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Improving Company Morale?
Undaar asks: "I work as a developer for a web development company. We were pretty hard hit (as were many companies that do what we do) by the "economic down-turn". The company went from over 500 people to under 200 in under two years. It's more stable now, but people are consistently laid-off. Consequently people feel like they always have to look over their shoulder to avoid getting fired. Most lunches are spent complaining about lack of enjoyment/challenge from the job and the fact that upper-management seems not to understand what we do. Employers: what have you done to improve employee morale in your company? As an employee, what can I do to improve the morale in the people I work with? How can I make my work environment more enjoyable? What kind of constructive suggestions can I take to management so that they can help improve the situation?"
Heck, The free lunchs I get are perfect for my morale.. yummm.. (donair on friday)
People that are happy at work tend to be better workers, so letting them use the internet and phone for some personal business during work can be a "good thing." That's not to say they should be allowed to surf for porn all day, but looking a few websites outside of business during 9-5 can help.
Also, be flexible with work hours. Not everyone needs to work the same 9-5. Let departments figure out their own policy and be flexible with workers.
Whores. Lots and lots of whores.
And don't be stingy with the cocaine, either.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
It's gonna be like this, in our job market at least, for a while. Hopefully not too long...!
"Firings will continue until morale improves"
;)
- The Management
Sorry, couldn't resist
-- Gxis! Ed.
Two years ago I wrote this: Management Techniques of the Bottom 95% of U.S. Corporations.
:)
Just take all the advice and reverse it.
I'm in a similar situation. Our company has had some layoffs, nobody who was a valuable employee in engineering was laid off, however.
Our management is bad, their management is mediocre, and the management at the top is terrible.
How do we fix our morale?
The one thing which has helped me is realizing that management isn't always the enemy. Some of them are stuck in the same shitty situation as you, the engineer, are. Others are trapped by their own management. And yes, some of them are just rotten, but don't blame the messenger, but usually, don't blame his/her boss either!
If there isn't enough challenging work, and people are getting laid off, find another job. That's sure to raise morale.
I work for a software dev company down
here in O.C. It's the same way here.
The way I relieve my stress is applying
for better jobs and talking more sh!t
about management and their crappy decisions
that landed up the company in this situation.
what have you done to improve employee morale in your company? As an employee, what can I do to improve the morale in the people I work with? How can I make my work environment more enjoyable?
I left and went to another company with people that are happy. Much happier when I recognized that I couldn't steer a ship from the White Star Line with a paddle. Just not possible.
If the company intends to screw everyone after finishing a couple pieces to make a liquidation plausible, then it's pretty cold to try to improve morale if you know something horrible's about to go down.
Just fire all the troublemakers as an example to others. Morale will skyrocket. ;-)
I work for the city goverment (NYC) and I can tell you right off the back its not what you know its who you know.. sometimes you just have to buckle down and kiss ass I know it doesnt sound like the moral thing to do but usually the bosses snitch/bitch usually rides the boat the longest.. Just start smooshing with upper management this is a cut throath market everyone wants your job!! get to know more people of higher status than you in the company.
- I came I saw I Conquered
These people should be glad they're able to find work at a job that cannot really be considered manual labor. Be glad it's not the depression. Be glad it's not a factory line job.
In short: Look on the bright side.
"In fact I know this place called Mary-Anne's Hammocks - the nice thing about it is, Mary-Anne gets in the hammock with you! Hahah, I'm just kidding, Homer."
Hank Scorpio rules.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
Get a new job you whiner. Some of us would be happy to have a job to complain about.
#1 *ALWAYS LOOK FOR A BETTER JOB*.
That is, until you find a job where you don't feel you have to look over your shoulder and wonder why management doesn't get it. When management doesn't get it, there's usually no way to fix it. It becomes entrenched in the fabric of the company.
There is only one way for such a company to change--promote from within. This brings up the people who already understand the business PLUS understand the real-world problems faced by the little employees. But such companies rarely do this. They usually hire outside people who have no clue as to what goes on day-to-day. And they keep crapping on their own employees.
I really recommend looking for another job. If jobs in your area are scarce, then think about moving. Being flexible always provides better opportunities. I know the job market is tough right now, and I would not like to be looking for a job. But I've been in that situation many times. And there is not much hope for this type of a company. Unless they promote from within and start investing in their current employees, rather than try to find the next replacement manager who is going to solve all problems, there really is no hope.
Also, all employers should have incentive programs that are based on performance. If your employer does not offer such incentives--even something as little as free movie tickets for the top-performing departments based on measurable results (like lines of checked code, or # of support issues resolved and verified)--then it is another sign of problems with management.
---gralem
Read this. The leader in your company should be the first to take on long hours, pay cuts, all of the worst jobs. Set the example for your employees and most importantly, do it with a smile on your face.
This guy is way out there
It's going to be very hard in your present situation. A ping pong table or lunches aren't going to cure the problem: that you've been laying off in stages, causing people to believe that more stages are yet to come. My only suggestion is to open the books a lot, to let people know that you are cash flow positive and that they don't have anything to worry about. If you aren't cash flow positive, then make another cut, but cut very deeply, deeply enough to get the company in a survivable state, and then open the books.
If you can't cut, then you'll need to readjust salaries. DON'T OVERPROMISE. Don't say things like "you'll take a cut here, but when things get good you'll get this kind of bonus" and then later make projections like "we'll be doing well by 3Q03." People remember this shit and when you don't follow through, every promise you make is suspect.
If you don't do something drastic, what will happen is this: the best developers will find a new job fairly quickly for today's economy (about two months). You'll be stuck with the worst ones: the inarticulate, the inexperienced, and the difficult to work with. And then your company will really suffer.
-no broken link
Optimal experience comes from "flow". See http://www.debateit.net/improvethought/flow1.htm
In a company/team setting this means having shared challenges that are overcome by the working together. If an assignment isn't inherently challenging you can try to find ways to make it a game.
By contrast morale isn't developed by free food, foosball, ping pong, beer on Fridays, etc. Those things might make it more fun to be at work, they can reinforce the bonds in a team, but they don't make doing the work any more fun.
No, seriously. That really helps at my company. Granted, it's only a small company of around 30 people, but every last Friday of the month (and occasionally others) they bring us beer and sometimes margaritas. Everyone hangs out in the kitchen and lets off some steam and it really does help. There's usually leftovers too, so my friend and I sneak back there about 15 minutes before quitting time on other days and have our own little party. Several times the owners have walked past on the way to the bathroom and occasionally they join us.
I read an article about 10 years ago which was about some guy in Brasil, I think it was, whose rubber company was about to go down the toilet financially. So he went to his workforce and said "Here's the situation - we're up shit creek financially, either I make half of you redundant, or we take half pay, until the situation improves - you decide" and put it to the vote. The workforce apparently decided on the half pay option, but productivity soon improved and they could afford to pay their old salary. The guy went on to experiment with introducing worker democracy on a wide scale - salaries, job descriptions etc. and apparently the company became very successful. I've always thought that sounded like an interesting idea, has anyone else heard of this?
I reserve the right to be wrong.
You can't compensate for customers that don't buy anymore. But you can give the company some kind of purpose - so that people don't feel lost anymore.
A manager could redefine the company so that people see a future for it. It could specialize. People could get trained so that a department becomes better and better. Such a specialization could even help when the layoff go on, because it will improve the chances for a new job.
Even a low level employee could help building such a view. Try to find collegues gor exchanging ideas and build your own "center of excellence". With a sense of purpose and collaboration even mediocre employees can achieve good results - provided the motivation is there.
Assuming that such things as more money and raises are out, due to budget constraints, you tend to have two options:
1) Small gestures. If you're a project leader or some other type of manager, take the people who report to you out for lunch whenever a milestone is successfully passed. Or provide free soda. It won't cost that much, compared to, say, the cost of training a replacement. For some companies, it could also be being flexible on the hours slightly (so that people could come in an, and leave, an hour earlier or later). Or allowing them to play Unreal Tournament after business hours. (This may not be a good fit for all companies, though.)
2) Keeping them included. If something's happening, the employees are going to be hear about it. They can hear about it through the official means, or they can hear about it through rumors. It's better to hear it through official channels; otherwise, rumor-mongering just goes up. If people are going to get laid off, you're much better off being upfront about it -- there'll be uncertainty either way, but at least there won't be the idea that management is hiding something. If possible, present the news with alternatives (see if anyone is willing to work part time instead). The important thing is to let them feel like they have some small amount of control, as opposed to being subject to the whims of fate.
Obviously you haven't been getting enough floggings.
I know the secrets of the video game champs
There is an art to managing technical people that makes them feel like their brain is wanted, and their strong, peon-labor back is not the most important part.
Here are some helps:
If you assume you know the market better than your technical people, all you'll do is torque them off. Programmers usually know the software market pretty well. They at least can tell the difference from a quality product and a lame one -- something most business people can't seem to figure out.
If you have to do lame, per-hour contract jobs (ie, SBIR), make sure the people who actually put in the hours get a bit of hourly income in addition to their normal pay. In other words, the management doesn't deserve the Gov's money when I did all the labor for it. And again, nothing motivates people to peon labor like money.
Free beer. Done deal.
1) Stop laying people off. If you have to make sacrifices, then make them accross the whole oragnization, temporary pay cuts, etc.
2) Management should make an effort to understand the work that the people are doing.
Ultimately morale is usually tied to a sense that the company is going in a positive direction and that the smallest underlings are appreciated. You can't fake morale. Company picnics or group bonding experiences are poor substitutes for a real sense of cohesion.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Treat your people like professionals, not children. Tell them what you need them to do by when (set reasonable expectations, not impossibilities), tell them what their assets and resources are, and then leave them the hell alone to work. Don't hold enless status meetings, don't hassle them about what hours they're working, etc. If someone's struggling or not doing their work, you'll have to deal with that, but don't treat that as the default situation.
My last "bad" company was constantly under deadline pressure. My development VP responded to this my having daily status meetings, wasting an hour a day restating what was happening and getting status info that he could have gotten automatically if he'd just learned to use the damned change tracking system. They'd also give you shit if you tried to go home before 9 PM (even if your work was done; you should be "testing or something"). What did I learn there? Treat people like irresponsible children and that's how they'll act.
So, basically, don't overmanage and don't be a dick. Treat your people with respect that you'll get it in return.
There's one more thing I'd suggest, but in my experience this is either something you're good at or something you're not: I'm a firm believer in team building, but in an informal way -- when you go to grab lunch, ask your people to come with you. If you're going to grab a beer after work, invite your people along. In my experience, this works great and has a lot better effect than going to Dave & Busters once a quarter or something.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Perhaps your company already works this way, but my company gives it's workers a lot of freedom. I come in and leave as I please, with no fear of reprisal. This leaves me relaxed in the office, and I have never resented by bosses because of it.
;)
Another tip is to take your co-workers out to a bar
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Our company's engineering department runs an annual "coding contest" with a nice prize or two. Last time, teams of two had two days to build the fastest-running solution to a series of problems.
It sounds kind of gimmicky, but there's apparently nothing like a little competition and a prize to get the software engineers' blood pumping. It was really all the discussion about the problems before and after that was so great... it did a lot to get different groups of people talking like they never had before.
It worked brilliantly as a team-building exercise for engineers. Heh, and maybe it helped the management spot the engineers crazy enough to spend the time on the contest, and win.
Random and capricious firings, demotions, reorganizations, and project cancellations help. So do bamboo canes. I would also look into 50% pay cuts for anyone who isn't management. Keep the staff isolated from each other and the outside world, make sure no one knows how the company is really doing in presales negotiation or postsales execution, and then you'll have a really tight rein on them.
Oh yeah, mustn't forget Gestapo-like surveillance techniques and frequent reminders that you don't trust your employees not to squander company time and resources! Crack down hard on anyone who likes to mail jokes around, block access to humor sites and job-boards, and occassionally reject or alter outbound mails "by accident". Finish this off by identifying your employees by number first, name second -- a login and email address like jc7385@company.com really lets them know how much you care.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
Is Just to Fire all of the unhappy people
First off, I'd _allow_ and/or _encourage_ Geek activities (This _is_ a Geek workforce we're talking about, no?). Say, maybe you could have an after hours LAN party? And of course you'd need to allow /.ing, etc, during work hours. of course, not to excess.
Also, assure the rest of them (Falsely or not) that their jobs are secure, that the company needs them, etc etc. THis tends to be important. Also, reward productivity. Maybe $50 for a good worker? Not expensive, but it will boost moral.
Hope this helps!
When a boss needs to cut things to show he's ding things to keep costs under control, he invariably heads for 'the little things' first. Like that espresso machine. Or the supply of bottled water. Or Mountain Dew. In many cases these are what employees will consider made the place 'livable', and when the perceived quality of life drops, morale soon goes out the door as well. Especially when all the old guys tell all the new guys "Back in the day we had blah-di-blah blah"
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
I worked for a company that dot-comed in a blaze of glory, but even through the layoffs we managed to keep morale relatively high by simply showing the employees that we valued them.
I was a low level manager in the NOC and found that by keeping the employees up on what was going on in the big picture, allowing them to have input in some of the decisions which directly impacted them, and not being afraid to roll up my sleves and work side-by-side with them they respected me more and were always willing to go the extra mile for me. The most detrimental thing to their morale were the company meetings where the C*O's tried to rah-rah the troops with buzzwords and press releases. People like to feel as though they have some controll over thir future and they know that upper management is the proverbial irresistable force, so keep them away from that and help them focus on the things they can change for the better.
In short the best thing for morale is the respect of your direct manager and as little of the corporate crap as possible.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -RAH
Then get on the company PA system and tell everyone to fuck off, especially your boss
People see layoffs.. takes YEARS and new policies and management..possibly NEVER, to improve company morale. It would ALWAYS be in the back of my head.
Having problems with negative talk during lunches?
Get rid of the lunch breaks! If your local labor laws won't alow that, then just make sure each employee has a different lunch time. You may have to vary start times to fit them all in, but that is why the day has 24 hours.
People complaining around the water cooler?
Remove the water cooler! If the local health laws require a source of water, then intall a money collection device. People will think twice about gathering around for a BS sessions if it costs them $.25 a swallow.
Negatiove E-mails making the rounds on your corporate network?
Are their computers REALLY needed?
Isn't web development really more of an artistic thing? I think only one person would really need to have a computer, the rest can just draw there ideas on paper with crayons and submit them to the guy with the computer for entry. And those silly PHP or Perl monkeys spend WAY too much time changing code, tweaking , degugging and stuff. I think most bugs are there because they are not careful or they are poor typists. You could hire a touch typists from you local high school to enter all their code for the day in the evening. Tha way they would be sure to be accurate the first time. Your empyees will be so busy they won't have time to have morale.
You are correct in your assumption that lay offs cause bad morale. NEVER LAY OFF EMPLOYS! Alway make thier job so horrible, so degrading, so painful that they just quit. It will save you a bundle on unemployment fees and severence packages. If you planned ahead you are allready located in an area like Utah, that has a horribly depressed tech sector so a few employees will stay because they know that the only other oppurtunity is flippiung burgers at McD's.
~Z
I think the key to enjoying work is to love what you do. I work for a startup and absolutely enjoy what I do, which includes creating, designing and documenting wireless communications systems. Sure, the pay could be better, and sometimes I wish that the company was better funded, but I think what I get from work is more than just a paycheque. I get to do things that I want to do, and work on special projects where I see I can make an impact. And that has made all the difference.
So what can employees do to make their working experience beter? How abou finding opportunities in your own position where you can make a contribution. How about finding a different job that you like and where you can do what you want to do? If there aren't any positions around, find new opportunities for your skills and experience and start your own business. Everyone has special skills and knowledge that are applicable to the marketplace. The important step is finding and indentifying these opportunities.
I figure I've been quite lucky in the grand scheme of things to be where I am, and I acknowledge that. However, I think that we all can do our part to find work that is stimulating and rewarding.
Kahil Gibran in his piece "The Prophet" wrote that "Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy."
Gibran continues, "For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine."
The key to enjoyment at work is to find a place where you can do what you love to do. And that in turn will enhance your morale.
These are the good old days you'll be telling your children about. Make them worthwhile.
Isn't that only until the next quarterly report?
If you are unhappy in your job. Quit and then make your own future. The companies need their employees when they all start quiting to do their own thing maybe they will learn. Or more to the point, hopefully they will cease to exist. Remember all companys are run by morons.
First, I agree with you totally. However, beoynd the web development/+5 years java experience/visual basic etc. etc. market, there exists a seedy underbelly to the IT world. That is the land of Legacy Systems.
