss doesn't care about the work enough to keep a copy for themselves, who really cares? I'd figure that if you had some ultra-important research, it would not just sit on your local desktop...
________________________________________________
suwain_2
It isn't just floundering dot-com's that lay people off in a shitty way. When I wrote as a "former" employee of SAIR Linux/GNU Certification, I didn't give the details of why I was no longer with them. When I was hired on, I made sure it was okay with them if I took a summer internship and returned in the fall semester. They said that it was. One day, less than one week into my internship, I found myself unable to login to my e-mail there. Thinking it was just a problem with the system, I e-mailed one of the sys-admin's (Les Driggers) asking why my account had problems. He replied that I needed to talk to Lenny Sawyer. When I wrote him, I got the answer that "it came to light" that I was taking part in some inappropriate activity while I was at work. Was it porn? Hacking? Anything malicious? No, I was accused of doing homework. I was not on the clock, and they provided no proof on my doing this. When SAIR hires student workers, they make it clear that they do not mind if homework is done as long as it is not done on the clock. To this day, I have not received a formal letter stating, in detail, why I was terminated. They did not have the guts to tell a Sophomore in college that he was fired in person. They had to send it by e-mail. How weak is that? How does that reflect on their business? I know from bad experience that SAIR has no credibility.
...see you auntie
Perhaps the best things to do is to plant a self-destructive mechanism in your companies servers that will automatically go off on a certain date(s) if you don't tell it not to. That way, you're sure to get revenge. Just make sure you don't forget. You think it was bad forgetting your aniversary?
what was his name? murray or something?
hilarious.
And, uhm, my name is actually, uhm, Milton Wadams, and uh I was listening to my radio at a reasonable volume while I was collating, and uhm Mr. Lundberg comes in and takes my Swingline stapler, uhm I kept the Swingline stapler when they switched to the Bostich because it staples better and I have some extra Swingline staples, and uhm they moved my office again because it used to be by the w indow, and there were these two squirrels and they were married and...
Uh, thanks Milton, but I have to go.
--Joe(PS. Laugh. If that wasn't funny to you, you probably haven't seen Office Space yet. Rent it. Now.)
--
Program Intellivision!
I can't believe you are saying that. Read what I wrote -- I never said they shouldn't have fired her. But, since a blind person has disadvantages, they should give her the help she needs.
Sheesh!
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Yes, but, while IANAL, I wouldn't think that a company that is gobbling up others would fall under the first two assumptions.
(1) If a business is "faltering," how can they swing the loans to purchase others? I am presuming loans were required as they are not profitable, and thus are not likely to have tons of ready cash on hand.
(2) Whe you swallow other copmpanies whole, part of what you get is staff. From the sound of it, current employees were being made redundant by management in favor of employees from the purchased companies. Most likely, the contracts involved contained language guaranteeing the jobs of the employees of said purchased companies, so the cuts had to come from the employees of the purchaser. There is no way in hell this could be "unforeseen."
IMO, keeping in mind that IANAL, these people have a VERY strong unfair practices case. Even if there is 60 days worth of severance pay being given, which the article doesn't mention, this is still gross misconduct on behalf of the management, and they really should be brought up short. Treating people like shit is not a good business practice.
Anybody have a list of businesses that this place owns or is involved in? They are prime candidates for the Capitalist Death Penalty. (Not buying a fucking product or service from them, and making a strong but polite case to others, businesses and the government not to purchase from them.)
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I work at Toys R Us, and a favorite way to fire employees is to throw their timecard away, so you end up coming in to work on a day you were scheduled and you're just not able to punch in. I think it's a pretty prick-ish way of doing things. At least give someone warning, ya know?
If you don't like it, fight me.
One of the funniest ones I remember was when some dotcom wanted to announce their layoffs and invited their staff to a meeting at the balcony(!). Why choose such a venue is anybody's guess but this was a feeding ground for many crude and utterly funny jokes on FC.
At my job before this one, I came back from vacation, worked that friday (came back on a thurs) and then monday, my laptop was taken off my desk and my network connection pulled. Then, after I tracked down my boss, he told me they were firing me because I left a computer on over vacation. (I had 8 on my desk, you miss them sometimes) Two weeks later, an old vendor of mine calls me and tells me the 80 person company is down to 12 people.
Their stock was already plummeting, so I decided to exact revenge for such a lame layoff, and turned them in for pirating software and got them audited....they had been using a crack for their Checkpoint firewall software....all 8 firewalls. The succeeding fine and licensing fees hurt, I bet.
Companies suck.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
I have worked for a couple of places where the laid-off and fired "just vanish" and/or little or no notice is given.
