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The Art of The Farewell Email
With so many people losing their jobs, the farewell email, letting colleagues and contacts know where you are moving and how you can be reached, has become common. Writing a really good one, whether it be funny, sad or just plain mad is an art form. Chris Kula, a receptionist at a New York engineering firm, wrote: "For nearly as long as I've worked here, I've hoped that I might one day leave this company. And now that this dream has become a reality, please know that I could not have reached this goal without your unending lack of support." In May, lawyer Shinyung Oh was let go from the San Francisco branch of the Paul Hastings law firm six days after losing a baby. "If this response seems particularly emotional," she wrote to the partners, "perhaps an associate's emotional vulnerability after a recent miscarriage is a factor you should consider the next time you fire or lay someone off. It shows startlingly poor judgment and management skills — and cowardice — on your parts." Let's hear the best and worst goodbye emails you've seen.
I worked in a company once with a guy who was known for sending out long, rambling emails and overwriting everything he got his hands on. I was constantly trying to get him to edit himself better on fact sheets and the like. Well, he gets laid off and his final email (sent to everyone in the office) read simply "Fuck all of you! I'm outta here." I was so proud he had finally learned the power of brevity.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"You should've taken away my database access before telling my I was being laid off."
Yeah.. vengeful geeks. Nothing new there.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
It smells like...hollow victory
Not to mention possibly career ending. Someone about 10 years ago was leaving a company I worked at, and wrote a blistering goodbye email. A few years later at another company, a fellow ex employee of the first and I were on the interview team. And guess who walked in!
Needless to say, he got a very short interview and absolutely no consideration. When asked why, both myself and my coworker said 'Unprofessionalism'
. . . Good for the managers. Personal problems shouldn't affect their decisions. What, the managers should instead lay off a better employee because they're feeling sorry for this woman?
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
"So long and thanks for all the fish!"
Which is why we should all endeavor to display a complete lack of 'unprofessionalism.'
The funniest "goodbye" email I saw occurred about 10 years ago. A guy down the hall from me was responding to a personal ad--probably in a "casual encounters" section. He gave, shall we say, a very elaborate physical description of himself. He also went into details about his various fetishes and sexual proclivities, as well as some choice moments from his sexual history. He also described exactly what he hoped to do with the person he was writing to, complete with various sexual acts and positions.
Unfortunately, when he clicked send, the mailer garbled the "to" line in such a way that it went to the company-wide email list. (The company-wide email alias was "world"--the email address he was sending to had "world" in it, and I assume he had accidentally put a space the middle of the email address, causing it to be mis-parsed.)
When the email hit everyone's inbox, there was a moment of silence on the whole floor, followed by phrases like "holy shit" and laughter. The last anyone saw of him was him ducking and half-running down the hallway with his backpack. He apparently thought he'd never be able to live it down, called HR later in the day to resign, and never showed up at the office again.
I'm an IT consultant - my contract was terminated early, and I wrote a tasteful goodbye email ("was great working with you all" etc. which happened to be true). Good thing I did - 3 days later more funding came through and I was called back!
Russ Pitts tells TechTV that he "couldn't care less if the building spontaneously filled with eagle semen"...
'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM DATA WHERE name LIKE '%'... if you're reading this, it didn't work.
In response to the article summary, I don't think Shinyung Oh's upper management knew that she had a miscarriage. It's not like they were waiting for the worst opportunity to lay someone off. It sounds more like she had a basically really terrible week. On a side note I think her response was wholly unprofessional. Let your contacts know you are no longer working for said firm and be done with it. Don't make it a personal vendetta. Junk like that only kills your chances later on in the career path.
When I was given the news, I was able to tell the head of the department:
"Good luck with your layoffs, alright, I hope your firings go really, really well."
Others weren't so glib, but then others hadn't already planned to quit and secured a 40% raise elsewhere. For me, the severence was a bonus.