There exist systems so large and arcane, that it takes a developer the better part of a calendar year just to understand some basics of how the system works (and I've seen others struggle for longer). There is ADA. There may be FORTRAN. And there is a whole lot of assembler.
These are systems that have their own operating systems written on top of the operating system. These have components that average 100,000 lines of code each- with another 100,000 lines of code for the test harness. Now multiply that by 12 support components. And we haven't even gotten to the actual APPLICATIONS that run on top!
For projects like these, management does have to watch their back. They don't have lots of money to keep useless developers on, but once a new project ramps up they say 'oh, we need developers who have a lot of experience with our system' hahaha! Hire back those guys you fired!
It is companies like these (think: big ol' gov't contracts) that have to play this dancing game of shelling out some money for pizza every now and then to keep people happy because if they let go of everyone now (or piss them off enough so they leave), they won't be able to staff up in time when the new projects come, and they won't be able to complete the new projects (because they are aggressively scheduled) and they never make a dime on new projects again.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
First off, if the company continues to lay off people in round after round, don't keep your head in the sand because you could be next. Be sure and have some feelers out for a new place to go NOW if it all possible...who knows, you could end up with a better job.
I've worked at places like you described. Unless the company, or at the very least, your immediate management itself commits to making it a better place to work, it's not going to happen.
Things the company can do (not in any order here):
1) Free drinks
2) Flex time
3) Comp-time for overtime work
4) Food brought in
5) Lighten up on the dress code
6) Flexibility on web access
7) Promotions.... even if it's just in title
8) Explain what the hell the plan is.
9) Increased vacation time
Things the company should NOT do:
1) Organized pot-luck (how depressing)
2) Hand out company-logoed crap
I'm sure there are more for each list. I just can't think of any at the moment.
You and the rest of the folks you work with can do things outside the company (go out to movies, play sports after work, lan-parties...whatever you're all into...you get the idea), and that'll help the moral with the folks you work with, but it's not going to help with the place you work.
Again, the downside of all this, if moral is great, and the company continues to lay people off, getting ripped out of there at some point for a layoff will hit you like a ton of bricks. And one hell of a lot more because you liked to work there.
Best thing for morale?
How about you quit?
After a few months of you still unsuccessfully job searching, everyone at the company will feel really appreciative that they still have their jobs. This will vastly improve morale!
Also you can return periodically to regale them with hilarious job interview anecdotes.
ALE AND WHORES!!!
Employers should work to incorporate more of these Moments of Absolute Joy on the Job into every work day.
i'm sick of it already but my company along with a lot of others swear by this book/film/crap
http://www.charthouse.com/product_film_fp.asp
woo woo.. I like fruit pies.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
And don't take away the casual dress policy (if you have one). Nobody wants to have to wear a damn tie just to sit behind a desk all day. It makes no sense.
I was in a healthcare-related tech company that went under and in the last couple of months, you could see it coming. The bosses had no clue what they were doing and wanted all of us smaller people to come up with AND execute the big ideas.
Maybe the business should offer some info on how to make a great looking resume.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
There is almost nothing worse for morale.
Management may make one last round of layoffs, if really necessary, and then set a challenging goal and declare that there will be no more layoffs for one year (unless someone is really not getting any work done, of course).
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
My own experience is with a company that started with 4 developers and 3 management types...we got up to a whopping 18 people at our highest (only 8 of those webheads) and now we have 3...morale in my company was the lowest that people quit in batches...all thanks to a management that didn't pay attention to what the developers had to say...we were just slaves that cost too much :)
;) but I think I outlined the points I wanted to share that make me the work-a-holic that I am...one who enjoys giving tech support just as much as getting that new delphi component to work exactly the way I dreamed last night at 3am and then decided to code at 4am...
In a way, thankfully, the owners woke up and ripped the company to shreds after finding out what was happening...now we are three developers...and yes we went from 40 hour weeks to 70 hour weeks along with our salaries dropping by as much as 60%...but we are loving it...we went from being developers with absolutely no control of what we did to developers ready to conquer the world...
It's not about team-building, it's not about pats on the back, it's not about high salaries (but high salaries don't hurt )...it's about making a difference in a world that is regaining some of the idealism we thought was lost...open-source projects lets everyone be the king of software...watching a feature you dreamed up make it into the site or the software is better any day than having your boss give you a peptalk about doing a good job...
For those who read this and are not sure where I was going or where I went, you're not alone...I'm not sure either
[excerpt from Dilbert strip] ...
Dilbert: Any idea why morale is so low?
Wally: We think it's your breath.
I timed out on big companies and corporate BS about 6 months ago, having worked for 3 big companies ( > 2000 employees each) and never coming particularly close to "job satisfaction".
:o)
The one thing that most annoyed me, considering myself to be a good, honest, hard worker, was the fact that there were people at all these companies who were not, and were not sacked.
Why should I turn up to work everyday and work my ass off, to pay not only my own salary, but that of idle layabouts who do nothing to earn theirs.
That and too much documentation.
I now work for myself, so I only have to worry about myself becoming dead wood, and I don't do any documentation
At my last job, we were required to play at least one game of fooseball per day, and we had an office-wide Counter Strike game almost every day after work. Even the vice prez played. It was really great for morale and team togetherness.
Also think about what kind of extra services you can easily offer your employees using existing resources. Set up a webserver where employees can host personal web sites, for example.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Of course you still have a job. You don't think anything else exists. If money isn't all that important then your time should be. For the love of God enjoy your "life". One day you will look back and say "I had so much power, but that didn't matter either".
My boss allows me to work from home on Mondays and Fridays. I avoid a long, stressful commute to work, and I save 40% on gasoline. Overall my productivity has increased, and I feel better.
Do some reasearch on Demming and the paradigm shift from the factory model of production.
The more workers feel like they "own" the company; they are proud of it and understand their contributions and sacrifices, the better their output.
This also has a tie-in with business process. The more that business process reflects the way that workers actually work, the more people are willing to comply with it.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
My oberservations (UK)....
The worst boss is one with a chip on their shoulder because they are a boss; they tend to not talk to their people and make political based decissions to further thier career.
The best boss is "part of the team", they get involved, understand the problems, make decissions to impove the buisness / team.
Social activities are great for breaking down cross team walls. I once worked at a company which was stuck in the middle of no-where and everyone drove miles to get to work. There was no social life as a result. I really missed talking to other teams and understanding their problems, and for others to understand my problems.
I've never understood why people moan about external contractors.
1. If you think they are getting paid too much stop moaning and be a contractor! Oh you like the stability of a being a a permie...
2. External contractors generally provide a lot of benefits. They have seen it all before, got the t-shirt etc. You can get a lot of great advice from contractors.
3. When you hire a crap contractor, sack them! I have worked with too many contractors who cant code for toffee, the management know they cant code and they are kept on until their contract comes to an end.
by 2p
Al
you're a lying bastard. Go to hell.
I work for a very large computer and printer manufacturer (can't say which one, but the initials are HP), and it's so far been my experience that the company isn't at all interested in morale. Why? They don't have to be. With so many people unemployed, they can get away with neglecting or even mistreating the employees and hide behind "you're just lucky to have a job". Anyone who gets fed up and quits is a bonus for the company, because they don't have to worry about paying any severance package as they would for a layoff.
This may save them a few pennies in the short term, but once economic prospects improve, they're going to lose a lot of good employees who have long memories.
Just listen to yourself.
Bona-fide middle management material or what?
T&K.
Political language
This is soooo true. I have flex hours, I can work 6am-2pm, 2pm-10pm, or 9-5. I can work at home, or my office, thanks to things like a VPN and Avaya IP Softphone.
When your work load starts to be equal to that of 2 or 3 (or more!) head count, and you know that if you push yourself that you can do it... there are a few things that happen: 1) you realize that doing this work will save your job for the months to come so you do it, and 2) you realize that your boss doesn't really care if you sit in an office or the recliner in your home... as long as the work gets done the boss will be as happy as pig in shit.
--------
Free your mind.
We've instituted a revolving-door policy for the productive workers.
Our managers and shareholders have never been happier.
huh, welcome to the real world
Leave.
In my experience, trust in management can only accrue slowly over many years, but management can burn up that trust in a few months. When the staff no longer trusts the management - that's why morale collapses; and unless you replace most or all of the management, it will not recover for many years.
Clear, Dark Skies
"The way to an engineer's heart is through his/her stomach." It'a all about lots and lots of cookies.
You should also try loosening up the dress code. At my company (govt comm software and hardware, 1000+ employees) the normal dress for engineers is jeans, sneakers, and a polo shirt. A lot of people even get away with jeans and t-shirts.
Try compressed work weeks which allow employees to work more hours in fewer days than the usual 8-hour per day schedule. The "4/10" work week is where employees work 10 hours per day over four days. My company uses the 9/80 work week which occurs over a 2-week period as follows: employees work seven 9-hour days in a 2-week period, one 8-hour day and then receive one "free" day off every other week. We have every other Friday off. It only takes a couple of weeks working 9 hours a day before you don't even notice that extra hour a day, and you'll never want to go back to the old schedule.
I also work for a hefty little internet company. Our main webpage is homesnet.com. I know what he means about the whole looking over your shoulder thing. Always trying to make sure that you can impress the boss in a way that the other guy can't. And also if you make a small mistake (like today i deleted some attachments of pictures we were sent to put up on a page) it's just downright nervewrecking.
Now, while it is true that low level employees will get flogged from time to time, consider how close their current situation is to that already.
Do the tradeoff godamit! Are you a pussy or an engineer?
Seastead this.
That turned out to be the best way to improve company moral. It also improved my moral.
I was such a good complainer, they put me on a team that was directed to manage both the west coast development and east coast sales and support. What did I find out? Improving a corporate structure is a fruitless experience.
Working for myself IS sometimes a pain in the ass. Too much paperwork and sometimes I'm forced to invent an imaginary boss, as being the sole magilla can get tiring. But at least the fruits of my labor are my own. I can live with myself at night. I wake up to challenges just like before, but the dead-end of tilting at corporate windmills is over.
If they can go down from 500 to 200 in a year, and if they are unable to maintain a honest, open atmosphere throughout the company, then THEY are the problem. Why don't you request that management share the business plan with the rest of the company so that everyone can work toward a common goal (of course, they probably haven't touched the business plan since the last time they got funding)?
I highly suggest you read the book How To Win Friends and Influence People . I don't have time to write a review, but there are a couple at the Amazon page. Basically, this book will teach you how to lead people and get them to do what you would like them to do.
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
It costs approximately $10-15k (before you spend dime one in salary) to hire your average full-time employee in America. (This is an average, not a locked-in-cement dollar amount... It includes advertising, agency efforts, the manager's time, the HR manager's time, how much time it takes to sift through 2,000 resumes for a $22k per year helpdesk job, any training they may need to provide to get the new guy up to speed, drug test, background check, reference check, etc...)
Given this fact, in the long run, it costs MORE to have high turnover in a company than you could ever spend on treating your staff like human beings... I'm not talking about pool tables and six-figure salaries, either. I'm referring to simple things like flex-time so people can actually see their kids and have interests in their lives besides work.
It seems to me that any company operating under this "Who gives a shit about you?" theory should be avoided... Sadly, in this employment market, the talent (that's us) doesn't have the option of voting "nay" to shitty employers by walking off to other jobs.
I am quite fortunate that my new employer is a private (profitable) corporation that doesn't have to whack $1,000,000 out of the budget every five minutes to meet short-term proft forecasts and prevent stock price fluctuations. My former employer made $36 billion in PROFIT the year they laid us off. Sorry, but if you have to fire 5,000 people one quarter, then need to have a "massive hiring drive" the next, that is short-sigthed mismanagement by drones in suits who put their 401k balances ahead of the company's long-term stability and reputation.
It is easy to say "We can cut 30% out of tech support and still field the same number of calls" but "# of calls" is not the same figure as "# of calls handled satisfactorily." As the quality drops, long-term sales prospects of the company's newer products slowly evaporate as CIOs and IT Managers say "Why the hell should we deal with those slow/incompetent jerks, when XYZ Corporation still offers good service?"
(Ever spend big money with a vendor after their "support staff budget cuts" led to lousy service? Me neither...)
Sadly, I'm afraid you're correct that we're going to have to deal with this sort of idiocy for a while longer... It is amazing to me that in strong economic times, managers complain endlessly about their "free agent" employees, louldy wondering where "loyalty" went?
Then, in the down times, selfsame managers do their best to shit all over said employees... Perhaps if employers didn't (ab)use their power over their employees in a lousy employment market they wouldn't be so eager to jump ship at the first opportunity.
Who did what now?
I know you're probably just being sarcastic, but this is a management tactic and one I firmly disagree with.
Here's something that every university-level management program ought to stress on the first day of class: The real leaders in your organization are not just in the management chain, and all those in the management chain are not real leaders. Effective "troublemakers" are really the natural leaders in your organization who are alienated or dissatisfied for some reason. The smart thing to do it listen to them and recruit them to your side.
I'm not talking about the know-it-all engineer who runs his mouth constantly (we all know this guy, don't we?) because nobody really listens to him, anyhow. No, I mean the person who seems like they're friends with 90% of the company, who people like and respect. Think about it -- you know the sort of person I mean.
A good manager will figure out who these natural leaders are and understand that they're the key to guiding whatever organization they manage. These people can either destoy morale or make your team a team. As a manager, it's your choice.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
*Massage therapist every other week, free 5 minute massage, helps people feel relaxed
*Allow flextime work (ex. work 9 hour days, get every other friday off), allows people to feel in control
*Cater the last day before holidays, let people feel good about their job over the holidays rather than feel stressed
-Vic If you can't figure out my email, then don't.
At the last company I worked at (Verity) the VP of Engineering kept telling "motivational" stories based on his 3 week vacation in Africa. You know, about hyenas and lions eating other animals. He did this three company meetings in a row. At the same time a number of employees had been told (not asked) to work 7 days a week (which most did since they were H1-B's). Very motivational.
Oh yes, since I left the company I guess he still tells motivational stories based on the vacations he's had since...
In my (albeit limited) experience the most depressing words ever to be uttered are 'Company Morale'.
And everything goes downhill from there.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
If things are bad then trying to raise morale is nothing but an attempt to deceive employees. To try to convince them things are OK when they're not. But employees aren't so stupid. Nothing tells an employee that their company is in trouble more than morale boosting exercises from management.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
"Oderint dum metuant" seems to be the motto of most "managers" today - "Let them hate me, as long as they fear."
This is going to backfire in the long term, as this guy found out a long time ago.
But hey, if you get your $30-60/hr programmers to sift through their stuff constantly and clean it up instead of doing their real jobs, you'll save SO MUCH MONEY!!!!
Oh, you wanted a positive ROI? Sheesh!
Yeah, right.
or at least have a very stern conversation with them first.
There is nothing more infectious than a bad attitude, and it destroys teamwork and productivity.
Sales groups use this approach at all times to great success, sometimes even removing good performers because they bring the rest of the team down.
It may be morally repugnant, but it is very effective, and necessary for a good manager.
I work at a University. We don't have all of the restrictive deadlines that a buisness may have, the pay is not the greatest, but I get to work on things I enjoy without people looking over my shoulder.
werd.
We have grown from 4 employees in 1999 to 270 in March of 2003. Employee morale and engagement is incredibly important to us as managers in the company.
There are no shortcuts to creating employee morale and engagement. Free lunches won't do it, pep talks won't do it, even stopping the layoffs won't improve morale and engagement.
Creating an environment where people know what is expected of them, where they can grow, where management cares about them, where they are recognized, where they are valued and where they have the tools to do there work will improve morale and engagement.
Accomplishing this is hard work and it is up to your company's managers to make this happen. As with most things in life there are no shortcuts. It is hard work. Hope you are up to it.
Here is a list of the 12 key items that you need to discover from your employees from the Gallup book.
Look here:
http://gmj.gallup.com/book_center/FBATR/
Item 12: Opportunities to Learn and Grow
Item 11: Talk to Me About My Progress
Item 10: I Have a Best Friend at Work
Item 9: Doing Quality Work
Item 8: My Company's Mission or Purpose
Item 7: My Opinions Seem to Count
Item 6: Someone Encourages My Development
Item 5: My Supervisor Cares About Me
Item 4: Recognition or Praise
Item 3: Doing What I Do Best
Item 2: Materials and Equipment
Item 1: Knowing What's Expected
What Is a Great Workplace?
Hey, I'm a funny guy and a web developer to boot. I'll boost morale around the office!
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
What to do:
What NOT to do:
Just a few thoughts. I'm still a newbie. If you're an employee, and you want to increase your company morale, forget it. I suggest finding a new employer.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
"For fun I go to the interview, they offer me the job, then I drop a bomb on their stupid asses. I want 95k/year, 6 weeks paid vacation"
He met to end this with:
And then my mom comes and picks me up in her minivan and takes me to my real job at McDonalds.