When I worked doing database programming, amyone fired would just not be seen again. (This place was incredibly paranoid and for good reason. They were hypocritical bastards.) And you knew that if someone was one of the "disappeared" that you did not ask about them, or you might get the same fate.
One contract I worked on, I was told the system had crashed that morning before I got to work. I dialed in and found that the passwords had been changed. Guess what? Yep. Informed the moment I walked in the door. (I asked too many embarasing questions to the new PHMis director.)
Most places where the management is suffering from paranoia that the workers are out to get them seem to manage in this way. Those are the places that are stressful just walking in the door. (I can remember getting blamed for a system crash when I walked in the door. I had not worked there for months and they had no dial-in. Ironically, I knew who was doing it and told them repeatedly. They would not believe me because he wore a suit and played the kiss-up game. He was hacking in file pointers into the middle of kernel VM memory and crashing the machine.)
I learned a long time ago that if an employer does those kinds of things when you leave, get out on your timetable and quick. Companies that do that to employees as they leave are also willing to screw with you for other petty reasons on a whim. (To understand the reasons behind this, find a good book on primate behaviour.)
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Speaking from experience, employees sometimes have their security clearance (keycards, network login, etc) revoked before being informed of their termination to reduce the risk of retribution to the company.
Happened to me once, too. The company profit-sharing plan was keyed to the departmental expenses and I was highly paid and had just finished my latest project at the start of the last quarter approached. So the boss who had inherited me (third since I'd been hired) dumped me. I got my first hint when my PPP link didn't work when I tried to check mail before coming in. (It wasn't a security thing - they let me clean out my account and my desk unsupervised. It was just "the way things are done".)
After the end of the year said boss quit, along with the most of the remainder of his department, and started a new company (much to the annoyance and bottom-line damage to the OLD company). A couple months later he called me up and wanted me to consult for his new enterprise. After he'd surprise-fired me at the old shop and then hadn't invited me to be among the founders of the new? Fat chance!
At an auto company's engineering department a couple decades ago I saw what happened when two consultants come to blows. Security had them off the premesis inside of ten minutes. (Took that long because it was a BIG site.) They were permanently banned from the company and their desk contents were packed and shipped to 'em. You DON'T lay hands on co-workers in that industry.
Funniest one was the time Amdahl pulled the plug on Key Labs. Came in that morning to find a sign on the door: "Will build mainframes for food." (Amdahl let the people at Key keep their offices and email for a month or so while they job-hunted.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I quit my .com after half the staff got laid off. My boss was real understanding and now I know why. They never intended to give me my last paycheck! So the 15th roles around no paycheck. They tell me it's in the mail. Finally they admit to me that it's not coming. What do I do? I'm still trying to get my money. If any of you have ideas I would appreaciate it. (By The Way I'm an independent contractor so my situation is a little speacial). Just goes to show that you have to watch out becasue some companies just want to stab you in the back.
Speaking of Chinese, if their relationship with the U.S. ever sours to the point of war, we could just send 7 octogenarian commandos over to take over the whole country.!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The company mentioned in the title also has a practice similiar to this. If you come to work one day and find that you login to your station, it means you're fired. Taima does tech support for over a dozen different ISPs, such as NetZero, Rogers@Home, and RoadRunner.
You get fired... are never told... and continue working for months..
Let's enhance this horror story...
Lets say every few weeks the computer keeps nocking the e-mail out... a co-worker is a prick and keeps disabling the e-mail.. So you get the Sysadmin to install a script that checks and reinstalls a script that runs once every 6 hours to check and see if your e-mail is valid.. if not reinstall... (Don't do this right away or the prick employee will just disable the script)
Now... say the card reader is flaky.. no accually the card reader is fine your card is fragged.. HR won't issue you a new one.. so a friend let's you in every day...
The company cell phone is a kludge.. you gave it back to HR and got your own.. the company dosn't like it but screw them... You want personal phone calls anyway and they won't let you... (Reasonable if they are footing the bill)
You walk in and the card crashes and your e-mail is disabled all at the same time.. Big deal.. this happend before..
Of course given this horror story what you do is you write a newspaper artical.. make some money... and get a better job...
(Obveously this never happend to me)
I don't actually exist.
The other strange coincidence is that she talks about working at a construction company, just like Ron Livingston ends up doing at the end of the movie.
eunuchs, hehehe
idiot
I worked for a dotcom (a gaming network mentioned on /. today actually) and was mysteriously fired as well. One friday, I was out sick. I had no home phone and my cellphone was at the office, so I sent word with two friends that I would not be in that day. Having two weeks vacation saved up and considering my stance there (I worked 80 hours weeks and was grossly underpaid), I thought absolutely nothing of it.
