Slashdot Mirror
Beyond Pay?
An anonymous reader asks: "I was wondering if Slashdot readers have encountered harassment in the workplace, and how they have dealt with it. In particular, when working for
technology-based companies. Examples of this include the company forcing employees to put in extra (unpaid) hours, with the implicit/explicit threat of loosing the job if they don't, to actual personal harassment in the work place by management staff. My experience is that even in cases where the employee is completely right, it is impossible for her to win the case, given current employment law."
At my age, my job choices are pretty much limited to the low end of things-- data entry, burger flipping, stocking shelves, and so forth.
Granted, I don't get paid as much as most of you probably do, but I do have one thing going for me:
If my boss treats me like crap, I can quit and find a job with a similar pay rate in pretty much the same day.
Berrik
Current karma: Terrible (due to mods without a sense of humor)
When you work for a company, the company is basically your customer, they are buying your labor.
If you don't want them as a customer, quit selling your labor to them. Don't whine and bitch and look for someone to sue.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
guy that was younger than me, with less experience and definintely less knowledge, got promoted to a position I applied for, but he looked much older than I did.
I don't know if you're male or female, but I'll assume you're male like most slashdotters.
Grow a beard/mustache and add some grey color to your temples. It makes you look older & more responsible.
Personally, I dislike facial hair. But it creates the impression of age, if that is your problem.
Exactly. Making a threat "do this or your fired" is not necessarily harassment, if it falls within the bounds of what you are employed to do. If it becomes personal harassment, eg "hostile work environment" in the legal language, then an employee would definitely have a case against the employer, provided you have documented specifics and particular instances, and have tried to address the problem with either the person(s) doing the harassing, management, or HR and nothing has been done.
So he got a job to work with a company where derogatory and demeaning remarks are acceptable? That doesn't sound "good" to me.
There's more to a job than a paycheck.
So you hate the place you work? Why are you still working there?
Look at it this way. You are the victim of a faulty syllogism:
Why do you have to be a software engineer? Is it because you like the job? Well, taken as a whole you don't appear to like your job.
Is it the pay? Well, do you have time to enjoy the pay?
I don't want to oversimplify this, because if you demand respect, you may end up with respect but no job. But if you start from the position that you need this job to survive then your prospects are grim.
On the other hand if you start from the attitude that you can survive without this job, and that every person has a right to dignity and a personal life, you can make a rational decision about where to draw the line. You have your line, your boss has his line, and the space in the middle is where you can negotiate changes without having to issue an ultimatum. If you're boss's line is behind your line, then you have to look for another job.
So, we've established that you should attempt to negotiate working condition improvements. How do you do it? There's no magic formula becuase it depends on your boss. Of course, if your boss is a narcissitic jerk, then there is no hope, and you have to pull the plug on the relationship. I'd suggest that you point out he can get more out of his employees if they are happy and willing. Appeal to his sense of leadership. A little fear now and then is a good thing, but a constant atmosphere of fear and powerlessness is poisonous to productivity.
I manage a highly productive development team. Any one of them would, if I asked, willingly put in an 80+ hour week. The key here is willing. My management problem is that I actually have to throttle them back so they don't repeatedly throw themselves into the breach. Today I have people taking an enforced four day weekend because they gave up their last weekend. I just tell other managers they can't keep going to the same well over and over without consequences in quality and productivity. I express sincere gratitude for efforts above and beyond, and find various little ways to reward and acknolewdge them. The result is we have a lot more fun, and in an emergency I can call any of them on 8PM on a Friday and they will gladly come in for the weekend. Respect and cameraderie are incredibly powerful management tools.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I hate to defend this behavior, but, in technical fields there tends to be a high number of socially inept people. We once called them (and ourselves most likely) nerds, and now try to insist that they are geeks (cool nerds). The interviewer may have been trying to be funny, with no clue that it was inappropriate in general much less in an group interview.
This signiture copied from somewhere.
I went through three of them. Wrote core code for each, then got squeezed out when it was time to get profitable. Startups are abusive by design and you as a programmer mean nothing to them. My advice, a larger, more stable, long term profitable company is probably not such a bad thing. Definately not as sexy, but what's wrong with a little of comfort and security to look forward to?
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
but after awhile I realized the guy actually thinks because I look young, I must not know anything
Eventually it escalated to the point where I told him to fuck off and I walked out
Maybe it was not your appearance, but your maturity level that he had an issue with...
Telling you to work overtime or you'll be fired is not harassment
Classic dilemma -- we have two vocabularies. Common usage, and legal definitions.
Obviously, this can be indeed be a form of harassment in the common usage of the term, but it's not harrasment by any legal definition of the word (in US law, anyway).