Flexible work hours and an open plolicy regarding internet and telephone use is a very good policy, but the absence of this type of policy is a symptom of a deeper problem within corporate "culture," by that I mean the treatment of employees like any other "just-in-time" business resource.
Many companies today layoff and re-hire (euphamistically called "contract hire") employees as they're needed. Contract prices today are generally no where near where they were a few years ago because of the surplus number of contract workers and the new rage to outsource work to drastically cheaper overseas labor pools. Corporations spent the 80's and 90's trying to convince people that it really was in their best interest to function as resource units, even suggesting that it put the individual worker in the driver's seat, but in realitiy of course it was always in the corporations best interest. An excellent book on this subject is Thomas Frank's One Market Under God which chronicles the enormous PR and marketing resources expended by big companines to cultivate thier self-serving pseudo-populist image. Great insight also into the backgroud behind all those MCI and IBM commercials featuring throngs of third world looking people and the proverbial work-at-home CEO mom. Does Microsoft really stand in awe of us? I don't think so.
Few people are doing well contracting today. Employers need to realize that paying employees well and not treating them like children, indentured servants or worse as a simple "resource" like computers or other equipment but instead like fellow human beings, is the best way to make everybody happy and productive.
I agree with the internet and phone use for personal business. Most of the time I have to take a vacation day to compelete such tasks and no work gets done. On the flex hours, I would agree to a degree. In the past I have had a question for someone only to realize the that person would not be at work for another two hours (or has already left for the day). But I do not have a problem with 30 minutes to maybe an hour. 30 minutes can drastically affect commute time because you are no longer in sync with everyone else.
Find the better unhappy ppl in your .
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company that are fiscally responsible
people and quit and start your own venture
Something that takes advantage of the downturn
or has to do with emerging technologies that
look like they will do well
Ex.: Wireless , Hydrogen fuel cell's , etc etc
As a web page churner, you may be limited
by your skillset . This area is kinda
saturated right now as you yourself have
pointed out
In any event, good luck, and try the idea
as a part time endeavor and do case studies
on how well other ppl are doing in the sector
you may be considering
Companies in times of a labor glut really
do not care much for their employees unless
the market starts to climb back up and they
fear being left high and dry
Peace...
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
The computer industry in the US is a dead end job.
Try going into the health sciences or law.
Not the same comany apparently, but it reminded me of AES Corp., as described in Fast Company's article, "Power to the People".
Speaking largely about U.S. companies and politics the following holds true. There are some evil companies that are being run by people who cook the books so the top execs get big bucks like Enron. The rest of the companies are run by well-meaning folks who want their employees to be happy.
The companies want happy workers possibly for non-altruistic reasons vis a vis "A happy employee is a productive employee". However, since the Republicans have taken over we have gone from an ample surplus to a terrifying deficit.
$hit has a tendency to run downhill. The microcosm (individual businesses) are being hurt by the macrocosm (the government). The dot coms have died and stocks have plummeted under the current regime. Free enterprise is on its back and companies are failing.
The best thing an employee can do to improve his lot is to become politically active and vote in a better government. In the meantime suck it up and hope that the cyle turns around for the better.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
The company I work for had a new salesperson. This guy had previously sold ERP systems, and now he was going to try to sell our companies development services.
This really happened - I was walking by his office and spotted him reading a copy of Java for Dummies. Yes -- a salesperson.
He explained that he felt he should know at least a little something about programming if he was going to try to sell our services as developers.
Un-freakin'-believable!
How many of you have spent endless hours explaining geek crap to sales/marketing/management nitwits who didn't have a clue and didn't care that they didn't have a clue?
Well... needless to say... he was canned a few months later by a clueless superior.
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
jc7385@company.com ... That sounds like Teradata NCR !
Free. (as in Beer)
:)
As in lots of it.
Fellowship 9/11
I have been through the down turn thing twice. What I have found is when people are not busy the find time to bitch. As soon as they are busy on new projects, the bitching stops and they get back to their jobs.
The home of the 3D Socialization and Interaction Engine
If as you say, more than half the company was laid off and layoffs are still happening then who wouldn't be watching their backs?
Poor morale is just going to be a fact of life in this environment. On one hand the employer probably isn't too worried about this because people won't be leaving anytime soon (where would they go?)
It's guaranteed to improve morale.
Why should they care about your morale?
The market is different, they have the upper hand currently with the high unemployment rates.
If you are not productive, or a trouble maker, they can find a replacement for you.
A few years ago it was different, and they had to keep people at any cost. But that is not the case now. Be happy you are even employed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why you ask ???
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The H1-b visa quota has not been rescinded
more foreign labor to be imported for less $$
The L-1 visa program is now sweeping thru
insurance companies in connecticut and
large portions of the staff are being dumped
for cheaper L-1 labor
The L-1 visa program is going to make the
H1-B visa program look like a JOKE !!!
There is no cap on the number of L-1 visas,
that is right, it is unlimited !!!
They just use the clause that says they
have a branch outside the US , and they
have their loophole !!!
http://www.visapro.com/L1-Visa/L1-Visa.asp
If this keeps happening look for mass
bankruptcies, forclosures, and ppl goin postal
I feel lucky I have ratholed away ALOT of money,
and am living ultra-cheap right now
I quit my job due to lopsided responsibilities
and pay, and was only able to do it because
I have been thru this cycle of crapping
on ppl while the economy is bad before
I am taking the time to study and get some
more certifications
They can find someone else to be super tech,
while the other ppl are getting promoted
Peace...
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Peter Gibbons: So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.
Dr. Swanson: What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Dr. Swanson: Wow, that's messed up!
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
That's some funny shit.
The book "Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment" by William Byham might have benefitted me more during management training than any other single source especially as it relates to morale boosting.
. Ergo sum cogito - Yoda
I find that morale is driven by common purpose. When layoffs are occuring each individual must decide whether to try and find a job elsewhere or to become part of a solution.
Workers at the coal face have a lot of comments to make, and after may long bitchy lunches often have some very good ideas on how to get the company out of it's financial woes. These workers working as an integrated team to bring the company back into the black are the key to sucess and morale.
I think the keys to making this work though are honesty (If the workers aren't given a realistic view of what's going on up at the top then they won't come up with good solutions at the lowest levels) and responsive management. Responsive management is tricky, and particularly when the number of employees drops significantly in an organisation management is looking after it's own collective butt, and often not concentrating on getting out of the rut. Management is usually a lot quicker to drop actual productive workers than they are the management group which made the poor decisions in the first place. In an example in my own company we had an office lose 20 software developers out of 30 while only one token management position fell. To compound the problem the key management individual who was responsible for the group's downfall was hired into a more lucritive group to save him from his self-made destruction.
Management can't be responsive to the front-line workers when there are too many of them, or when they're worrying about their own positions. They may come to see the situation as the same "us and them" battle that the productive employees see. Management and general employees must take hits in equal and honest poritions, and must communicate effectively to save jobs at every level.
Benjamin.
Have a job. I don't have a job for the las t three years and will have a great moral if i had one and surely will help to increase the moral between my co-workers.
I'm a great programmer, people's people and will work everywhere in the US, CAN or EU. For a low fee too.
------I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.------
Management Techniques of the
Bottom 95% of U.S. Corporations
This has rare insight into the world of Inc.
LOL,
I can't stop laughing, the sad part is that
alot of it is TRUE !!!!
Peace...
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Why don't you watch the news every now and then. I suppose the videos showing Iraqi people happy to see the US/UK soldiers are all forgeries. Just like the moon landing, eh? You're such a fucker.
in the current economical climate, you have to be flexible. a good idea is to have plenty of redundancy among the programmers/functional people and have a mean, very slim sales team and some supportive personell (secretary). the main costs in IT companies are salary costs, so pay the people that do the work.
;-). if you see a solution, just propose it to your manager casually. if you focus on that kind of strategies,and put energy into discussing improvement, you have at least a higher chance to enlarge your influence on the situation.
:)
:) personal experience!
now in real life, this will never happen. what you see is management that stays and "lower" employees who get fired. therefore, the people who have to do "the real work": functional design, programming, implementation, customer support are getting overworked and are underpayed to support the huge cars and salaries of management.
the only real solution is to cut down the amount of management positions, and have many employees that can do "the real work"...
i know this isn't of much help. all you can *really* do is to sit back, work like mad, and hope economy will be rising soon, and clients will want to invest again.
now, for some basic personal improvement lessons: stop complaining. the amount of energy you put into worrying about things you cannot do anything about is enormous -> think about it. focus on what you can achieve (how little these achievements may be). as Covey says (recommended reading!): enlarge your circle of influence. and be "proactive" (the most annoying buzzword ever
do it nicely though, the managers are in huge stress, covering their ass all the time. don't say "i think this is wrong, we better do...", but instead use formulations like: "we thought a bit about the idea you proposed the other day. it was very interesting (blah blah blah), and then slowly introduce your opinion about it. make it seem as if it's his/her idea, with just some minor optimisations. you will fail a dozen times, but the 13th time something might stick. and if a lot of ideas start sticking, you and your co-workers might even be able to really change something.
and don't worry about being acknowledged. what you and your co-workers want is a better environment, and not a management position, right? (at least not for now
trust me it works
Flexible hours... Some companies have flexible hours. However, there are so many related issues it is not even funny.
The notion of flexible hours in startups has become "come late, leave late". If someone wants to start the work day at 7am in the hopes of getting out by 4 or 5 and get a life, there is almost palpable tension from the glares of coworkers who amble into work sometime at 10am or 10:30am. More so, if the bosses themselves are late comers.
The flexible hours thing is almost abused in some places. It is much less pressure, if people are asked to be in at certain time, get out at a certain time (unless there are deadlines and other situations).
Imagine having no work to do and still having to sit till 7pm because the dudes that come at 11am will stare you into submission...
S
The only thing that will help in your situation is Job Security. If you don't have that, nothing else will help. Nobody is going to be gung ho if they don't know if they are going to be there tomorrow. Of course you could try the dot com way and hand out worthless stock options like they were toilet paper.
A company can only survive about one layoff per year. It's much better for morale to have one big one than lots of little ones. It takes more planning by management, but that's what management is for.
This reminds me of our "official" company motto: The random firings will continue until morale improves"
http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/topic.pl?fo rum=13&topic=485
;-)
That's how you improve moral, comrade
What kind of constructive suggestions can I take to management so that they can help improve the situation?
Get rid of the managers.
--there's a lot of things that will effect morale, primarily people work for "money".
So, is the company really profitable in what it does, or is it struggling with the remnants of venture capital and dotbomb kruft? If they aren't profitable, there's no way to have good morale. If what they do as their primary business is based on fluff and unnecessary extravagances that have limited and volatile markets, don't expect them to stay in business, so adjust your own morale in advance for that possibility. Go ahead and suck it down while you can get it, but don't keep false hopes.
If the company could be profitable but isn't, are the managers doing things like moving operations to much cheaper rent, slashing their own salaries, getting rid of those thousand buck chairs and business lunches and "personal assistants", or are they shipping labor offshore, keeping the same expensive offices, giving themselves bonuses, etc? If they are, you won't have good morale. Eventually it will be a handful of local bosses and all you guys will be bye bye, bad for morale obviously.
Is the company cooking the books to make it appear like they are profitable? Nose around, schmooze up to the bean counters, find out, because you DON'T want to be there when TSHTF. If they are, chances are good you'll come in one day and the owners will have split or something like that, no lie, that happened to me once in a good job,(small shop around 10 guys) came in monday morning,the boss/owner had split,cleaned out some personal stuff out of his office and around the shop, he had cleaned out the corporate accounts, moved from his house (I went and checked, he was poofed), had left everyone the previous friday night with rubber checks. Stuff happens. Or if a bigger place you might get raided by the feds or something, it's in the news every other day of financial mismanagement to make it look like companies are making money when they are bleeding red ink. You'll never have good morale with people like that "in charge". Any good morale will be built on false premises, the crash and letdown can be pretty bad. Be wary of uber professional sales types in management positions, they are necessary for all businesses, but are smooth talkers and actors by definition, if you keep smelling rats with what's going on, assume there's rodents no matter what smiley face they project or soothing words. Hmm, sort of like politicians re election commercials, talk with several large handfuls of salt.
If you are an employee, after first noticing the previous, well, you do your job! It's that easy! You use your brain, you are a professional about your work, you stay flexible enough to deal with unexpected things that occur, and you don't assume anything but it's a business, it's not a hangout, social club or place for games. That's not to say it can't be casual and sometimes fun, but that is secondary to the purpose of work, and it should be a far away secondary.
If you know you are doing a good job, then your morale should be good. If you are medium happy with your pay and bennies, accept it, don't think you'll get automatic raises all the time or that you deserve a never ending stream of attaboys. Accept criticism when it's necessary, and go ahead and ask if you don't know, if it's some project that has tons of variables, seek out an opinion voluntarily, ask "how does this look, is this what you really want?" etc. Sometimes management actually gets embarrased and doesn't want to address critical issues in a timely manner, they will let problems go too long without addressing them, so make it easier for them. You stop short of sucking up, that isn't required, just use a common sense approach. Everyone has good morale then, based on their ability to handle weird situations, no one is exactly the same, so don't assume they are.
Got a beef with co workers? Analyse it, see if it's work related, or personal, if it's personal, you just have to deal with it. Keep contact to a minimum , just enough to do your job, but if they keep s
The principle is pretty simple. Go out of your way to demonstrate you understand and are willing to fulfil employee's individual needs.
Other suggestions:
Hire a workforce who are likely to be good for morale eg optimistic, fun, good communicators.
Make your employees shareholders. Train natural leaders for management.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Gee, I guess you could have beer busts, free prozac, company t-shirts, pep talks or any of a number of methods of raising moral temporarily.
The only real way to improve moral is to get more work for your company. Details for implementing this are left as an exercise for both employees and management.
If an open channel of communication between the developers and the management doesn't exist, there is nothing you can do to fix it. It is up to them.
Management has a tendency to slip into their own circles and forget about the little guys, even though it is the little guy that makes their company move forward. You have to be honest with them and communicate what is happening and how you feel about the situation, and provide suggestions for improvements. You have to work to keep those channels open. The minute they close, they are closed forever.
If you feel that you cannot do this, or if you have tried and failed, you have two options.
First, you can do what it takes to secure your job. Take all the money from your paycheck you can and stick it in the bank for that rainy day that is inevitable. Put out your resume and start contacting recruiters, using your lunch break to go to interviews. When you find a job, make sure they give you a good raise before jumping ship, if you can stand waiting for another job to show up.
The second option is to quit and look for employment elsewhere. You don't have to quit to go on a job search, but it helps to have more freetime if you want to start your own entrepeneurial endeavor. Make sure you have plenty of cash (6mos+ of bare minimum living).
Now, the key here is to quit in style. You go up to the CEO, or the board, if you know them, and tell them working conditions are unacceptable, and if something isn't done fast, there will be terrible consequences. You name names of managers you really don't like, and ones you do. You tell him to fire the managers that suck, and give raises to the managers that are cool. Don't leave out the CTO/CIO and department heads! You tell him what policy changes need to be implemented, or else.
You will likely lose your job for being so bold, unless you are personal friends with the CEO or members of the board. However, they will be the ones letting you go, and they will never fire you for being direct, but always for "economic reasons" or something harmless.
*DON'T* take out your frustration on the code or the systems you manage. We IT people need to maintain our integrity. One bad egg who does this will ruin all of our reputations forever.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
No. You're right. News broadcasts were never used for propaganda before.
It would be worthwhile for the poster's bosses to have a look at them. There several stories in both books about leaders and managers that discovered Shackleton's story (usually by reading Endurance) and transformed their approach to leading others.
hey,
...
...
...
... I don't think there is a way people can be motivated enough, to make them forget what happened in the past ...
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...
I have got to admit > I've experienced it two times now, and I don't want to sound to pessimistic or anything - but here is my view of the situation where you're in
1. the overall morale is bad, and personally I don't think there is anything that will be able to change that - as long as one person remains in the company that has experienced the bad time and bad morale ; someone will always refer to the other times
2. once people are giving up, there is almost nothing, that can change that, except the people themselves ; there will be events from management to boost morale, there will be team meeetings and whatever other things managers will come up with - it will not help, unless the people themselves are ready for it
3. after some time, management changes will start happening - since upper management does not see a lot of changes in attitude settling in
Sadly enough - this will only add to the frustration and wondering of the cublicle dwellers - since they will most probably not be informed about the changes and the reasons thereof
4. because of all frustrations getting the upperhand - more people will leave - and less work will be done because of employers talking to each other etc etc
I think what I'm referring to is a spiral > I'm afraid there is nothing much that can be done about it, especially with so many people involved - you talk about a company with 500 people in the past, and 200 remaining
Dilbert comics come to mind by the way
In the two times I experienced this - I remained until the end - until the complete demise : I got fired, and the company went bankrupt both times, in some way
What I learned from this - jump ship when you can, especially if yout got some serious qualities, unless it is a small firm and you got a really innovating product or service worth losing your own motivation for
good luck !
mentor
Knowledge first. Social contact later.
