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Executing a Mass Departmental Exodus in the Workplace?
rerunn asks: "The recent story about the consultants from JBOSS walking out couldn't have had better timing. I'll save the drama and cut to the scenario: You and a few close co-workers make up the core grunts of 'the department'. The company relies heavily on your department for many services, some of which, other departments cannot provide. You like your job, it provides great satisfaction. Suddenly, the company realizes its in deep financial shit, and starts making cut backs. This impacts the department. You suddenly find yourself working 50-60 hour weeks, put on call with no compensation, given unreasonable amounts of work and generally treated like dirt. You get the feeling that the company is just going to take advantage of you no matter how and what happens. You get together with the rest of the department for a 'fsck this company' meeting and decide to walk out. Have you ever done this?? (We are so close!) What was the outcome?"
Unlikely. Collecting unemployment usually requires leaving work through no fault of your own. Walking off just to prove a point or to be pissy won't cut it.
What you're describing is a strike. If you do it right (start organizing the shop, aka unionize) your employer can't legally retaliate. Organizing for a union is also a pretty good way to get the Company's attention; most employers would much rather head off unionization by treating you well than have you organize and then force them to treat you well anyway.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I just signed a contract saying that I wouldn't get together with others in the company and quit. If a bunch of you quit at once and the company can prove that you guys talked to each other about quiting it can do such things as, keep your last pay-check, sue you for damages, etc. I hope you didn't use your company email.
It takes more then a handful of developers to start a software company. If your department is nothing by developers, with little knowledge outside of software development you will have only a small chance at success.
Companies are in departments that are interdependent in order to compliment eachother.
You would need to have a good salesperson or two, someone GREAT with finances, like an accountant with at least a Bachelors, but better with a Masters Degree in Accounting.
You may also need someone with professional management skills. Not just a software team management style, but someone with a degree in Business Management.
The other person you would likely want to have is a professional purchasing agent. If you don't have someone that is GREAT at negotiating purchases and discounts your company will be bleeding money like there is no tomorrow. A good Purchasing Agent can cut costs by several percentage points.
With all that in mind, I wish you the best. It is a tough economy, but with the right crew and an innovative product, that fits perfectly in an uncovered niche market or is a POWERFUL broad use tool you could likely be looking at success.
Good luck!
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
So anyway, my project manager, two other developers and I got sick of this and decided to start a company of our own. This was back in 1998. We got some funding and made a go at it. Not two days after we quit and started up the new company did we all get slapped with a lawsuit from the previous employer. The lawsuit alleges that we stole trade secrets from the previous employer, which was completely baseless. But, it accomplished the goal of putting a huge burden on us while we were just starting out.
Fast forward to 2003. We were recently forced into chapter 7 bankruptcy, partly due to the legal fees associated with the lawsuit, but also due to the fact that my previous project manager (who was the president at the new company) was one of the worst businessmen on this planet, despite being a great project manager. The legal system is slower than molasses - we still aren't scheduled to go to trial until July of this year - nearly five years after the lawsuit was first filed! There have been some depositions, hearings, rulings, and appeals along the way, but man has this thing dragged out! Needless to say there's not any money for them to win anyway due to the bankruptcy.
Overall, walking out and starting a new company was the greatest business decision I ever made in my life. I'm getting all sorts of offers to do contract work on the side, plus one of our customers at the new place hired me with a six-figure wage plus great benefits, and actually allowed me to write a no-compete into the employment contract. In addition, they have picked up an attorney for me and agreed to pay my legal fees in the lawsuit.
If I could go back, I'd still say that the lean years at the new company were all worth it. My only regret was not doing it sooner - I'm already 24 years old and I'm not going to live forever.
Most companies want to know when their employees are unhappy. Most companies will do something about thier unhappy employees because they realize that unhappy employees are unproductive.
You are the company. Be a team player. Don't go into a meeting with a manager/director/SVP/etc. making demands; help solve the problem by proposing a solution. You may have already tried some of this. That doesn't mean that you can't try again. If no one is responsive, then it may be time to move on.
But beware... The market is not good right now, and new employers will be less than enthusiastic about hiring someone who walked out on their last employer.
Good luck.
A clever person solves a problem, A wise person avoids it. -Einstein
These are called "yellow-dog contracts." They used to be illegal, but who knows whats going on these days. Thousands fought to earn these labor rights of ours, which we are letting slide away...