Reminds me of a discussion I had with an aviation liability lawyer. He told me that there's no such thing as a "frivolous lawsuit". I cited many examples, but he wouldn't budge on his claim that they simply do not exist. That's because I was using the English word "frivolous" (consult dictionary), wheras he was using the Legal word "frivolous" (consult definitions in laws and statutes).
Don't I have a RIGHT to take a job where they make me work long hours and don't pay extra?
And don't I also have a right to go somewhere else, negotiate a better deal, or work by the hour as a contractor?
What is the problem here?
Anyhow, when someone thinks they are getting screwed because they are being forced to work extra hours without pay, the two relevant questions to ask are:
(1) Is the person a salaried aka "exempt" employee?
When they are, there's no legitimate legal claim. The "exempt" pretty much means they have chosen to take a position that is classified as exempt from most labor laws.
But if they're an hourly employee, they are legally entitled to get paid for all of the time they work, and probably higher overtime pay as well.
(2) Okay, so if they are an exempt employee, are they classified correctly according to the law?
The laws on this vary from state to state. In order to be exempt, usually the employee has to make some decisions on their own, have special training, have some control over their work schedule (again, as long as the job gets done), etc.
Many states have laws which make it very easy for pretty much any high-tech position to be exempt, which seems like a good thing to me.
I don't want to be forced to work hourly, because then I might have to accept a lower wage! If my position could not be classified as exempt, the company might lower their hourly offer to account for expected overtime. They may expect to have me work more than 40 hours per week. Then, to make the same money I make now, I'd need to work overtime every week instead of just when needed.
If I felt like my employer wasn't paying me enough (and if I didn't like it), I would focus on getting a better job rather than putting time and energy into a lawsuit.
-=Ivan
You hit the beard/mustache thing on the head. I saw a guy go into a company, got promoted to management very quickly, and then people found out he was one of the youngest members of the staff. I saw a picture of him without the beard, and he looked like a kid.
Pretty decent manager though.... far better than the other ones around there.
Examples of this include the company forcing employees to put in extra (unpaid) hours, with the implicit/explicit threat of loosing the job if they don't, to actual personal harassment in the work place by management staff
You should look at your employment contract. There are some employment contracts under which you never get paid overtime, and there are others in which you are. In either case, the employer can fire you if he isn't satisfied with your performance. Maybe the fact that your employer tells you to work overtime is a last opportunity he is giving you for making up work you should have been getting done during working hours if you had been reasonably effective (and not been posting on Slashdot).
My experience is that even in cases where the employee is completely right, it is impossible for her to win the case, given current employment law."
Of course, and why not? There is a small set of things your employer cannot fire you (e.g., your race). Anything else is fair game. After all, you yourself wouldn't want to be forced to keep employing a nanny or cleaning lady if you don't like the way she is performing. Why should your employer be forced to do the equivalent, then?
How old are you? I'm 21 and I run all the Macs at a VERY prestigious school. I've been running tech aspects of private and public schools since I was about 10, and getting paid for it since I was 16.
Never underestimate the education industry, a lot of the people at most schools are clueless, and it takes a young person to 'mold'to the inbred political culture.
A good idea is to not mention age until you're hired, people at my current job thought I was in my mid to late twenties because of how I carried myself. It doesn't hurt that I live on my own, so I can relate to everyone else who has to pay their own bills and deal with the 'real world'.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Sure you can. All you want. But NOT IN A JOB INTERVIEW! My having a spouse, or a funny accent, or a different god, is not a factor in my ability to perform a job. If, as an interviewer, you ask such a question, and it is answered, I can argue that you used the answer to discriminate against me during the hiring process. Likewise, if you hired me, everyone you didn't hire can argue that my answers to these questions denied them the job.
If you want to find out personal information about a candidate, a popular tactic is to end the interview, thank them for their time, then invite them out for lunch. You still have to be careful, though: perhaps the lunchgoers should be people who have no official say in the hiring process.
This is not my sandwich.
Just to be a spiteful bastard you should track your old boss down and remind him what actions of his led to his current situation.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Should our society establish civil rights on the basis of behavior?
For example:
I drive a station wagon. Some other drivers don't like that.
I like Linux. Some people think that it's nerdy to use Linux.
I like Mac OS X. Some computer users (eve n some linux-likers) look down on me for that.
I like to go for walks. Some people get upset when others get exercise while they sit.
I like to sing. Some people don't like the kind of songs I sing.
It is conceivable that an argument could be made that each of those activities is one that could be the subject of discrimination.
When our society begins to establish protected classes of citizens on the basis of behavior alone, there will be no end to the number and types of protected classes.
As such, it doesn't sound like a good idea to use behavior as a standard.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?