Well my company is moving from old buildings to a nice shiny new one. Er, which isn't big enough. So now instead of working in offices with our own desks and a handful of people where we can think at least some of the time we'll be in a big noisy open plan area. Desk-sharing. And did I mention that unlike the current situation there aren't going to be enough parking spaces, so we'll need to ride-share too? Our CEO tells us it will all be all right, and I'm sure this must be true. But I wonder why he's leaving for sunnier climes before the move?
No, the business isn't shrinking. It's growing. Honest.
Oh, sorry. You wanted ways our employers are improving the environment and morale. My mistake.
I see you've already been tagged as flamebait, but let me give you some real advice: going around screwing with people who are there to offer you a shot at a job (whether they work for the government or not) is not wise. Professional people (public and private sector) have friends that work in other sectors, and jerks like you are good conversation topics.
You may miss out on some future $95k job opportunity (assuming you're worth that much) because someone already knows about your reputation. JMHO.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
I was working in San Francisco at an internet startup in 2000. We had about 75 employees at the peek. Given the environment and how well I saw the company doing I started to believe it was likely to fail.
I put feelers out to friends and had an interview with a friend of mines boss. I decided to jump ship even though I was an important (principal) engineer as it was obvious that whatever happened the odds of the company prospering were aproaching zero. This process of working up a resume, meeting, interviewing, getting an offer etc, took over a month.
I accepted the new job the day before it was anounced in a company meeting that layoffs were upon us. If the company hard performed an amazing turn around maybe I would have stayed.
I was VERY lucky, several of the engineers at that company go sucked into working for free - many of them then left that company to work at the next one started by the founders and still work there FOR FREE - if you check your calendar that will tell you how screwed those people are. 'Loyalty' to the company was used as leverage to prevent these people from leaving.
The key points of my experience:
- when you realistically think the company has a high probability of failure bail, don't wait.
- don't work for free, find a new position
- loyalty to a for profit entity has to be balanced with self preservation.
There are ppl in droves helping to pull down .
.
.
.
the statues, and photos of Saddam, and
after the Gulf War they beat his ass back
in 19 out of 22 provinces
If we would have helped , Saddam would have
been out in 1992
Read the history of Iraq you liberal lapdog
I have friends that were THERE, you have
hollywood dipshits running their mouths
because they wanted Gore for prez
Peace...
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Remember WWII? War sucks, yes, but sometimes it is necessary to improve the world situation.
Those are the two things everyone has to do to be happy.
1) Be thankful that you have a job at all. There are a lot of guys that would kill for your job right now -- even if it's not exactly fun.
2) Be patient and wait for the economy to pick up. It HAS to pick up at some point.
Being thankful and patient are a choice. They are contagious, and when you, as an individual, apply them to your own job, your co-workers will eventually pick up on it as well. Conversely, if you choose to complain and make that the norm, your co-workers will also pick up on that and morale will suffer accordingly.
Sounds like you need to break - try the campaign at http://www.dphilc.blogspot.com
Drop out of technology. It's a soul-less trivial existence spent repairing other people's mistakes, then being replaced by an Indian, Chinese or Russian who can barely speak english but will impale themselves for the boss.
Become a chef. Work with food and happy people. Actually, Indian, Chinese and Russian cooking.
Then you can open a fancy restaurant, and charge lots of money to the folks who took your job to eat the food they could have for cheaper if they stayed in their country.
It all evens out.
When your boss is always talking about how "he doesn't want to see the division outsourced" just because he heard it once in a meeting, and now he panics everytime a meeting is scheduled.
It becomes a catch-22 when you have to prove your worth, but you know that you are one foot in the grave. What incentive do you have to look forward to?
The job prospects look bleak on both sides of the fence. No moving up, and moving out is scary with the state of the Just Over Broke Market(this really applies now that employers want the world for minimum wage or near it) being what it is these days.
moo.
All companies should make reading the Hacker FAQ mandatory for all employees. Even IBM uses the Hacker FAQ!
My personal favorite:
0.2: How should I manage my hacker?
The same way you herd cats. It can be a bit confusing; they're not like most other workers. Don't worry! Your hacker is likely to be willing to suggest answers to problems, if asked. Most hackers are nearly self-managing.
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Zany. Zany always makes them happy.
"I work as a homosexual for a gay development company. We fuck pretty hard (as do most gay web companies) and we all use Macintoshes. The company went from over 500 useless faggots to under 200 in under two years. It's more stable now, but people are consistently fired for being useless. Consequently people feel like they always have to look over their shoulder to avoid getting fucked up the ass without enough lube. Most lunches are spent going to Bloomindales and shopping for dishes. Employers: what have you done to get rid of the homosexuals in your company? As an employee, what can I do to have sex with that hunky VP so I can get some more "job security"? How can I make my work environment more gay? (Maybe some more window treatments?) Should I tell management to suck my dick? Or does it have so many piercings that they'd be turned off?"
One thing each of you can do to restore some flow and escape the Dilbertian universe... each time there is a snag, a delay, a challenge... decide to love it, laugh at it, embrace it, go with it, and make this the centre of your group's understanding of things. let go of the outcome. you're going together on a ride.
At some point when the heat is up, you and your workmates will throw a glance of understanding to each other. If all of you can get in sync with this, it will end up worth a lot more to you than merely holding on to the job.
There's a lot of talk about others being unhappy, so i'll be unhappy. This is a herd instinct, take it a step further, why are you unhappy?
If your getting paid, how can you be unhappy? Is'nt that the most important thing? I think a lot of people have lost focus. Times are tough and you have to focus on the important things. Do you really know what's important? Putting food in your belly, providing shelter and more important than happiness, perhaps not much but a little.
If your in a job, great, then your probably luckier than you actually realise, so stop complaining.
Ask yourself, what would make you happy, how could morale be improved? You'll find that in most cases everything is fine, yet the person or persons are simply bored. You want a change of your routine, you dont want to wake up at 7am, you want to sleep till 9am. You don't want to chat around the water cooler, you want to go and travel. You don't want to see the same colleague sitting across the desk, as you've seen them there for 2 years, you want to see someone else, your just bored with yourself, not the job or workplace itself.
This is the cause of low morale in the majority of cases. People are projecting their boredom with themselves onto whatever is closest to them, which just happens to be the company, think again, because in many cases your the cause of that low morale.
Quake Lunch Hour!
Your job does not define who you are. Being "computer geeks" does not mean we should not do anything outside that realm.
Oh, and don't BS me that my job is secure. A lot of really good people got let go in the last round of layoffs. If more are coming, tell me. If they're over, tell me that too. But don't ever "assure" me that my job is "secure" - there is no such thing anymore.
1st thing: your manager should be asking this question, not you. That means you have an uphill struggle out of the gate.
Take you manager (and other managers) to these lunches where people complain. Invite different executives to have lunch once a month or so with your team. Create venues for people to communicate.
You still don't get the difference between "We don't like Saddam" and "We want you to bomb our cities to drive ONE MAN out of the country", do you?
---
Remember that you are just a developer, and it is not your job to improve morale. You may want sales to improve, but it's not your job to go poking into improving sales.
;).)
Management will notice your attempts, and if they are failing to address the morale problem, and you are trying to edge into their turf by trying to address it yourself (from their perspective, questioning their policies and pointing out their inadequacies.) You are likely to be the next one laid off if you try to push for change.
That might not be a bad thing, I don't know what your severance package is (I really liked mine.) When the company is going downhill, IMHO the only way to raise employee morale is to disconnect that morale from the company. The one constructive thing I would suggest you do is network with your fellow employees. Get to know as many of them as you can, especially those doing things unrelated to you. And once you or them are laid off, keep in touch.
I had a similar experience, although it was coupled with years of re-orgs and muddled direction. I tried to push for change, but my morale broke, and I just accepted things and hoped for severance. I'd been marked as a trouble-maker, so once things got tight enough, I was out. They had to re-hire me as a contractor, and I am 10 times happier about working, and probably 3 times more effective than when I was dragging my feet from low morale (paying me almost 3 times as much too
Taken from Fuckedcompany.com in Dec. (Jo Anne was soon fired afterwards, go figure).
From: Jo Anne Miller
To: Gluon - Site - All
Sent: 12/6/2002 3:03 PM
Subject: Commitment Message from the ALL HANDS MEETING
Importance: High
As those who were present at the All Hands Meeting this morning already
know, I am seeking the PERSONAL Commitment of everyone at Gluon to the
Release 2.1 development schedule. I expect a return email from all the
staff to tell me if they can step up and make the commitment to DO
EVERYTHING IT TAKES, INCLUDING POSTPONING DECEMBER VACATIONS to hit the
2.1 ready for field trial milestone of January 20, 2003 and ready to
deploy milestone of February 21, 2003. I also need to know if you will
volunteer to be here the week of December 23-27 and Dec. 30-Jan. 4.
Please consider this decision carefully. Don't say yes if you don't
believe that you and your fellow Gluon teammates can make this happen.
Don't say yes, if you aren't ready to find bugs, fix bugs, document the
product and get this ready to go out the door. Don't say yes if you are
too burned out to look forward to continued late nights, long hours and
stretch milestones.
Now more than ever, the Gluon team must have the start-up/do whatever it
takes mentality. If any of you are not of that mentality anymore, have
personal/family issues that prohibit you from making the full
commitment, please tell me that as well and I will do whatever I can to
assist you to find a job outside of Gluon.
I am attaching the four key slides from the all hands related to our
commitment to refresh your memory of what is required and why.
Looking forward to hearing back from everyone
Jo Anne Miller
Gluon Networks, Inc.
5401 Old Redwood Hwy.
Petaluma, CA 94954
707-285-4001
www.gluonnetworks.com
www.bleepyou.com
Start a war - it works for countries. :)
Seriously, that's the one thing lacking in the work environment. To be happier, you need to do something so that you and your colleagues feal like a team, you need to create solidarity. Why do you think the feeling of brotherhood etc. is so important in the military?
You can't sit on your butt at work waiting for the managers to do stuff for you. Five years ago when money wasn't the issue it is today, you'd probably get sent off on team-building excursions, but today you're going to have to do that yourself, and pay for it yourself, but it's worth it.
Just organise a paintball day, or (if you're feeling rich) a weekend in the hills doing orientation, capture the flag, whatever.
Just do whatever it takes to make your colleagues feel like they're not alone, like you're all "in it together" which, at the end of the day, you are.
But sitting in front of a terminal asking a fairly obvious question on Ask Slashdot instead of actually *doing* something about morale, isn't going to get you anywhere. If you're going to wait for it, it's not going to happen.
You want to increase morale in the company?
Stop laying off people. This has proven to be a serious morale booster. If your company has faith in our employees by not laying off people, they will respond exponentially.
Find other ways to cut spending. Start with Voluntary leadership salary cuts instead of laying off people. Have the CEO not take the yearly fatty bonus or have the upper management take a voluntary pay cut.
Also, start investing in research and development into new technologies and new money making ventures for the company.
Watch your morale grow after this.
Save the World! Use a Quote!
Recognize the quality veteran employees you have by promoting them.
Nothing distresses the rank and file more than to have a new manager every one or two years who appears, changes the direction of a project (or kills it outright), and then leaves and is replaced by another manager who shakes things up.
You need people who know the company's history, its people and abilities, and have a vested interest in the company's future.
Well maybe your just a Neo-nazi, or palestinian
.
supporter, or someone that does not mind
being in their company eh ???
If so, keep posting, makes it easier to
trace where you are so we can come question
you about your affiliations
Peace...
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
http://www.adl.org/rumors/atta_rumors.asp
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Ayn Rand's story about the fall of the Twentieth Century Motor Company was about a few incompetents introducing methods that brought out the worst in their employees: From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. What the parent described had nothing to do with penalizing the competent to reward the worthless, he was talking about management being honest with the employees, telling them what was going on, and giving them a say in their future.
God damn, that comment applies to just about any workplace where the men can't wait to have meetings all day long with other men while their wives and children wait at home!
Hire some fucking employees.
Bowie J. Poag
"palestinian supporter" must be the most pathetic insult i've ever heard.
You're a big pussy. Unless you change your attitude you will never amount to anything.
India has scared the shit out of alot of employee's. In the bosses mind it may not increase morale but it sure as hell increases productivity for the American workers. If not then an you can hire 3 Indians for the price of one american and have twice the workflow!
I sincerly believe this current strategy is going to backfire when the economy improves and when it does boy are these bosses going to regret it.
If the IT sector ever recovers I hope as hell these companies that do this ( cough sun cough ) will be revenged by their whole IT staff quiting. If I worked at sun and could not have my own desk( rumoured McNealy just has terminals with employee profiles ), be worried about being laid off, and deal with no loyality or ethics from management then sure as hell I would quit if I could find another job. The part about the employees not having there own desks is true. They have tiny cubicles with terminals and you have to pray that all the seats are not taken. No employee is assigned a cubicle or desk. They just go to a terminal and log in to retrieve their profile. They did this to reserve space and not pay for expanding their building. THey are cheap as hell and if employees have no personal space it can bring morale down to a new low as they feel they are a used commidity and not part of sun.
Then if they want shitty indian work then let them. All the American IT staff will have the power to give them the finger and move on.
http://saveie6.com/
Dude, I think you need some therapy. Going from 40hrs to 70hrs
and getting a pay CUT is never good.
(* Disclaimer: Do not taunt happy fun ball.)
I worked a summer job in a laundry. One day midweek, I looked up from the %meaningless task% I was doing to see the owner of the entire chain helping fold sheets.
I asked how often he does this, to which he replied "Whenever I feel like a change".
The girls on the line really liked it. He didn't have his own table at mealtimes, didn't have his own parking space, and you could call him "dave".
Ace fella. And even though the job was shit, most people were happy at it.
yes, www.dotcomforwardslash.com is my real URL.
You can put Happy Pills in the coffee.
Where I post game reviews, my PSP backgrounds, podca
You can say what you want about the war, but no one can deny that it created some of the most successful troll threads ever.
Memo to management:
1. I want to be left alone to do my job. No OSHA training (I can use a fire extinguisher without any explanation from the "Risk Manager," thank you), no safety training (I could not care less about the MSDS sheets - I'm in an office, for God's sake), no sexual harassment/sensitivity training and no drug awareness in the workplace meetings. Do not waste my time on bullshit meetings/classes that have nothing to do with my job.
2. I come in early, work late and work on weekends. If you see me leaving or arriving outside of my scheduled hours, don't worry about it: you're way ahead on the deal.
3. If I can only use my email or web connection for business use, fine: quit allowing people to send broadcast emails about Relay for Life, Blood Drives and Girl Scout Cookies. Either it's for business, or it isn't. Don't allow other people to clutter up my mailbox for "good causes" if I can't send/receive jokes.
4. I am low maintenance, but is it too much to ask that you *not* turn off the fucking hot water heaters and ac units to save money at 4:00 pm every day? Some of us work outside normal hours.
5. If one of my cow-orkers misbehaves, I expect that he be punished. I do not expect that new policies be put in place that have the effect of punishing those of use who did not cause the problem to begin with.
6. Don't lie to me. I'm a big boy, I can handle the truth.
7. Don't get mad at me when I tell the truth.
Anyone can get bored in ANY job. That is the simple truth. There is no big explanation. Just realize that. An astronaut can get "bored" about his job believe it or not.
I came to a point, where I felt the same as you stated both yourself and co-workers feel. I was unchallenged. I came in 9-5/5 days week and did my work. I could do a better job but I did JUST enough to get it done. I had a hard time concentrating and was always worried I'd be the one to be let go of. Understand there are millions of people in IT that would happily take your job who aren't burnt out. But don't let that intimidate you. I found the reason for my unhappiness was the fact I was always worrying. So I didn't enjoy my job. Nothing was "fun" anymore.
Take a 2 week vacation if you can (take any vacation time early). But understand that you MUST finish up every loose end before you go on vacation otherwise its hard to relax if you are worrying if such and such project got deployed alright etc. Take the two weeks and just relax. Have a good time. Get outside lots. Avoid a computer for more than 10 minutes daily, if that, to check email. Make a list for the two weeks, that contains 3 things each day that you've regretted not doing or had little time to do, or just had always wanted to do it. After the two weeks you will feel amazing.