Could we please not have stories on the front page containing obscene (e.g. 4-letter) words. There are plenty of sites out there with that sort of language, if people want it, but I've been very happy with Slashdot so far for not stooping to profanity (at least on its front page; comments are a different story).
It is very unprofessional.
I don't know about Walgreens, but Walmart has a long history of pulling crap like that.
Perhaps you ought to think about how lucky you are to even HAVE a job right now
It's precisely that attitude that perpetuates the perception a lot of bosses (and governments, for that matter) have that it's OK to treat staff as consumables.
You're absolutely right. My previous employer often stated that an employee should be grateful to be employed and should be willing to do him personal favors and work overtime. What a load of crap!
The employer pays for services rendered; the employee supplies those services. No sane business expects to get services from other businesses for free, so why do they expect that from their employees?
God is imaginary
In neither case was the mass exodus (ME) planned, in the sitting around and plotting sense. It just happened. In both cases, the ME was preceded by a spontaneous, manager-led, group bitch session, where all the disgruntled employees got together and described what was unsatisfactory about their jobs. The complaints were summarized and sent up the ladder. If your place of employment has reached the spontaneous bitch session stage, expect a ME to follow.
Here are some interesting results from the MEs I have experienced.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Better read the Fair Labor Standards Act before you decide to sue.
I.T. Professionals are specifically exempted from the Fair Labor Standards Act.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
COBRA lasts 18 months.
You should get a document from your previous insurer stating that you have been insured and that you can't be turned down for existing conditions.
Specific sorts of professionals are exempt, and management is exempt. There's a special stipulation with regards to computer professionals, but it mandates that you must either be in management, or making more than $27.63 an hour (from the last time I looked at the regs).
So, if you're making in excess of $57k/year, and the majority of your work is self directed (or you are in management) then you're somewhat screwed.
State labor laws are also important here- State law cannot weaken the federal law ( if your employer falls under it) but it can make it stronger with more requirements. Check with your State wages and dues/labor/workforce department. They will also come in and investigate if you so desire, and can mandate that employers pay up to 2 years of back wages if they are found to have you wrongfully exempted.
have fun. it's never easy.
EOM
The momentary pleasure you shall receive will not be worth the infinite hassle that these people shall bring down upon you.
1: Slow down the work. Take the hassle of jerk managers yelling when things don't happen. Simply respond with: "you could actually pitch in and *do* some of this work".
2: Start looking for another job. In a very serious way, not just sending emails, but making contacts. Assume your company is circling the drain at this point.
3: Once your leads start panning out, and you're getting interviews, don't flip these people off, but start pointing out their dishonesty to their face. A lot of managers lie because their power protects them, and nothing infuriates them more than having it pointed out. Make friends with someone up the food chain: "You're complaining about him, but he's done fine work for me Bob, what's the real problem here?". When you're given changing or bogus requirements or bogus deadlines, point them out. Let a few fake deadlines pass and find out if someone was making them just to squeeze your balls. When the manager does something incredibly stupid, let it screw up even further, then send mail to *his* boss describing how he is responsible for this (Well, Bob said (attached email) that there wasn't enough time to back up the server before moving it)
Remember, blaming your subordinates to upper management for problems is considered just as bad form as blaming your manager. Once you realize that there's no actual reason to respect this troll, you shall gain enlightenment.
4: Between enough of slowing down work, and being a pain (and enjoying it), you should be able to time getting laid off with severance at just the time you start your new job.
I once saw a team walk out to get their manager fired, and the entire team was replaced with consultants. I once saw a team threaten to walk out, and the manager was moved laterally, but I have only once seen a manager actually fired, and it was a concerted effort by a number of people to actually make him look like an idiot. It took four *months*, and he nearly sank a *critical* project during it. What got him booted was lying to the CEO, when we had the real information documented. "It's strange that he said that Steve, because that contradicts this email he sent earlier".
and you are a fool to not force your employer to pay you what you are due.
i am paid to work 40 hours a week. thats what they get.
... hi bingo
Been there, didn't do that.
;-)
While reducing staff projects upon projects were piled at a big5 company I worked for. At one point we had to say "Stop".
Did not walk out.
We compiled a list of ToDo's, went to our superior (okay, our superior's superior) and told him to give all these Priority-A-1-Alpha projects unique numbers. He has the big picture - or is at least paid to make decisions. So he decides. Not us.