:)
Later that day, I get a call from a friend letting me know that the CEO and my boss were going through my desk and took alot of my stuff upstairs and locked it in a room. This included a computer I owned that happened to be at the office. I was told by coworkers that they said what I did was a "malicious act". Hehe.
I couldn't get my computer until Monday, three days later. I went in that morning to pick it up, and the HR person tried to physically stop me from going upstairs to get it, insisting that I first had to sign some papers and meet with them. I took my machine (while four people hung over me like prison guards) and signed absolutely nothing. I hung out in the parking lot a while talking to shocked coworkers. Eventually the CEO came out and told me I couldnt loiter in his parking lot.
I received nothing saying I was being fired. No phone call, no letter, nothing. That night I had a friend let me in the office afterhours so I could get my belongings that were not locked away. I also printed a letter of resignation and left it on the CEO's desk. As far as I'm concerned, I quit.
I suspect they found out I was going to quit anyway (I had interviewed at Amazon.com and Disney that same week already) and were just looking for a reason to get rid of me. Why? I had alot of stock, and it vested a week later. We all know what dotcom stock is worth right? Needless to say I was not upset.
I now work as a webmaster for a software developer, and I have to say, I have never been happier or healthier. I get paid nearly twice as much, I strictly work nine-to-five, the people there are friendly, professional, and experienced, and there is no stress. Hell, I even have the makings of a social life again!
My advice to everyone in a dotcom startup is to seriously examine your situation and consider moving to a more traditional and stable environment. You might be surprised how much better it can be.
Or the stapler. Those Swingline staplers are worth their weight in gold;-}
When people use 'em at our office, I can't help laughing.
Still, much funnier in the movie than real life. Fucking bastards. Hopefully someone can nail them to the wall for this.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
2? Unforseeable? Anyone who didn't see the dot-com crash coming had his head stuck up where the sun don't shine. Do any of these companies have a business plan that involves taking in enough money to meet expenses?
No doubt they'll try to invoke 1) or 2), but who'd believe it?
And the brethren went away edified.
All I can say is treat the company how they treat you and your co-workers. In my opinion, the right way to fire someone is in a personal manner. The manager should call in the worker to be terminated for a one-on-one meeting for notice of termination. Although its tough for the manager to do, the employees is still treated as a human being. To fire someone via e-mail, voicemail, fax, etc.. is callous, cold, and dehumanizing. It treats workers as a simple commodity like milk or bread.
Now, I should point out I am a very loyal worker. However, if I saw one of my co-workers get the ax in a cold manner which they did not deserve I would immediately start looking for another job. I want a job where my company respects me and I respect my company, and you can bet your ass I wouldn't give them my two weeks. Instead, I would leave at a pivotal time in a project and then tell them my reasons for leaving at that time. So companies everywhere.. always remember the golden rule. Your employees are your most prized asset.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
The company I worked for was "merged" with a Fortune 500 company. A couple of weeks after the merger was final, my manager handed me a sheet of paper ~8:30. It said to gather essential personal belongings (keys, med., etc) and proceed to X conference room on X floor. Once there you were told whether you got to stay or not. Those that were canned were escorted to the door en masse. They were allowed to come back on Sat. to gather any remaining belongings. A very intense week for everyone. None of the remaining employees knew if the person they were calling was away from their desk or canned.
Apparently, this procedure was suggested by the "merger consultants" CSC!
I was informed in advance that our payroll clerk was being sacked, and that I'd be contacted to disable her login.
I was contacted later that day by the HR Director, who gave me the green light. This is NetWare, BTW, and when I disabled her account the server started bitching that she wasn't logged out (and sending the message to her PC). No problem, they probably forgot to tell her to log out.
Needless to say I felt pretty crappy when the CAO called ten minutes later to tell me they were about to go and meet with her.
The worst part, though, is that one of the employees laid off was BLIND. Yes, BLIND. They fired a blind lady. She had worked for the company 13 years. Fired her dog, too.
She had text-to-speech software on her machine that was owned by her personally and had taken me quite a while to install. It had a floppy disk copy-protection scheme that required you to move the key back on to the disk when uninstalling it, so I had to go up to her desk and remove the key for her. They had called her a cab, but NO ONE was around to carry her things, which included a braille scanner (heavy as hell) and several boxes of books and papers. So it fell to me to go get a cart, load it with her stuff, and escort the blind woman and her dog outside and wait for her cab.
I'd like to say I went right back inside and quit on principle, but I waited two weeks so I could take all my vacation time and get my bonus.
--
PaxTech
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
I thought I had heard of these guys - "Network Commerce, Inc" - recently.