Now come back refreshed. Understand that everything is an opportunity. Push yourself to learn new things. You're in web development, but are you just an (X)HTML code monkey? If so you can make it enjoyable (trust me, there are much worse jobs). Learn new tools. Never stop learning. Never be content with thinking you know it all. Learn PHP if you don't know it. Learn Perl if you don't know it. Hell even learn ASP, CFM, Python and other scripting languages if you don't know them. I found the hardest part was "starting". I always wanted to learn these but I felt too "tired" by the end of my 9-5 that I'd just sit and watch tv, and hit refresh on slashdot all night long...hoping...just hoping something exciting would happen to my life. Take it into your own hands. Don't be someone who needs direction from your boss. Make your own direction (but within limits of your boss of course). Your boss will love it when you don't need to constantly ask "what next, what next". Trust me. I started writing a weekly summary of my work including achievements, if the timeline had changed etc. The boss loved it. I would brief him and take only 15 minutes of his time per week. They love this, they really do. Make it a terse, concise single page report that shows all you've achieved in the past week.
Work hard and play hard. That is my advice. To be an amazing programmer, sysadmin, or whatever the heck you want to be, you don't have to sit on the computer ALL day long. Become more "efficient" so to speak on the computer. Get rid of your instant messaging or at least only use them for 20 minutes/day. Schedule a time that you will regularly hit your daily sites like slashdot, web comics etc. Preferably at night (I know I'm doing this during afternoon).... but by the evening you will be able to get the gist of all the daily news stories... you won't have to hit "refresh" all day. Heck what I even did was stop viewing new slashdot stories altogether for a period of time. I'd only view the day before so I could get "all of friday" today. I cut down on instant messaging and IRC to a point that I'd spend more time with friends going to bars, food, etc. But I'd still get on to chat about code, chicks, various stuff for 30 minutes a day and that would be enough time to "spend" so to speak, all of my energy and rants. My quality of life has improved a lot in my opinion. I'm more happy, and I've had more energy and curiosity to learn new languages and methodologies than ever.
I know this is somewhat off topic but who cares. Many people in IT suffer from depression and/or stress. They sit in a chair all day or at least a large portion of it. The human body simply
I manage a small infrastructure team (6 people). We take time out at lunch and at the end of the day (after 5) to play a couple maps of UT.
We name the bots after users we hate, or French presidents.
After 15 or 20 minutes of intense fragging, morale is restored.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
11 things developers can do
(not in any particular order)
1) Read "Code Complete" and "Design Patterns". Others will be thankful... trust me.
2) Have pride in what you do. Programming IS an art. It requires talent, practice, motiviation, inspiration, creativity, and experience to write good code. Know your craft.
3) Eliminate the KINGDOMS on your team. That is, one person should not solely own one part of the system... hence a "king". Make sure at least two people are knowledgeable about one part of a system.
4) Utilitize tried-and-true design patterns. These are your brushes and your paints.
5) Be politically aware in code reviews. Take constructive criticism constructively and remove your ego. If a reviewer is suggesting that you make a minor change, and the change doesn't harm anything... DO IT. Being inclusive of others' ideas in your code will make everyone happy.
6) When reviewing other people's code, don't be superficially critical. Programmers have different styles. A car, on the outside, may not appeal to you, but it doesn't mean that it isn't a well built/designed vehicle.
7) When designing (or refactoring) portions of code, have design reviews (informal or formal) with at least one other developer. Bounce all your ideas and thoughts. Get ideas and thoughts in return. Use your whiteboard for goodness sakes. That's what it is there for.
8) Praise other developers when they do well. Programmers need to know when they're doing good as well as bad. Programmers appreciate praise from other programmers more than they do from anyone else.
9) When you have to be critical of someone else's code, be constructive. Apply honesty with a feather... not with a sledge hammer. Instead of saying, "What the fuck??? You're not threadsafe and possibly creating multi-tons."... say... "Do you think that synchronizing this singleton might work here better... so we're threadsafe?"... for example.
10) Be consistent in your code. It makes your code more easily maintained by others.
11) Document. Please write comments. Don't be so egotistical to think that your code is self-documenting. Even in COBOL and Eiffel... the two most verbose languages on the planet... this isn't the case.
My officemates and I recite lines from OfficeSpace and make jokes about not getting paid on time and what we will do when it is our turn to go. At first, it makes things worse, but after a while you "feel the burn" and stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
If you can't add anything to a discussion more than "anime is porn" or unemployment whining...then why don't you go somewhere else, because it's getting really annoying.
Want a job ? Fucking move to where the jobs are, genius. Waiting for the job market to improve in Arizona will not get you a job. I can see many many many jobs that you might be qualified for on pretty much every job board out there.
But of course, if soaking up unemployment, playing videogames, and whining all day floats your boat, then fine....just don't keep crying about it like a little fucking kid. Grow up and become an adult.
Before you hire on to a company, please, for the love of Pete, find out how it's funded.
If they started from nothing, got three rounds totalling $100Mish from VC over the past 2-3ish years and don't have a shipping product to show for it, absolutely don't work there. VC money means that the company needs to be on the fast track to acquisition or IPO, which means that layoffs that cut burn rate will make the company more attractive to investors while the product is busy slipping.
If it's funded by an angel investor or angel pool, then find out everything you can about their personalities, their investment portfolios, how much they're worth and how much this venture, based on its burn rate, is likely to be straining them.
If it's funded by the people managing it, these, in my experience, are usually the best companies to work for. It's their daily routine on the line, in addition to their cash.
Find out if management has worked at companies where they've conducted layoffs before. They will likely do it again.
Find out if the company has ever missed payroll. If they have, do not assume this is a bad thing. Particularly if everyone stayed on board, this can be a positive thing, and it means management doesn't fire people at the first sign of cashflow problems. If missed payrolls happen all the time, then figure out, based on how often it happens, what your actual salary would be, counting the missed paychecks. It's really no different from saying that you are going to be paid a lower salary. As long as you are planning for missed payrolls, they won't really be missed.
Find out how you are going to split profits on the product. If it's just an ephemeral hand-waving promise that profits will be split, don't take the job. If it's just stock options, don't take the job. If it's going to be a subjective percentage of a pool based on performance, consider taking it if the deciding personalities strike you as fair, well-balanced people. If it's going to be a fixed percentage base with subjective bonuses, then absolutely take the job. None of this is real unless you get it on paper. So make sure you have that piece of paper the day you show up for work.
Most employees believe in the myth of salaries, and their precious, surprised little faces when they learn that there is no Santa Claus never cease to amaze me. Income comes into most companies in large, unwieldy piles of cash, not perfectly metered little bundies of biweekly love. So understand that salaries are a fiction, that exist to create the illusion of stability while lowering the employee's compensation for work over the long haul. We have come to depend on them because we, as individuals, have lost the discipline to save and manage money.
Always, always, always ask how much cash is in the bank right now. Always, always, always ask what the company burn rate is. Do the simple math, and plan to start looking for a job 2-3 months before that money runs out, assuming that they won't make a single penny in the interim or enjoy any further loans or investment.
Watch company growth. Ask every month or two what the new burn rate is. Do curve-fitting to get a more accurate idea of when the bank account goes empty.
Most people take salaried jobs because they don't want to sweat over the company bank account. Sweat it. You're just burying your head in the sand if you don't. Let the fear of that going zero motivate you. And let the excitement of seeing a percentage of those proceeds motivate you.
Morale is usually a function of how well the product is coming together. If it's making exciting progress, catching up, or God forbid, surpassing the competition, investors will usually continue to jump on until the product ships. This is always the first-order response for morale. People love working on good product.
Odds are, if you're in a web development company, your demand has dried up, you're competing with several other development companies also desperate for wo
Shut up. Any business deserves this type of treatment. Most of these jobs are actually worth well over $100k but corps refuse to pay that. Instead they take their labor overseas and hurt our economy that much more.
The more people that act this way and tell the man where he can stick it the better our economy will be. I'd much rather take my order from a well mannered, hard working and professional employee than someone working for minimum wage because that's the only job they could get.
I'd also rather work at the local 7-11 than Sun Microsystems. At least down at the 7-11 I can hang out with the store owner and know I'm not going to be in the next round of layoffs.
Corporations treat people like numbers. Its about fucking time they started getting treated the same.
Try working for a real employer, like the government. You can gain much more satisfaction by knowing what you do is of service to your country. Be a public servant!
We throw nerf balls at each other and scream obscenities at customers while the phone is muted.
It seems to help.
Never underestimate the fun that can be added to a work environment through toys.
I used to be the CTO of a straight-laced financial software firm. But I had toys and gadgets in my office and you wouldn't believe the attractive to other employees to come fire off a few rounds.
-psy
Do not tolerate employees who behave unprofessionally. Problem-solve or fire them.
I guess that would depend on your version of "professional." At the sweat shop I work in, simply questioning management or asking for a schedule change (because you commute using public transit) is "unprofessional" to them.
Fire all the unhappy people.
--- Nukes don't kill people psychopathic megalomaniacs do.
Before I lost my job to a layoff, (my job was outsourced oversees) I was doing the work of several, and constantly worried that layoffs and outsourcing were coming.
I'm now considering a whole new career in a completely unrelated field...
A clever person solves a problem, A wise person avoids it. -Einstein
I just quit. That improved my morale incredibly. I'm feeling better than in years. I have only so many years left to live, and no way of getting more time, so I'll spend that time doing something that's not crap. You do what you want to do.
The thing is, the economy really had nothing to do this if by economy you refer to the outside national and world economy. What has happened is that hard work, dedication, loyalty and quality driven effort has been first placed as secondary, then seen as an uneeded expense and then finally is actively eliminated. One fellow employee said that, "[our company] is in the business of putting asses into chairs." Ethics is something that is just not factored in... sure the word is slung but there is really not a healthy environment conducive to good ethics (and thus those with them are rolled over). Sure, there have been layoffs due to lowered income but usually this has less to do with the state of the economy and everything to do with who pissed who off up top and seeing the shock waves hit the troops down below. What is interesting is how the supreme goal of this organization on a personnel level seems to be to make it as a VP. You do not have to be competent, ethical, honest or professional but just be friends with the right bullshit artists. Normally I would not care about this... let them choke on their own inept bullshit! However, the primary customer of this organization is the US government and usually the DoD. Yes, that means your tax dollars getting put into the pockets of well dressed and well spoken criminals instead of the guys out there fighting and dying that should get it. (Note that when defending their bullshit, they ironically point to the warfighter and adopt this air of patriotic dignity as if that does not point to the fact that they themselves are the problem. Pretty words do tend to work on the weak minded.) When any other opportunity arises people jump ship... those with less scrupples can often be bought out. (I say bought out, because they seem to completely change their tune if they themselves are given money, options, etc... yet the important thing to remember is that no policy (or mindset) changes take place. So the unsrupulous of them prove they are really only looking out for themselves and using the situation for all as a rallying/negotiating point only... reminds me of unions)
The only way to solve this is with competition. Get big government out of the business of creating and enforcing monopolies and focus on who provides the best products and services for the best value... NOT who has the best golf swing, the best powerpoint slides, or is the wittiest with jokes and pretty words.
I got fired from ClientLogic without warning. The morale of the place among the workers wasn't very good. Seems everyone I talked to had some bitchfest about the place daily. The turnover rate was very high, because they were being bitchslapped around by Bellsouth. Their rules were archaic, and we were stuffed into cubicles, not one, but two at a time. Forced to run programs that crash every five minutes, and forced to be tech support, sales AND customer service. Not to mention that promotion was only a $.10/hr increase in pay. Add to that the fact that the vending machines were always broken and that they regularly lay off half of their staff where I worked, and you get low morale. I heard through the grapevine that we were getting paid $5 less than what we should have. And we were missing benefits. All so the company could profit a little more. ClientLogic was getting paid almost as much for giving us the privilige of working for them as we were busting our asses for them! And they slashed our benefits.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
So be careful what you say and don't come across as implying they're clueless managers. That's not going to help them and it could hurt you.
I sure as hell, have seem more legacy code writen in C/C++ then Ada. All of the Ada code I ahve seen is for current modern systems. The OSS project, I am currently starting, will be writen in Ada and Python. This is because these languages are by far thew best tools for the job. The only language that approches the suitability of Ada is Java. C++ just plain sucks. I would just as soon write in ANSI/ISO C. ( The only OOP thing that I have not done in standard C is Templets. But this is realy using the wrong tool for the job.)
You don't have a girlfriend either, do you?
Two points:
1) There may be less work pressure, but some of us have lives outside of work. Where I work right now, my ay typically runs from 10-6 or so, with a couple of extra hours work in the evening. So I'm putting in more than 40 hours a week - but I get to avoid the morning and evning traffic, and spend more time with my family. It's a heck of a benefit to me, and has cost my company little or nothing.
2) In today's economy, there are always deadlines and "other situations". If you haven't read it already, go find a copy of Yourdon's "Death March". It's an easy read, and the final chapter - "Death March as a Way of Life" - it pretty much on-target, in my experience. Whatever you're working on is always absolutely, vitally, critical anymore... because if you won't treat it that way, there's someone else who will.
Just remember, it's your employer's job to make sure you are happy and have meaningful, challenging and fun projects. You are the customer, and they must do all within their power to satisfy you so you'll deign to come to work the next day.
Come off it. This is a job. It is only as lifeless and painful as you yourself make it. There is fun to be had in debugging someone else's work, if you decide to have fun with it, or even the most tedious/boring projects.
Please note that those employees who are happy are generally more productive, and get fired last.
If you're waiting for your employer to "make" you happy, it'll never happen, you jaded cynic.
If you feel you cannot be happy without them being proactive about it then you'd best look for a job elsewhere.
Believe me, they'll say "Good riddance."
-Adam
complain responsibly.
No one likes an incessant whiner, but you can greatly improve morale by offering _good_ and _realistic_ suggestions that management can actually implement.
It will improve morale because it appears that managers listen and are implementing your suggestions, and management looks good because they have a happy work force.
IANAC (I am not a communist)
Does it surprise anyone that as we progress as a nation, more and more restraints are placed on workers and tools of success are removed?
All you have to do is look at Enron, the poster-child for this movement. Over the last 30 years, power has moved from the populace via the Government, to corporations via soft money. We are all working for their greed, and unlike the past, that greed does not represent gain for the rest of the economy.
We are now at the mercy of corporations and their greed. No longer do we have protection from these entities overstepping their bounds, just ask your insurance agency, bank or credit card company to stop spreading around your personal private financial information. They will tell you that doing so lowers prices, but in actuality increases premiums for those with poor reports, that may not be totally under their control, yet does not empirically lower your outlay.
More and more money is being extracted from us to feed the elite who control the multi-nationals. Every action taken in the name of efficiency by a corporation is simply to reduce costs to improve shareholder (preferred that is) wealth. Why do you think that the free markets of the world are moving towards non-tangible means to measure a company's wealth? The simple answer is because without a real standard to base stock prices on, they can effectively move more money to traders of large blocks of stock and to not pay dividends. Again, ask yourself why people's 401K's were raped when the economy lost it's verve? Because the smaller trading houses that needed leverage to compete against the large houses were locked out of salvaging their investments, which the analysts who made millions for their partners with large trading-block control suddenly couldn't predict the downturn.
This trend indicates an exhaustion of opportunity and moral resources that will push America to the brink of annihilation. Because of the loss of strengths such as egalitarianism and social consciousness, we are left to believe that the current economic climate of layoffs and the trend towards outsourcing is just and makes financial sense.
The adage today is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. While the reports are that there are more millionaires today than ever before is factually correct, look at why that is, and you should be astonished. Corporations are creating a welfare state that is dependant on credit, and sanctioning increases in salary, while simultaniously seeking to raise prices to keep people happy and convinced that we are making great strides in the capitolization of our workers. But in actuality, we are devaluing our populace because corporations are free to seek greener pastures instead of forming a symbiotic relationship with the country that spawned them.
Before this post takes a Matrix or Marxist bend, I suggest that you all read "Atlas Shrugged." I think it's time to start the dismantling of our corporate infrastructure in favor of a more just set of relationships.
Contrary to popular belief, life is not a bitch. It is far far worse.
That's really all I have to say. I'm sure somebody else will step in and explain why. Grow up. I'll earn my karma on other comments ...
One simple rule for its versus it's
Your problem is obvious--the constant layoffs. Without doing something about them, nothing anybody does will help.