He tried to argue (you must know - you're the techies), even actually tried to walk away. We said: okay, then we'll assume you hand us a blanko cheque okay to priorize. We'll then have this (interesting, but only moderately urgent) project with top priority (which still was sensible/okay but not the most urgent one) and continue down the list after finnishing.
No! He cried. Other projects...! We handed him the list again: Here. Numbers. Nonrepeating. You decide - or we have to. You know our suggestion. Decision still is your responsibility (i.e. your neck). So he told uns a preliminary No.1 - and followed up with a clean priority list.
With this we were able to work without overtime. Just worked 40(+epsilon) hours a week, and had priorities to fend off requests for "just a bit more" work (More work on your project? Then talk about priorities with Mr.X).
As for "a bit more overtime" - overtime and crunch mode only works for very limited ammounts of time (common knowledge is max. 2 weeks). After that stress-induced errors and illness have a very offsetting effect. If you're more stress-resistant that the remainder of your team, just fall back to the average to take speed and pressure out of the system. Noone can prove wether you really cannot find the one proper file among all the garbage crunch-mode-produced yestarday. It's very hard to differenciate between real symptomes of stress-induced illness or faked ones.
It even is a great opportunity to you, your team and even the company to introduce a task delegation and priorizing system - or other ones to steer projects and processes (e.g. change control procedures). Just to make sure, the really important business cases are handled properly and quality-assured, of course...
Escalation:
If the problem is your direct superior (S1), walk to his superior (S2). Or to his superior's superior (S3). If he understands the problem - fine. If not, start bouncing the problems back to them. They have to decide on priorities: "Which one - A or B - decide NOW!" - where the NOW is important as the project is important and must be complete NOW (so it's not your NOW, but his or the customer's one). You even can use it to jump levels (beyond/around S1 to S2) - simply have your colleague do the same talk with S1 simultaneously - so you can't reach him for decision and so you went to S2 because of the project's utter importance. If the answers contradict, go back to S2+S1 and tell that S1 (or S2) just ordered you otherwise (sorry for the overlap - it's just due to the hectic...), and you want a confirmation.
Simply bounce the pressure back. They have to slice the work into managable chunks - that's what managers are for. Just bounce it back for re-assignment. Because you want to see the project done, too (of course) and see THIS (chunk) will not be working (or contradicting with other stuff).
So get priorization and escalate, i.e. bounce irresponsible pressure, untaken responsibilities and not done decisions back to from where they come and where they belong. All for the sake of professional work and successful projects, of course (*NO* irony here).
This can even enhance your own position, especially if you give your superiors good (priority) suggestions and decision reationales. And suddenly you're not only programmer or admin, but on the track to project manager...
Qapla'!
Have you ever even been in a union? Unions protect you from getting fired for punching in a minute late. Unions make sure you get fair compensation for holidays/overtime/pulling double shifts all that kind of stuff. Yes, most union presidents are as good as criminals, but unions still help out the workers.
I worked for a 4 man tech support crew once
A previous employer liked to give out $10k hiring bonuses that had to be repaid if you left before a set time (my case was two years).
We had several people who left the day of the expiration, with less than on week's warning.
I casually let slip that I would be renting out my house six months before my date was up.
This employer has a few bad things to say about me, but they have admitted that my departure was cleaner than the others because it was expected.
Time limits on sign-on bonuses plus a bad work environment always equals a mutually-agreed termination date.
First, it always help to know when the company has started the fsck plan as soon as possible. This will help you in to not getting yourself in trouble as you can when you start obeying the company to stay for long work shifts, or even 7x24, because once you start doing so it will very difficult to stop. It always pays to have friends on human resourses / finantial department to know when things happen.
Second, you start searching for another job when all your coworkers use the extra work time to fall in the spiral of trouble. Of course, it will help when not only you, but all the department simply do not accept the new kind of rules, but unfunaterly this is not the case as you're reading Slashdot when the others are using compressed air to clean motherboards.
Third, you can expect to be fired when this process (finding another job in your free time) is still in early stages, because other coworkers will even start to complain as you leave office early every day, among other causes. This is not as bad as it sounds: when the company fires you only because you're doing your job at the usual schedule it will pay you for that (legal affairs differs state to state or even country to country). When you leave voluntarily you receive a lot less (and you will if you find another job to jump in).
Third, never use the company's network to search for another job (you can be fired early, even with no compensatory package, simply for using the company's assets for this purpose), this is NOT a smart move. Period.