They just acquired the domain registrar Registrars.com last week, per this press release.
According to Network Commerce chairman and CEO Dwayne Walker:
"We believe this is an important addition to our technology infrastructure business. We also believe this will be another avenue for expanding our database of registered customers."
Wonder what it'll do for their database of employees...
First Ericsson decided to get rid off my (expensive) category of employees, so I was given 6 months notice. 2 months later they decided to close down the company, and gave everyone 3 months notice.
I also have 2 brothers who are not related.
I was a PC Technician for Best Buy for about 2 1/2 years, back when I was about 16. I worked summers and December as a seasonal employee, but actually ended up running the department because five out of the five full time managers they brought in to be my 'supervisor' were fired, and that long before the true measure of their ineptitude became apparent to anyone but their co-workers.
BR>My last summer there, I went to punch in my first day back and got a strange error code. "Your file is probably just screwed up," said the manager. So I simply kept manual track of my time and submitted my paperwork at the end of every single shift for two months.
Only, when payday came around, I didn't get paid. I complained at the beginning of July, and they called the big head HR place and informed me that I had been terminated back in January due to a corporate directive that Best Buy could not hold over more than 4 seasonal employees from Christmas, and I had not been one of those four. Not only had I not been notified, but I had been working for 6 weeks before we even found out.
Fortunately, I got along well with everyone there and they promised to straighten it out; it was, they said, a violation of the policy for me to be working there, but they would not go back on their word that they gave me and so they kept me on until the end of that Summer. I hadn't been paid because payroll wouldn't issue a paycheck to a terminated employee. So they said to just submit my hours manually (As I had been doing) and I'd get paid. Another pay period went by, and still no paycheck. Turns out that they'd lost all of my paperwork and had no idea how many hours to pay me for. Put in that position, they said to me 'Well, tell us how many hours you worked.'
This would've been a good opportunity for justice, but I did my best at beind honest and it turned out okay. If a bit embarassing for them.
I was in college by then, and they still had a policy that they couldn't re-hire me seasonally, so I left after that.
Places like Best Buy need college-educated employees; they could've kept a loyal employee, but instead they went their usual route of hiring a new batch every few months, after the last batch is fired or quits.
i got hired by c|net way back, once, to be a tester. i filled out the application, got called in for an interview, and was told i was hired. i waited a few days but didn't hear anything so i called in to find out what was up. it was impossible to get ahold of the guy who had hired me so after a week i just took a different .com job. Ah, the bay area...
unfortunately i got no severance pay out of the deal.
At my former employer, people would do just the opposite. Rather than resign any old time of the year, they waited til end of January, took their bonus, and then resign. Given the high yearly turnover, the effect was quite noticable...
Say no to software patents.
hire yourself without telling. There was a hysterical article in the New Yorker a while ago, about this guy who waltzed into a .com company, got past the security guard, and picked out a cubicle for himself. Over the next few days, he got himself setup with a phone extension and a computer, despite never being hired or knowing anyone. Acording to him, nobody there knew what was going on, and people showing up, and vanishing with no explaination was completely normal. He wasn't getting paid for his time there, but he got a productive setting to do his own work, and he got free food. The article sounded so bizzare that I wondered if it was true, but a week later I saw a small note in the paper, that the author of that article had been called to task, because he made up one encounter in the story, and he didn't disclose that his mother had previously been an employee of that company, so I assume the rest of it was true.
------ Work is so much easier when you don't
IIRC, Amazon still hasn't turned a profit and is still riding on the fact that it provides a really good service. But stockholders won't wait forever.
Yahoo is valued greater than GM, that bubble's gonna burst.
Ebay's starting to realize that people can circumvent them and deal directly with each other.
AOL is just so big, it ain't going nowhere.
CDNow, which I frequent as a customer is in big trouble from what I've heard.
So three out of these 4 companies are on potentially shaky ground, and even if they and other well-established businesses continue to succeed, for each success story there are a thousand failures.
A lot of those businesses that are pouring massive resources into a Web presence are going to learn the hard way that once the novelty wears off (and it hasn't yet), they might be saddled with an expensive operation that isn't paying off.
Companies are starting to run out the leeway they had from the buoyant market and are now facing the reality that ad revenue, upon which many, many content providers rely just isn't there.
I think the Internet bubble burst is just starting. Many will die, a few will survive. The stock market may tank more (at least the stocks... and there's the supposed Economic Slowdown (TM) looming).
The Internet won't go away, but how it works economically might change drastically in the next few years. I think it will be very interesting to see what happens. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett by way of the Chinese: We are living in interesting times.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.