Layoffs are sometimes necessary, especially in poor economic times. The critical thing is to do them once and get it over with. Figure out how many people you can afford to employ for the next year, and cut down to that size. Then tell the remaining people that their job is secure for at least a year. It's painful, but people will understand the financial need--and they won't looking over their shoulders, wondering if they're next on the hit list.
My last job (incidentally, 70 weeks ago, unable to find work since) required me to relocate 3,100 miles from the Right coast to the Left coast, to work for them, leaving a very stable job behind. A week after I got there, my hiring manager was fired, along with 76 other people. We were 250 people at the time.
Over the next 14 months, we went through 5 rounds of layoffs, including the last one which liquidated my entire department, leaving me as the only person standing. Even my boss was let go.
In 18 months time, we had gone from 250 people to 30, and were on our 4th CEO. All three founders had resigned, two failed merger deals (one with a company that just recently bit the dust themselves), two sexual harassment suits pending against the first CEO and his team, and it only got worse from there.
We originally had free vending machines, but those were soon turned into pay-only machines. The senior management team had free parking in a mostly-empty garage space, and we had to pay $20.00-per-day to park across the street. The middle-management groups were internally promoting themselves, laying off more and more people, and making the remaining people work longer and longer hours, for less pay. We were earning (as developers) roughly 1/4 of what the managers were earning at the time. They were working 4-day weeks, 5 hour days, feet up on the desks, while we were camping in the offices overnight sometimes to meet customer deliverables.
Every day, people would come in wondering if "..they were next". That's not a nice way to come to work, not wondering if you're going to lose your job, but when.
In November 2001, I decided to pack up my things, and resign. The company wasn't going to survive a 6th round of layoffs, and now with the board in control, they had changed direction, completely tarnishing their name with the Open Source community. I moved back 3,100 miles to the Right coast, and haven't been able to find a job since (yes, it's incredibly tough out here).
After I left, they worked on a product, and after the remaining developers completed version 1.0 of the product, and delivered it, they were all fired, en-masse.
How's that for morale for you?
The key to flex time is to notify your co-workers when you will be arriving. I have co-workers who arrive at 6am and leave at 2 or 3 and other co-workers (boss included) who arrive at 10am and leave at 6 or 7pm. As long as everybody knows when people will be around, everybody seems to be very understanding.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
I don't have a whole lot to say on the how to increase it, but I can definitely throw out a few pointers on how NOT to do it.
I once worked for a company contracting in tech support for another major tech company in the Boise, Idaho area. The morale there was so low people often didn't bother even calling in to say "stuff it, I quit" when they finally decided that complete destitution would be of greater benefit than showing up for the daily abuse.
The first things that I recall about the place was the feeling that although we really were skilled technicians, is that we were treated like cattle. We were herded from bay to bay (a bay is a group of workers in one large cubicle) depending upon how things were working that day, what we would be doing, and how many people showed up for work that day. We were numbered, and given a position to sit at. We had no personal space whatsoever. At one time, we were able to have personal effects since we didn't get moved around as much, but the biggest hit to my morale was when they asked us to take out "personal things" home. There was no comfort. We couldn't even enjoy a friendly familiar wallpaper on our computers.
The second thing that comes to mind on what not to do is an incident we called "black wednesday". We were going through a "low point" in technical support due to summer months (where there aren't that many holidays to make an excuse for buying product, it happened every year). We were all happily riding a wave of good availablity to work on issues and taking some time to relax when suddenly a commotion arose. We all looked across the large room that we were in to see a group a whole "bay" of people being herded out. Their work badges were obviously being confiscated and they was no doubt that if their badges were being confiscated that they would never make it back in the building. A moment later one of the "floor supervisors" came by and told us that they had been "layed off" due to lack of work. In actuality they were temporary workers with no rights apparently, and they were never reassigned. Which equated to being fired. In that building the line between being a temp and being an actual "hired on" worker didn't exist. If someone from the temp agency went, be happy that it wasn't you. The biggest hit came the next day when we were obviously slammed out of our minds with tech calls and no one to pick up the slack and we were told that we were understaffed due to "natural attrition".
I leave it up to you... slashdotters. What do you think? Cattle, or people? Lies, or truth? lets not get down to your fuzzy happy ass benefits package... how about the basic rights a person is due. Like being called by their first name and not being lied to on a daily basis because we can so easily be replaced.
It's more stable now, but people are consistently laid-off.
This is the problem. You have to lump the bad news and spread out the good. Employees are willing to understand layoffs. People are surprisingly understanding of how a buisness needs to adapt, and how that adapation can, unfortunetly, lead to layoffs. As long as you take care of those being laid off (e.g., solid serverence pay, extension of health benifits, assistance finding a new job, etc.), both those let go and those staying behind will show suprising resiliance.
However, if your consistently laying off people, that means upper management does not have a clue of what is going on, and will undercut any confidence in the company. People need to be able to focus on their day to day responsiblities and get their job done; not worry if they're going to have a job in 48 hours.
All the other suggestions, flex-time, etc. are great, but you have to fix the fundamental problem before you can get to those. If you have a bad transmission, you don't try to fix it by getting a pair of fuzzy dice.
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
Heh. I don't have to imagine that because the staring into submission doesn't work on me. The easiest way to get me to dig in my heels is to try to exert peer pressure.
They chose to come in late. Screw them guys, I'm going home.
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
... and a large banner that says "Is this good for the company?"
this sig is a highly rehearsed improvisation
So, you work from 6AM to 10pm every day, including your two "casual days", saturday and sunday.
you realize that doing this work will save your job for the months to come so you do it, and 2) you realize that your boss doesn't really care if you sit in an office or the recliner in your home... as long as the work gets done
Months to come, then you are fired and so is your boss.
Ahhh, the real world. It's such a moral booster.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
As a contractor I've worked at a number of companies where morale was very low, and WITHOUT EXCEPTION the managers at these places have been pointy-haired boss types. Some of them technically illiterate, most with serious communication problems, and all incapable of thinking in terms other than budget and deadline.
At the places with high morale, again WITHOUT EXCEPTION, the managers have been technically savvy, good communicators, realistic about what can and can't be done with given resources, and able to inspire (by example) commitment to quality.
I think management is a talent like any other. You can awaken that talent with education, but you really can't teach people how to be good managers if they aren't innately able. Unfortunately the number of management positions in our economy exceeds BY FAR the number of people who have talents for the job.
So my recommendation to you is to move into management yourself, and see if you are one of those people who can do it right. You definitely have the right motivation. Too many people are in management because they just want to make more money. The fact that you are interested in improving the situation, and are actually looking for ways to do it, sets you apart already.
INFORMATIVE!?!?! STUPID SHITHEADS. Do your fucking homework. He did not say Osama Bin Laden. He said "ABU NIDAL". Gore was NOT on that panel. As for the Atta story...IT WAS A DIFFERENT ATTA, MORON! FUCKINGGODAMSTUPID MOTHERFUCKERS. FUCK. Look, read my other posts, you'll see where I stand. I am NOT a liberal in any sense of the word. I am educated, and I do my fucking homework. STOP SPREADING LIES.
What, are you nuts? You can't break an employee by beating them. They just get all upity about their dignity and what not. No, as long as everyone keeps their jobs no one is really scared.
Look at it this way: It takes 20 years and a pension to make truely loyal employees. It takes about two years, regardless of beatings, to make a technically competent employee. It only takes about six months of unemployment to turn a man into the cynical, sniviling yes man that management desires. Which do you think management prefers?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
But, I don't think a company is stable that has to be consistently laying off people.
A couple of simple rules have always helped me with the morale of my team. If morale is poor, I nearly always point at one of these things and realise that I/my company is not doing it: 1. Clear, achievable deadlines
2. The best tools and equipment for the job (within reason obviously)
3. Insulation from the most insideous company politics and hopeless project managers.
4. Wages in the upper bracket of the industry for each role
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
My current client seems to not understand this.
They have been implementing actively stupid policies.
First, they outlawed accessing email from yahoo and other web email services. Rationale? They couldn't enforce virus scanning on those systems. Why is this stupid? Because the same email virus scanners that our exchange server uses is also on every machine, so that the same scan gets performed on our exchange email OR our web email. (Policy states that if we don't keep up on the latest scanner patch, we will get fired.) Since I never run javascript and I've been paranoid about viruses before anyone else there, I'm ticked. Even worse, for the first 6 months there, they hadn't given me email on their system, so I had to use web email (before they implemented this policy.) I had signed up for various developer forums using my yahoo address. Various developer emails have been sent to me at that address that I can't access from work anymore.
Recently, I discovered that they decided that people don't need to be able to change their own network passwords. If we need to change it, we have to talk to the help desk. The help desk has total domain control of the network. We don't, although we're the ones who actually set up the web and sql servers, did various maintainence on them, and are the ones that the help desk come to when they can't figure out how to clear the cache on their machines. (I exaggerate on that last bit, but not too much.)
Why did they decide to not allow password changing? Rationale, according to the network admin (the little hitler) is that users can't remember their passwords if they change them. Rationale according to the cio is that management needs to know everyone's passwords in case anything happens. When I tried to explain that the domain admin can login to any machine regardless, and even change our password, it was waved away. I was asked if it's really all that inconvient to have the help desk change it. Even more annoying, the help desk doesn't know our passwords. They simply let us change them on their machines. All I can figure is that I'm either being lied to, or management has no clue what they are doing. Not a morale boost.
I've met way dumber and more stuborn people in the corporate world than this. In fact, a really evil bastard would have blamed the underling for the bad decision and used his 40 page report to make himself look good. Those types don't make it in a university environment where people plan to work till they retire and know everyone's tricks.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I'm amazed to see so many suggestions regarding promotion possibilities -- I wonder if you all work in a different IT industry to me. I'm only 30 (don't laugh), but I'm already as high up the technical career ladder as it's possible to be at my workplace (and changing jobs would be a demotion based on the job ads I've seen). To get any higher I'd have to become a manager, which doesn't yet excite me. Isn't there more to a career than just climbing the ziggurat?
Anyway, if you are a manager, the best advice I can give is to find a copy of Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, read it, and use its advice. It's a thin book, but it is +100 Insightful when it comes to employees. Some links on the book:
Having worked there for five years, you must see the folly and instability of VB. M$ has consistently knifed their VB programers in the back with changes that require recoding. Soon, I'm afraid they will abandon VB alltogether.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
When the "work for 1/3 the pay and do whatever management says, no matter how absurd, or be deported" crew is gone, management will have to start treating us like human beings again.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Best way to improve company morale? Get the boss to stop acting like a know-it-all jerkface.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
After several rounds of layoffs and terminations, managers should realize that employees might be a tad sensitive to jokes regarding such things. It would improve my morale to tar and feather the big boss who keeps joking about our "Employment Continuation Program".
Grrrrr!
(This is supposed to be a humorous Kohan reference, in case any moderators think this is offtopic)
Here's an idea
STOP FIRING PEOPLE!
I don't know why noone's thought of this before, but it seems that the greatest cause of low morale is MASS, RANDOM LAYOFFS!
You know, I really, really, *really* hope you have an equity stake in the company. Your trust in the owners is scary, and I'd like to think you're getting something for all this nutbusting. Do you really think they're going to reward your loyalty? I can appreciate working hard because of the satisfaction you get from a job well done, but surely there are other work places out there that would offer you the same satisfaction AND fairly compensate you.
I'd hate to hear from you in 2-3 years when the company goes belly up (or the owners decide to "rip it apart" again) and you've got NOTHING to show for your work but an empty life (because you've been working 70 hour weeks) and empty nest egg (because you took a 60% paycut).
"...you can steal my woman, but you ain't done nuthin' smart."
So Globexcorp is a criminal organization bound to take the world...
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I think the last sentence sums it up: "Well... needless to say... he was canned a few months later by a clueless superior. "
The original poster thinks the superior was clueless for firing the one guy who had clue.
Think, do you want to read and comprehend?
One of my previous companies outsourced our whole department to a bunch of people in another state for half the pay we were getting. That sucked. But they gave us three months to try and get another job within the company. Most of the 25 people in our department took this time to play Quake and Warcraft over the company LAN. A few of us worked on our resumes and web sites. And then our boss told us that free training was being made available. Only five signed up, and three of them never showed. I showed. I took every class they gave me, and if one guy didn't show, and his slot was something I didn't have already, I took that. On days with no classes, I spent on the web studying FAQs and reading Slashdot to see what was new and fresh.
Because of this, I got a job within the company just days before the end. I got a great pay raise, too. Doing something I never did before, which while it turned out that it was run by a terrible manager, it gave me the stepping stone and breathing room to find another, much better job elswhere. I am now making almost 3 times the pay in the industry now, and love what I do.
I learned something from that experience. To keep learning. Take advantage of opportunites as they arise.
Sure, a lot of companies don't give a flying fark about you, your family, and you're just a number hidden in a @sum column in some spreadsheet. Some bosses suck so bad, they create a false vacuum in their cubicle that makes your ears pop. In fact, unless you are working for some small business, I can almost guarantee that a majority of the company doesn't know who you are or what you do. There's nothing you can do about that. You can't control what others do, only how you react.
Right now? I am learning Linux, BSD, C, Perl, and a ton of other things. I fully realize, at any moment, no matter how good a job I do, I may get laid off. I can't control that, and worrying about it, or acting like a victim, flopping about like a defenseless overturned turtle isn't going to help. I could be justifiably bitter, playing Quake Arena on the company LAN until the accounting department makes a formal complaint about the noise. That is a choice I can make. It is also a choice I can make to see if I can do my job better with a new programming language. In the last two years, I saved my department several hundred thousand dollars by migrating to Linux, even though I was told "it's not worth it," and "no one will agree to it, we're Windows material all the way, right or wrong." But then M$S would not give us a site license. Our budget was sliced in half, and we couldn't afford to upgrade *and* pay M$. I said, "I have the prefect answer."
That's when column AJ1230 on the spreadsheet noticed me, and that did a lot for my group's morale. :)
because techies like you don't understand what they read...
Why do you think those guys come in late???
How about the fact that they have smartened up? If the company is going to ride you for all the extra unpaid overtime hours, then you might as well come in as late as possible seeing as you're having to stay there the extra hours whether or not you have done your typical 8.
There is no such thing as peer pressure as everyone is worked like a dog and feels the same way. The pressure is from the knuckleheads "managing" the company.
We play deathmatch a hour a day.
Hell, I own the company and I know what it costs me, but it really cuts down the stress level and everyone loves it.
Ok, who on earth rated the above flame bait informative?
There's a happy worker here, and someone who assumes he's working all the times he's at home. That's BS.... having flex time means you make your schedule, except for the emergencies that come along, when an emergency comes, you fix it, that doesn't change if you're working 9-5 in an office or 10-6 at home. You are paid to do a job. If you do it right, and are happy then there's no need to worry. Sure, you COULD get downsized, then again, the US could get bombed with a few nukes from North Korea, here's an idea. Enjoy your life, if you like where you're working, and they give you some freedoms, say thank you very much and spend the money well.
Make your company a cult. You never heard about bad morale at Heaven's Gate.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
So instead the employee should be given a free reign to decide when he wants to work. IMO, flexible hours lead to better productivity as it gives the employee the chance to choose a work schedule that suits him the best.
A great book called "Leadership and Self Deception: Getting out of the Box" couldn't be more highly recommended. Get it, read it, apply it.
This link contains a good analysis of changes in income distribution in the US:
Pyramidal Economics
Why not a dress code no more complex than "if your gender-specific components are covered, you're cool?".
The disadvantages of dull clothes include:
1. High costs. I can easily dress in a T-shirt and shorts for under USD 50. A three piece suit, not so readily. Expensive clothing just stretches budgets further.
2. Low climate adaptability. Cut energy costs by running the office at 84 degrees? Let people wear shorts, and they'll be a lot happier.
3. Low zing factor. Fifty grey suits will not excite people's minds. No, that's not meant in the filthy sense.
4. Impression of pettiness. If it's not affecting the work you do, why does it matter what you're wearing? If they're paying you to look at you dressed up a certain way as you work, then they should start shoving your paycheque down your pants!
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
The way to fix this problem is to get another job either working for yourself (it's hard, but it's fun!), or join a company where your boss actually writes code. If your boss isn't writing code, he does not have the skills to manage you. It's as simple as that.
I've been to visit a big company recently where this is the case. They have their shit together, and they are profitable, and their employees are happy. I've worked for (and at, as a contractor) a company where the manager's don't write code, and frankly, many of their programmers didn't, either. They let most of the department go when I left.
-D
More often, in my experience, it is the other way around. I've always been a night owl. My last job had an equal number of late comers and early birds. I was almost always the last one out of the office at night, sometimes including the night guard who locked up everything around 10PM.