In the end, if everything is sincronized, you will find yourelf in another job, using the time the others spend jobless working for your current company, for less daily hours. This is the best case, of course, and demands you to be as reserved and confidential as you can. But hings could go wrong...
Always get to know the law, as you can find what can happen, to be prepared (this could help you when you receive your last payment for your current company, for example).
You can use some (of all) of your company's benefits (days you can work from your home, sickness, courses, even not showing at office with a limit) to go to job interviews.
Keep in mind this: you will not be treated different because you're special, you know something the others know or youÂre to important for your company, if you fail to realize this you probably shouldn't reading this, it will help you more to use compressed air to service motherboards and cds. You have very little time to fly, maybe to a better possition ;)
If it helps, once the company fires the unfirable staff, it starts a never-ending process of hiring new people, and as soon as this people finds what it's all about, resigns, to start it all over again, and again, and again...
It's just a shame that there're some places where the finantial people are so dumb thay cannot say what costs more, or the company is so alienated with money that does'nt care for it most valuable asset: the people.
Carlos Niebla
Sure, but I left my job when it got bad, sold a house in LA, moved to a cheaper part of the country and I could live off the house proceeds for a couple of years without worry and still buy another house....
:-)
I'm looking for work, but I'm not worried, and dear God in heaven, I'm so glad I left the job from hell... the only question is "why did I stay so long?"
Now my motto, and I really believe it, is "do what you love and the money will follow..." to which I add, "live where you love living... and life will follow." Why live in an industrial hell hole when you can just move to your idea of the most beautiful part of the country and work out the trivial stuff like how exactly you make a living once you get there?
Most people make a living in most places, after all.
That's my theory... but I haven't got a job yet, and in the meantime I have those house proceeds to live off of...
When I as in Grade 8, the school board in our area decided rather than cutting all teacher's salaries they would dismiss 2 teachers instead.
This makes sense except that it's union so those with seniority kept their jobs. We the students were really pissed off because 2 good young teachers were going to be axed and there were at least 5 teachers that were no younger than 62. 2 of them had to take insulin shots every 2-3 hours (and they did miss and go into shock on more than one occasion). 2 didn't care about their jobs anymore and it was evident in the quality of the classes. 1 seemed to think that nothing had changed since the 1890s and that a teacher should run their class via fear and intimidation. She was also becoming senile although she would blame this on her students 'playing tricks on her'.
One day at 9:30am EVERY student in the school (a junior high, grades 8-10) walked out and started protesting in front of the school. The principal came out and tried to dissuade us and was having a good go at it until the press and the TV cameras showed up. A group of the best speaking, most presentable students addressed the press and told them exactly what was going on. As soon as the parents saw the 6:00 news, they weren't so mad about their kids walking out as they were pissed that quality teachers were being fired so 'useless' ones could earn an extra year of undeserved wages.
The next day students from 10 other schools in the area did the same.
After 2 days of the school board receiving calls and letters demanding certain body parts of theirs on a platter, they reluctantly found other areas to make up the money instead of firing teachers.
This also shows one of the drawbacks of unions: sacrificing youth and skill for old age a treachery...
PS: Read your NDA. Most only cover the property of the company, not the 'dirty laundry' btw employees and management.
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
Man, at my last job we *dreamed* about getting "50-60 hour weeks, put on call with no compensation, given unreasonable amounts of work and generally treated like dirt". After the first round of layoffs, my job sounded like what you describe... ...but there were 4 more rounds of layoffs after that, and each time someone in my group got axed, I got their workload added onto mine.
Try 80-90 hour weeks, 7 months without a Saturday or Sunday off so I could finish a project that my boss took credit for, denied a promotion because the reports of that same boss showed I wasn't really putting in an effort, and constant Warnings Of Doom from everyone about how if I quit I'd never be able to find another job.
My health got shot to hell, my attitude got shot to hell, my *life* got shot to hell... one day a co-worker asked my boss if he was worried I'd quit, given the ludicrous conditions, and my boss replied "he'll never quit... I *own* him".
I put in my notice the next day.
Months later, I'm still in bad health, attitude hasn't really improved, and I have made the decision to let my college degree gather dust rather than go through that again. I'm looking at going into manual labor, if my health improves enough to allow it, and taking a handful of sleeping pills, if it doesn't.