I envy the person who can work at home whenever they feel like it. I had this luxury for about 2 years. The trick of course is that both you and your manager (or customer) must have a good idea of what the job is that you are doing so that you can agree on when it is 10 percent done, 50 percent done, or finished. These days, there are way too many manager that have never done any of the technical work that they manage. They don't have a clue what you are doing or how you do it. They don't know good quality from bad quality until the end user complains. I would rather work as a greeter at Walmart than work in one of these organizations again. I have no respect for the managers involved, and if you sign on to one of their projects you are doomed to fail even if your own work is beyond comparison.
At some point, and maybe we have already reached it, production of good software must be it's own reward, since the captains of industry don't seem to know good from bad. Results are slowly comming in from projects farmed out to cheap labor overseas and it ain't pretty. This has nothing to do with intelligence or talent of those workers who do work over there for a fraction of what we are used to getting paid. It has instead to do with the total inability of management to conceptualize (much less document) the products that they are trying to turn out.
It is unfortunate but true, these failures will not result in the perpetrators getting fired for incompetence. Rather they will be so monumental that they will cause businesses or at least divisions to be closed down entirely. As poor as mid management is at evaluating the quality of our work as programmers and technicians, top management is even *worse* at evaluating the results of mid-level managers. In almost every case the solutions will be too-little too-late.
With many games and even child play, why not? It's sure fun!
:-P
My favourite is that with people running around chairs... the music stops and people seat.
Very funny!
My Company:
- Long Hours (all employees are salaried and must work a minimum of 50 scheduled hours per week).
- Low pay (because of the economy, you are told from the beginning that they will pay you less than you're worth)
- Little Vacation (1 week per year, 3 sick days)
- Psycho Managers (very senior management love to fire people, even have one that brags about it)
Your Company:
- Expect more (schedule 40, if possible, higher more people especially if you're profitable or economically well off)
- Pay what they deserve. A little less, due to the economy is fine, but not a lot less. As soon as the econ picks up, they're history.
- Time off is essential. The more you hedge them in, the more they notice and want to get out.
- Management must care, and be open. We do have many (if not most) that genuinely care. You can't fake it - you're employees are not rats in a cage.
As a manager, the power to make employees more comfortable is HUGE. Free soda, participative scheduling, food at meetings, etc. As an team member, it's limited to your immediate circle. 1) Decide that you're working there because you WANT TO BE. Although it may not be easy to get a new job, convincing yourself that you can just walk away if it gets worse is the equivalent of a soothing mantra. 2) Sugar is great. When someone on my team calls in late, he/she often picks up donuts on the way in. When I've got a few days off, I bake (and bring in half the booty for my office). Most of us have a candy stash, and perk up our overworked teammates with chocolate and sympathy. 3) Actually listen to each other. A group of workers who sympathize and agree with each other can sometimes be more productive than a group competing for bonuses and favors. If it's gotta be us against them, the "us" might as well be playing together. Plus, you can cut off repetitive whining with "Preaching to the choir!" 4) Make life easier for your coworkers and they'll do the same for you. If you know Bob has a great vacation planned for May, offer to cover his projects so he'll cover your in June. If you work out your own plan for an efficient schedule, Management won't have to impose theirs.
"The beatings will continue until morale improves."
Step 1: Dump 90% of all the other "suggestions"
Step 2: Run out and buy the paperback version of "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Read it and practice it yourself for 30 days (count starts after you finish the book). It is worthless sitting on a bookshelf . Don't be afraid to use a highlighter. It also may be tax deductable.
Step 3: Convince your boss, HR and/or upper management to by a copy for EVERYONE in the company with a requirement to read it. Yes it includes the dock workers, maintenance people, and the janitors. You will understand after you read the book.
Step 4: Have the company create a plan based on what they have learned from the book and implement it.
Results: Morale and layoffs will no longer be an issue and the company will grow to eventually own its market.
What happens if you follow the book but the company refuses to buy into it?
The company is no longer worth your time. You need to find another job with a company that will appreciate your real worth. This company does not. Try their competitors first. If they hire you, and follow your suggestions, they will own the market and your former company.
If you can't get a job with a competitor, then use the books advise and find a different company to work for that has principles and values. Your paradigm has been shifted and you no longer need to be a victim of your previous job.
If you abandon the book or Step 2, you deserve what you got.
The solution sounds easy but it is the most difficult thing you will ever have to do - especially Step 2. If you can make it through Step 2 your are home free.
1. Get a boss that says "yeah..." alot 2. Hire two people named Bob to do the lay offs 3. Make posters with company slogans like "what can YOU do for the company" and you're set. ;)
When you come into the office by 9am and leave at 5pm, you are communicating a message to your peers that you get your shit done, you get it done in the time allotted, and then you leave because you don't need to stay late.
In time (provided you are actually getting said shit done and done well), it becomes a point of respect that you have other priorities but that first and foremost you are handling your business.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Not that it wouldn't be useful, it just doesn't seem to be *that* necessary.
Is this a Taylors, SC company?
upper-management seems not to understand what we do.
so liquidate upper management. that'd sure as fuck cheer me up.
Aww, you hate your job?
There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, we meet at the bar.
See you there!
My mom says I'm cool.
I work at a 24-7 operations center where people are constantly arriving and leaving. To coordinat work and projects asynchronos communication, such as email, voicemail, and ticket tracking software are used. 30 minutes is nothing and can easily be worked around if you do it properly.
As a currently very happy employee myself, I can tell you what specific conditions exist at my job that make me happy. Most of these conditions are a function of the job being A) unionized, and therefore solid with good benefits and a living wage, and B) in government, so there is a well-thought out bureaucracy in place to keep things running smoothly. BUT, the specific happiness inducing effects shouldn't be too hard to replicate in private industry -- IF the bosses want them to be. So, as a public service message from moi, here are the factors which lead to happiness:
1. Pay your employees a living wage, and AT LEAST give them medical and dental. Note that this doesn't mean you have to make them rich! But if you're not paying them at LEAST in the 40K range, they're going to be too busy worrying about getting their rent money together, to worry about YOUR work. In places like NYC or Boston, better make that 60K or your employees will be living in cardboard boxes.
2. Don't breathe down your employees' necks. Where I work, the bosses leave you alone as long as you produce. So, if your employees aren't missing deadlines, leave them alone and let them do their stuff. When managing programmers (as with herding cats) less == more. Just tell them to keep you posted on their progress, at least once a week (say, Friday before COB). If you need to find out how something is doing, ask casually (this is good because it shows interest and lets the programmer know he's not forgotten). The trick is to LET the programmers produce instead of trying to force it. You'll find they come to YOU to tell you how things are going, because people like to talk about what they're doing. And they'll like you more (this does matter).
3. Don't be anal about when programmers come and go. We're not the most precise people when it comes to getting up in the morning, or going home at night. We may get in a half hour late and leave two hours late at night -- you get a free hour and a half, and we barely notice. But if you enforce business hours, we get pissed and come in and leave on a much more exact schedule.
4. Casual dress code. This means, generally, something comfortable but tasteful, like jeans and a polo shirt. Don't enforce the whole "dockers and sky blue shirt" thing (god, that is SO over), or (worse) suits. If you're uncomfortable, you're worried about stretching your shirt collar, not coding that loop. This doesn't mean you have to let them walk in in a kilt and a see-through rubber shirt, either. But, let them be comfy.
5. Cubicle decoration (within the limits of good taste) should be encouraged. A cluttered, chaotic cubicle is a happy, productive cubicle. A pile of paper on a desk is a sign of activity. Don't sweat stuff like this.
6. Coffee. Lots of coffee. Don't skimp on the sugar and half-and-half, either, or no one will drink the coffee and that's like no coffee. Any old coffee pot will do as long as the coffee is a reasonable, good brand and when people notice the pot is empty, they can set a new one on to brew. I can't stress the importance of caffeine and sugar to programmers enough. They WILL find ways of acquiring it; if you don't supply it, they'll be taking breaks to make coffee runs. Which do you prefer; three minutes to fill the mug at the office coffee pot, or fifteen minutes to walk a block to the Starbucks, with you playing Spy Games to figure out who's going where and when?
7. When nothing serious is going on, let the programmers do pilot projects that will eventually be good for the department. You can direct this a little; if you know, say, that you're going to be using some specific set of email tools, mention it to a programmer who isn't too busy and ask him to fiddle around with it and see what he can make it do. Then, keep the source code around for when the project ramps up. Remember: idle hands are the devil's playthings.
That's about all you have to do, really, to keep people happy. Leave them alone, let them do their thing, keep up the supply of interesting things to do, don't push them unless you really have to, feed them lots of coffee, and let them dress comfortably.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
When I was working at a dying dotcom that was on its way out, we found plenty of ways to keep out spirits up. "After hours" games of Counterstrike and StarCraft were a must. Some of us went out every night to drink and play pool. Then on weekends we would all go get totally plastered at the local pub, walk to someone's place and crash.
It worked really, really well.
How to improve your companies morale:
Step 1: Be part of a successful company.
Step 2: Do not lay people off.
Step 3: See Step 1.
Although you already answered your question, people feel like they always have to look over their shoulder to avoid getting fired. Bottom line - your company is the problem. No amount of booze, yoga, flex hours, massages or magic pixie dust are going to increase morale. Odds are the stigmatism from laying off 300 people is still in the air. My suggestion is do one of two things - find a new job or be content with your situation.
Actually as harsh as this sounds, the despair.com text is accurate in terms of increased productivity and morale.
An unproductive worker will typically bring down the productivity of the others. In a group of 10 people firing one of them can increase productivity by up to %30 for the whole group according to some studies by Harvard. Also noted in the study was that the canned employee was not replaced. Even with a man down projects can pick up speed.
Most good managers know this as well as puting more humans towards a problem does not make it go faster. There are over 5k programmers on Microsofts Windows team for example and Linux is still ahead.
Also I have worked with verbally abusive employees. I threatened to even quit if one of one them was not removed. Believe me when I say its a good thing sometimes that this person was canned. Not just in my situation but other people were being effected by her unrelentless anger and unprofessionalism.
In my situation my personal morale as well as the company's went up after this individual was canned. It was a small bussiness. She was not happy their anyway and the owner thought he did her a favor in the long run.
http://saveie6.com/
...thanks to things like a VPN and Avaya IP Softphone
Holy shit. This was not the link to follow if you wanted a quick intro to the Avaya product line....
moto411.com
We tech-types HAVE to start running our own companies and ourselves. Get completely rid of the Wall Street wannabees (as in stingers),lawyers, trouble-makers, lawsuit-happy idiots, ego-maniac bosses, etc. What we have to do is learn to run companies ourselves. Take turns doing the paperwork, etc. No stock-holders to answer to, no desk-job stiff-shirt types- just us doers. We just have to do it- somehow, hopefully through the 'net, we can join forces. Not like the labor unions of the Industrial Revolution with the politics we need to rid out- but with unity of purpose!
Forgive me for living in the past- I too often refer to the Challenger destruction- but it was caused by stiff-white shirt bosses over-ruling the engineers who said "don't launch".
Dang, getting on my soap box... but your post is very refreshing because I honestly am beginning to wonder if it is even possible to find more than a small child's handful of good leaders out there.
To put it in perspective... here is my company (and I have tried moving around so I guess I have to change companies now):
Where I work has flexible hours so long as you are in the office between 10am and 4pm. I feel that this is a good compromise, maybe 10am-2pm would have been OK but you get the idea.
Some images are not to be allowed in one's brain.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
How about Funny Hat Day or maybe playing some Tom Jones music? That always cheers me up.
"I am the Angel of Death. The Time of Purification is at hand."
New paradigm: "Laying off programmers makes Open Source software better".
I suspect there are more than 5K programmers working on Linux and related projects, which is what I'd use to compare to the MS Windows (and apps that are "part of the OS") team. How did that go? "With many eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"? Mozilla has gotten much more productive over the last few years, possibly due to the number of bored programmers (hi!) currently unemployed.
Have you got a link to that Harvard study?
10 down to 9 is only a 10% cut in staff. The sort of layoffs I've seen tend to be between 30% and 70%. These were usually accompanied by "we haven't made a profit in a long time" from management. The implication is that if they could fire enough people, they might make a profit.
Going from 10 employees to 9 isn't a layoff, it's more like "firing for cause", "terminating at-will employment", or "retirement".
The other questions I'd have about this Harvard study are:
1) How long did the productivity increase last?
2) How productive was the same team if the person wasn't "let go"?
3) If you do the same test, but cut 2 people using the same system, do you get a 60% increase in productivity? If so, you may be using full-time college students as employees.
4) How was the choice of who to let go made?
Notice: The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Birth, school, work, death... You're currently at work, so at least you have something to look forward to.
You've been selected to receive even more Special High Intensity Training. Check with your supervisor to see how piling up Special High Intensity Training classes can help you!
If someone is incompetent, they should be fired, period. Otherwise, it's a slap in the face to the competent, and just plain bad business.
and thus, no karma.
You expect us to learn all about the company business. Well then find out about what we do for you. That way you know if someone is blowing smoke or if the task/deadline you set is unrealistic.
It also builds resentment when you discover your manager is an example of the Peter Principle and drawing $$$ while you know more than he/she does about what's going on.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
""Laying off programmers makes Open Source software better"."
It happens. Look here and here..
Unfortunatly the harvard study I got was from a guest speaker at the New York Linux Users group. The speaker was CEO of geekcruises.com. I do not have a link handy but its based on the 80/20 rule.
This concept is taught to any MBA major. %80 of your most important work is done %20 of the time! The rest is in meetings, doing busy work, lunch, etc. If a distracting employee is getting in the way of the %20 of real important work then it hits your %80 of what needs to be done.
And this is why 1 bad apple can spoil the whole bunch and studies prove this. If the employee chats in only %15 of the %20 time for the group that will eat away productivity.
Anyone reading this know the name of 20/80 law ?
Help would be greatly appreciated since its so important. Thanks
http://saveie6.com/
Nobody knew everybody else, so there was a pecking order to establish. As always, the biggest chickens pecked the hardest, crowed the loudest, and pretty much pissed off everybody else.
Those who contributed nothing to the Big Hit were telling those who did how they should be doing their jobs, and why their decisions were wrong, wrong, wrong.
Needless to say, there was no team spirit. Quite the opposite, there was team spite. The product was late, over budget, under performance, and in general a black eye to the entire organization. To the day I left, the Next Big Thing group was the butt of hallway jokes and the one group nobody wanted to be part of--nobody who was worth their paycheck, that is.
So what's the moral of this story? Teams grow over time, they don't spring up magically. Bad leadership spoils any team. If you find yourself on a bad one, jump ship now before you're forever branded with the putrid stench of of a rotten organization. Nearly every large company has dumping ground groups, where they put aside their "Peter Principle" cases to keep them from screwing up something important. Know them for what they are, and stay far away!
Finished school 30 june, got hired 1st july after i told I learnt fortran. There is such a lack of skilled people wanting/knowing fortran 77 that they hire foreigner not speaking a bits of the language but a bit of english.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
i have things in my mind, though i am not a programmer, i do technical and management at the same time :) (and we are a team)
:)
1. treat people with respect. they'll treat you and your company with respect back.
2. don't overwork the employees. though at times, they will really need to do a lot of things for days and days, treat them to a small out of town trip even for one night. makes everyone relax and forget work.
3. managers should mingle with the employees more. see their status and talk to them. avoid asking techies to make paper work (i'm sure a lot of you don't want to spend a day typing a report.)
4. as a team member, try to delegate tasks. this will avoid conflicts.
5. there should be a "war room" where everyone can put in their ideas and be seen or listened.
6. try to put an incentive program to the employees. it doesn't need to be expensive. a simple recognition award will do.
7. management should be a little flexible with time. they should try to understand if people will be needing an 8-5 shift (like secretaries) or a flexible shift (like programmers.) allow breaks during work. if the time shifts for different employees are different, everyone should be required to keep their mobile phones on.
8. employees should be set up as team based and not on a hierarchical manner. each member of the mean is responsible for the success of all. whether it is a manager, secretary, programmer, technician, they will be treated almost equally.
9. teams should be allowed to set their own goals. for example, a technical group decides that there is an increased number of support calls for a particular problem. they will find ways to solve it. (they do things on their own without having someone to tell them too - you don't want people to order you around do you?)
10. your team should go out from time to time, after office for some recreational activities.
11. don't order around other people (see related item # 9.) although there may times when a particular task needs to be done. these may be exceptions, but for basic stuff, try to ask.