So what was your problem again? To me, it sounds like you live in fucking SUGAR COATED *FAIRY*LAND*, cavorting with the fucking ELVES and UNICORNS and TELETUBBIES, and you're complaining that you don't like the flavor of fucking MARMALADE they put on your fucking TOAST.
If you are organizing such an exodus, you are placing yourself at great litigious risk, particularly if you are a profit center for the company. The company can sue you for damages and the courts tend to favor employers.
You may also be unpleasantly surprised at how few employees actually quit. It's one thing to talk about it. It's another entirely to walk out the door, especially if you have responsibilities.
By the way, the job market for IT totally sucks. You must be prepared to wait it out for almost a year (or more) in some markets. Make sure that you've got a healthy nest egg, because unemployment compensation is not in the cards if you decide to leave. Depending upon your state, the employer controls whether or not you get unemployment. They would certainly protest your filing.
Along those same lines, I worked for a game development company that made it a priority to secure as much money for the big wigs on top as possible. Actually producing good games came second, treating employees like humans came a distant third. Employees went through 60, 70, or 80 hour weeks to make a milestone, and then when they needed a day off to rest the week following the milestone, it was counted against their sick days/vacation time... which amounted to 10 days a year.
To save money, they would only hire about 70% of the people actually needed for a project, pocket the diffrence on what the publisher payed the company to develop the game.... so who picked up the slack of the extra 30%? The employees of course. The code base for the engine was buggy and outdated, and management constatly insisted that things be done right away, rather than being done the right way. And for those of you who work on large projects you probably know what comes next... unmaintainable code.
So, projects start going badly, because the complexity of games now is such that you can't afford to just 'hack it' anymore. And then the layoffs start... and the good people start getting laid off, because the company keeps people based on who has a personal relationship with those in manegment.
So surprise surprise, the company is going under now. Pretty much anyone who actually knew how to do the job right has either been laid off, left the company, or stopped putting in 60 hour weeks.
All these things are very pridictable in a company. Learn to see the signs early, because once you get caught in the 70 hour a week death cycle, you don't have the time or energy to seek out a new job.
(posting aninymously b/c it's a small industry and no wants a rep for bashing a company, no matter how bad they screw their workers)
Payback's a bithc:
Call OSHA about your work stations
Call the health department about your employee cafeteria
Call the Fire Department about those boxes stacked in the stairwell.
There isn't a company in the world that follows all the regulations - make 'em pay.
For the lot of you to get together, and decide to act as a unit, not by walking out, but simply by working the way you think is fair, within reason.
Draft a letter, signed by all of you, about the bad working conditions. Make a few demands, pointing out that they are perfectly reasonable: 40 hour work weeks as a rule, not an exception. No unpaid on-call time. And most importantly, no retaliation towards individuals out of your group for the time being. Point out that if people are fired from the group, the others will not take up the slack for the time being. Slow down your work to a reasonable amount, and do the work you DO choose to do well. Make it clear that you are good resources, but that you will not be pushed around due to managerial incompetence.
It's true that you may be an important group, but so are other groups, if you change your perspective.
You can get a lot more and be more professional than simply all walking out.
here is the scenario:
After my first year as IT Manager I orchestrate a major building move (Data wiring, PBX programming, etc.) I could have quit in the middle of the project (to get more money), but I didn't. The reward for that, no Christmas bonus (the year before I got $600 for doing nothing). The excuse: money is tight. PHB had a nice laugh as he drove home in his 2001 Porsche 911 (NOT KIDDING). That is what started it. I had bitch for raises that were promised to me, and perhaps the most frustrating thin of all is dealing with managment that has NO technical skill and is not interested in acquiring any. (After two years, I still got a call from PHB at home because his printer was jammed.)
Then my wife gave me the best birthday present ever. She said I could quit and her income would suffice. So I gave it a week (to make sure finances were correct) and then I quit on them. Why no two week notice?Good question. These guys were assholes. I watched time and again as they laid off people who had worked there for more than 4 years with no warning. Come to work, "let go" bu lunch. No severance package, NADA. This pissed me off, so I decided not to give them any warning.
The morning I quit, Vice Pres calls from Mexico. First thing out of his mouth "Do you want more money" FSCK YOU!!!!!!! Where was that money at Christmas? Or if I deserve more money, where is my raise? Quitting was the best damn thing I ever did. I am now self-emplyed and will never look back. My advice, always look out for yourself. I don't care if you and your boss wife swap, you are NOT friends and they will can you in a moments notice.