12. find ways of making people do things at work not because of money but because they are challenged with what they are doing. for example, try to challenge your employees from time to time to do a difficult task. remember that they should find ways to grow. work should not be monotonous day in and out.
there are more. basically try to think that the employees are the company similarly the church is to the people and not the physical structure. employees are people - they are not robots to which management orders them around (see item # 1.)
johnlaw
p.s. read my signature. i hope you have that job.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
Three types of employees:
(1) those that make all things possible (hardware, software, science, technology, art, literature, commitment, loyalty, satisfaction, drive, profit, ...),
(2) those that clock-punch, do-a-job, are socially functional, expects a $ for a $ effort, will plagiarize (Type-1's subordinates' work) for career advantages.
(3) those that are pet-rocks of CEO/SES/..., have exceptional (almost sociopathic) social skills, will take all the credit whenever things go right, point the finger at others when things go wrong, their prime purpose is to manage their career, because (they believe) only Type-3's can be successful bosses/managers (right, they know not their job).
I have known all three types at every position in Government and Business. Sometimes the Type-3 will be the CEO/SES, have other pet-rocks for affirmation, and believe that Type-2 folks do everything that is needed, because of Type-3 management ability, and Type-1 jerks/fools are the cause of all problems.
Following the above logic (THIS IS TRUE!): [A] Management says: (1) everyone is replaceable (get rid of the problems), (2) worker-bees cannot be promoted into management, because we need them to do the work, (3) pack-mules are great they get the work done and you can load them up with the important task. [B] Employees say: (1) screw-up move-up, (2) It is not what you know, but who you blow, (3) give head to get ahead. I have heard both "A&B" quotes from Type-3 management people, but employees (all three types) stick to the "B" quotes.
My observation is that a Capitalist Republic is little better than a Ferengi Republic, though either can be camouflaged as a Democratic Republic, Capitalism remains an economic model, (thank the gods) the Ferengi are fiction, and Democracy maintains the "Great Expectations" for all.
Any of these models/philosophies are better than all previous governing or ruling attempts by humanity. Kings/Emperors (Louie, Caesar, Napoleon, ...), Dictators
(Mao, Marcos, IdiAmin, ...), Megalomaniacs (Hitler, Stalin, Caligula, ...), Democracy
(USA, Australia, Britain, ...) proves that we (humanity) can all do better
without business, religion, dictators, ... running a country or subjugating
people.
Now back from the abstract to the concrete topic. It is not in the interest of some management teams to have (as equals) mutual respect with employees. Firing a few employees every now/then proves to anyone who may consider themselves equal that they are totally replaceable by other subordinate worker-bees, pack-mules, sub-human. Many capitalist businesses and religious institutions today (globally) are still fascist institutions. Religious institutions (all faiths) around the world continue to fall into three groups (1) the good and pious (I like and protect them) that do their best to help educate, feed, house, ... humanity,
(2) the pick-pocket (take the money/people and live well) evangelist always
knowing the words of god and asking for money, and (3) the shake-&-bake (shake'em
down and bake'em when done, [EM=Evil/Enemy Mankind]) religious leaders that can
always justify murder in the name of god. Consensus communities (Democracy) like "Open Source",
WWW, ... are now proving that there may be better more profitable (to the company, economy,
ecology, humanity) economic models. Dang again, there appears to be only
one in three people that I will ever respect, trust, or care about (luckily
that third, of humanity, cares about me and the rest of US).
These consensus communities, using inter/intranet collaboration technologies in the future, will create the stronger, more competitive, and profitable businesses. Network sciences and knowledge-bases of the future will keep track of who is doing what and providing success for US. Business (to stay competitive) will promote the (then disco
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The phenomena you describe I think is part of a larger (and growing!) class division in America. People who do real work (ie, that can point to a product and show their specific contribution, whether design, programming, manufacturing, etc) are being seperated from people whose real work consists solely of "managing".
People who "manage" have set themselves up as a self-ruling class that sets the rules and rewards for not only the the people they manage but for themselves as well. The important thing to note is the self-ruling aspect -- the management class very nearly always gets bonuses when workers get paycuts, for example.
The other aspects of the management class that trouble me is the way that the work done my managers is structured in such a way that many expenses are subsidized for the "managers". Many managers travel extensively and during this time have all of their expenses recouped, they dine out extensively and many often private expenses are paid for by the company (home office setups, club memberships).
It's not that any of the justifications for paying for these things (ie, meals on company trips) are illogical or wrong, but that the work is structured in such a way that an entire class of workers spends much of their working time in situations where logic dictates that their otherwise personal expenses are paid for by their employers, which is not an insignificant decrease in their overall financial burden, in spite of often exponentially larger salaries justified by the demands of "travel" and "evening dinner meetings."
Meanwhile the "do-ers" are forced to dine at the company cafeteria (short lunch periods) or brown bag it, pay for their own parking and justify office supply purchases for trivial items. Essentially they are required to bear the full costs associated with going to work, while the management class has them heavily subsidized.
What also concerns me about this is the social aspect of this; people spend so much time at work that they transfer the implied power and priviledge of their work places to the rest of their lives, presuming that a seperate set of rules applies to them vis-a-vis taxes, schools, residences, and even law enforcement and access to government decision making.
People who belong to the management classes tend to cluster in McMansions in the same wealthy suburbs and make effective use of their affluence to influence the political process to ensure their continued viability (undermining worker protections, tax cuts only they seem to benefit from, public works projects that they derive a preponderance of benefit from such as new highways to their suburbs).
I believe its just the further Brazilification of our economy and way of life.
However, I have my own company and make quite a bit of cash.
I love screwing with assholes on base because that's exactly what they are. I'd rather be a brick layer for $10/hour than work for 150k on base (or for the state for that matter). It's the difference between working with people who have pride in their job and don't simply look to work till 5 because that's quittin time.
BTW I make over 150k right now so it would be a step down anyway. I have my own company and work with other companies to meet their needs (contract labor).
If i miss out on a 95k job opportunity with the govt I'll have done myself a huge favor. There is something to be said for liking your job. And "Jerks like me" love screwing with the dipshits on base who make 40k/year after being there for 20 years and are pissed off at their shitty lives. If the people are talking about me then great. That's exactly what I want, them to NEVER HIRE ME EVER.
I found the cocaine addicted restaurant managers in college were better than the people I've worked with in the govt and on base. Why is that? It takes a special kind of loser to work for the govt. Anyone who puts up with the least efficient corporation in our country is just sad.
So to summarize, fuck the govt. I'd rather be poor than work for a govt agency/military job again.
There are MANY things good companies do to attract and keep the best folks in the industry. Performance-based cash bonuses a couple times a year go a long way. Flexible hours are key. Public recognition of hard work / successful projects is good for everyone. Encouraging developers to work from home as needed, 1 or 2 days a week, is great. And establishing a culture of trust and teamwork and sense of shared purpose is also very important.
This may sound like a fantasy, but my company provides all of these things, at least to some degree. Yes there have been layoffs -- but it is management's responsibility to make sure that its talent pool remains strong. So they eliminate the weak, and reward the strong, and amazing things happen. My coworkers and I work 50-60 hours a week on average, and more often than not finish the week feeling good about what we accomplished.
Also, while most of the corporate HR cultural initiatives have been somewhat bland and, well, corporate, individuals are fully empowered to take initiative themselves to make it a cool place to work. For example I started an indoor soccer team, and we've had several foozball tourneys, etc.
Anyway I wanted to share some thoughts on how some companies (mine at least) are doing it right.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
Jobs are interesting things, the product of capitalism and industrialism. The important thing to remember is that jobs are owned by the bosses not the workers. And although they come with attractive bait, i.e., decent paychecks, privileges, benefits, etc., they are still totally temporary and can disappear for reasons known only to the owners.
The work, however, is owned by the workers! This is not new. But after some five or six American generations in which a huge proportion of the population - especially the highly educated population and more especially the highly privileged population - have relied on jobs to provide their opportunity to work, it is difficult to unpack the work from the job.
Those who manage to keep the job separated from the work will also manage to find satisfaction regardless of the conditions of employment. It isn't easy. But it will liberate you from anxiety over why your boss is such an obvious fool.
... from "Ask Slashdot" to "Whine on Slashdot."
That's all it ever amounts to.
has this been suggested?
one day you take in a firearm of your choice to
work and waste the boss. guaranteed to improve
morale. alternatively, if you are the boss,
point said firearm at your head and pull the
trigger.
come on. it's the american way.
>>>The notion of flexible hours in startups has become "come late, leave late"...
Your comment (all of it) is is SOOO true! I lived it myself. Even the bosses was getting in at 10-noonish. When I started to rock climb and wished to leave early on Fridays, I started a 7AM-3PM daily schedule, and had to sneak out, as the boss would make sure to ask me (seeing me heading out) a 'last minute 4 hour job that must be done for today'. I started to leave my bag at my desk when leaving so poeple would think I was going for food or someting.
But what pissed me off the most is the 'late commers' would take 2 hours lunch, play games after 5, and leave at 7, working 3-4 hours. Anyone coming in early would do more hours and work, but had to face bad looks from co-workers for leaving beffore the sun was down. The sun is a big factor. It is a lot easier to leave early (5-6PM) in December when it is dark, but almost imposible in June when the sun is still hight.
We got confronted with this option, mostly because the owner wanted to sack another person, and the manager didn't want to. So we all went 4 day week and 4 day pay.
but somebody got the sack anyway, and we didn't get to go back to 5 day week/pay.
The owner of this company regularily every november/december sacked about 1/3 the work force (averaging around 60 people, down from 140 when I started with them), and rehired new or the same people again in March.
Christmas was always a slow period with lots of unprofitable public holidays so the owner saved much in salary and on costs. But in the meantime most of the rest of us couldn't give a stuff about doing the job well or at all.
Eventually all the people who knew anything about anything had quit and found jobs elsewhere. Even the headhunters wouldn't see 6 - 8 months at this particular company as a downside. I think the head hunters loved it.
The owner failed to see that it was costing him in lost expertise and skill about twice as much as he saved in salary costs. Ie the new people would take twice as long to get anything done as the experienced people. And as soon as the new people had figured out how to get things done, it would be Christmas again, and they'd be laid off.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
This Microsoft: article by Steve McConnell is interesting to read.
In its local area, Microsoft is known as "The Velvet Sweatshop," which suggests that, if anything, Microsoft might be doing too good a job of motivating its employees.
McConnel has a great book with a chapter about morale: Rapid Develpment
The thing is, the US *is* cowering in fear. "OMG we got attacked by terrorists!" and now you're blindly flailing your fists at anything you think is a threat. Other countries have had to deal with terrorists in the past. USA-funded terrorism has been a problem here in the UK, but now we're gradually getting it sorted. Perhaps you should put your own house in order first.
I used to keep a stash of one or more of these things and the stash used to get raided on a regular basis. Especially after hours. I could understand the jokes about lacing stashes with laxatives although I never did that. I always thought that kind of revenge would backfire.
anyway the contractors would quite happily eat the toffees too.
My experience of contractors and being seen as a contractor (even though I was always a permanent employee of a company), was that as a newbie permanent in an office I was always thought unable to do the job, but as a contractor, they just handed it over and expected me to get on with it. Whether or not I had the knowledge required was irrelevant, and if I was a contractor and asked a question it was seen as "getting familiar with the system" but if I was permanent and asked the same kind of question it was seen as "ignorance".
And I've worked with brilliant contractors and absolutely hopeless ones, at all levels of the action, from coders to management.
I guess that means my age is showing. Anyway the hopeless ones survived by a combination at being better bullshit spinners combined with blowing their own trumpet, something generally frowned upon in Australia, but seems to work when combined with a bit of brown nosing.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
No sig? Sigh...
First, the free stuff (often gone into in other posts). Having a liberal dress code and flex time policy costs a company nothing and can greatly help morale. Don't go too far, though, there are good reasons for having people who meet clients/customers to dress up, and you can't have regular progress meetings if flex time has destroyed all overlap in people's schedules; but back office staff should be able to where whatever they find comfortable, and those who must crawl under desks to plug in wiring should not be forced to wear a tie and slacks.
Next, talk to the employees. If the company is having difficulty, make sure they know exactly what the problems are, so the rumor mill is quieted down. Equally important, make sure they know the plan to get the company back on track. Set goals and tell employees how they can help. Reward the help too, if an employee does something major to help, give them an on-the-spot bonus, or a contract protecting them from layoffs.
Next, if more layoffs are needed, do it humanely and fairly. First, ask for volunteers, and offer incentives for volunteering (better severance package), why screw A's life over if B wanted to leave anyway? Second, if at all possible, offer a decent severance package, some people don't have a financial safety net, and if they see people cut off with just their last paycheck, they will panic. If layoffs have several weeks severance, and some access to company equipment for job hunting, those who remain will be less demoralized anticipating the next round of layoffs.
Finally, management must make visible sacrifices too. If staff is looking at a 10% paycut plus triple the workload due to layoffs, and they see management with unchanged salary and perqs (or worse, more) and no layoffs, staff will be upset. If staff takes a 10% paycut, management should take 20% (and tell staff they're doing so). If there are layoffs, make sure management is not immune. If staff loses health insurance, so should management. It makes a huge difference for morale to know that everyone is in the same boat.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Stop laying people off.
This is more important than you think. Most employees now are upset b/c they might next on the chopping block.
No matter how much management says it's not going to happen, there's always someone above that person who can change it otherwise.
There's a special committe, group of volunteers, who were to think of ways to improve company morale. Eventually, it all boiled down to, "how do we express job security".
Frankly, I wouldn't mind free food, but that's just me. =)
> You really have to hustle when your compeition
:) and work very hard (would probably earn $70K+ in the US).
> considers $100 a month to be a kingly salary.
I don't know where the people in the US learned that myth.
I am a developer in Eastern Europe, and here the monthly wage for developers start at $ 500 per month.
A "kingly salary" is $ 1000 and over per month.
I earn more than that because I have mad skillz
Put marijuana in the vending machines.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
560,000 it workers out of a job in the u.s.
for this problem, there is no magic bullet.
given the above statements; employers get a certain look in their eye. its the same look a wolf has when they see a wounded deer.
ok, what can be done about it.
consider the history of mass layoffs/extinctions; this happens about every ten years for us workers. an industry acquires more people to do the job than there are jobs, (thanks to the h1-b folks this time around).
ok, what can you do about it?
there are some rules that i apply that have helped me.
1. you can only bargin from a power position. this statement is heartful, but true.
2. adaptation is the ability to survive. right now its the housing market, apply your skills to this group of people. notice how i wrote 'people'.
3. is were you work at a pit? try working for yourself. you'll see what your boss gets to live with. you may like it, you may not.
4. complaining at work? are you insane? in southern california there are 1000+ resumes for every computer job opening.
5. leave work at work. rediscover your friends, and family. no one ever died in bed thinking what fullment their lives would have been if they had just stayed at the job one more hour.
6. cheer up, growing up has never been easy. this problem will make you stronger, wait and see.
Overrated? I did work for Sun Microsystems at one time, y'know.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The upshot is that if you treat people well, you will be treated well. Good deeds are rewarded, bad deeds are punished. And if you want decent morale, don't treat people badly.
Read the article. Then get your boss to read the article.
It's currently at 1, and this guy is correct. I believe this is the answer to all boredom and "lack of morale"-related issues, because the world has probably been the same way at your job since day 1, but now you have poor morale? That means it is YOU who have changed, not the environment.
Which is the answer in itself--you have been the same way since day 1. Do some more interesting stuff! In school, you progress year to year automagically with no effort and experience new teachers, classrooms, classmates, life changes, friends, neighbors. After you settle at a job or college, it is then that the true test happens. Instead of riding the age scale to adulthood, you now determine your next move. So take it! You want that girl? Go talk to her and express your feelings. You want to have more fun at the company? Have more fun! Do with your workspace would make it more fun. Consider it your company (since you work there and are a part of it.)
And don't buy/over-consume stuff if it's just to (in your opinion) impress society for no valid reason. Do WHAT YOU WANT with the money, and that will also improve morale for every dollar you earn. I know you're supposed to buy those $900 italian shoes and pretty bmw, but you know yourself that you maybe would rather save the money to buy a horse on a farm or something, then do it!
Your job IS your life. No, it doesn't mean your work should be all-encompassing of your life; and no, it doesn't mean your job has to define you or how intelligent you are. But it IS your life and livelyhood so don't make the life stop at 9 and start at 5!
So the best thing you can do to raise morale is to make people read the above. As I'm writing this, it's good information for myself and I hope others will too find it insightful.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
What is this... Dilbert? Reading mail is part of the job.
On the topic of Marching Band, I was reminded that being a cheerleader can be good training for higher level executive positions.
It's not all about brains and brawn, but it seems as if effective management takes some recognition and ability in how to rally a crowd of people.
"Provided by the management for your protection."