You might prefer pay cuts to layoffs. Me, I'd prefer the layoffs—either I'm unaffected, or I now know I wasn't valued and can start over somewhere that I will be.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/good-bye-from-a-hedge-fund-manager/
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There was this guy Andy H. who was laid off. He got his pink slip and sent out a looong 2-page email about who he hated and who he hated more... An hour later, his manager (who had not read his goodbye mail) came running out of his room saying, "Hey so sorry for the mistake, the OTHER Andy H. is the one getting the boot, you're still staying with us". Moral of the story - don't blow your mouth, be professional and courteous. Unless you're absolutely sure you're kicked out the door, and then you can say "fsck y'all, I'm outta here!!"
nobody remains virgin, life fscks everyone...
It's sad but true. When an employee does something wrong it's unprofessional. When an employer does something wrong it's business.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
You always have the option of starting the job hunt as soon as you're hit by a pay cut - and as a bonus you get to keep some salary during that hunt, AND have a less crowded job market as undoubtedly some people will take the cuts rather than look for a new job. If you're rather start over anew then you don't have to wait for them to forcibly boot you out the door before you start.
Our HR department is kinda slick (or at least they think they are). Last year we didn't receive annual merit raises, but they PROMISED that they'd give them this year. Well, they did, but decided to implement 3 unpaid holidays this year that end up adding up to almost exactly what the increase in pay was. So net change in ACTUAL yearly pay was zero. Strange when as a salaried worker my stated salary is one thing but I'm getting less than that per year. :S
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The employee is the supplier. The employer is the customer. In most cases, customers can abuse the relationship a lot more than suppliers.
Having said that, I'm sure that employers who abuse their employees pay for it when times are good and good people find better places to work. Usually the people who leave are those who can find other jobs - which are precisely those you want to keep.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
I know a guy who was laid off and actually heard that he was laid off from the press.
...
I'll see your "laid off from the press" and raise you a "new Chairman of the Board at the meeting".
The government agency I work in has a Board composed of 3 appointed members. The year after I started, the then Chairman of the Board was at the first meeting of the year and, from what I heard, the opening discussions went something like this:
We'd like to welcome the new Chairman of the Board,
Not an auspicious, or professional, way to introduce the new Chairman.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
When the manager entered one of our guys came forward and asked him for a kiss.
Upon the managers indignant reply "Why would I kiss you?" our Hero explained he liked to kiss while being screwed.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
People who can get rehired want layoffs, even if they are among them. Severance turns into a payed vacation and then you pick something else up.
People who are overemployed want pay cuts because they can't.
I thought that was pretty clever for a farewell done in good humor.
It seems to me to be more of an exercise in massaging one's own ego. I, personally, find it more productive to use a site like spoke or linkedin to keep connected to my former coworkers. No long winded e-mail necessary.
This is NOT the time to explain who you hate and why. It is imperative to be professional about the process (no matter how bizarre the situation might be). Your co-workers already KNOW to the self-promoting a$$holes are, who is sleeping with whom, the golfers, the entrenched dead wood, etc. There is a time and place to orchestrate a response, but it can wait for more favorable circumstances. If you're really pissed off, help find a new job for everyone who is competent and useful. But help yourself first. It starts with being viewed as a resource within your industry, and you can't do that if you have spent your time bad-mouthing anyone. Besides, you never know who you might be working with in the future.
It takes time, but bad things happen to bad people. Always.
We're a close group at work, and all get along pretty well and like working there, but people do move on from time to time. About a year ago, a friend sent a company-wide email with the topic "Out of Office", which is usually used if someone's emailing in sick or going on vacation. Took about an hour before someone actually read the email and saw that he would be out... permanently.
Now everyone reads all the vacation emails carefully, just in case.
The email has become tradition, with every subsequent departure using the same message, verbatim, changing only one thing... the first email said that he hoped the people at his new job would be half as cool; the next said one fourth, then one eighth, etc.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
Executive Summary:
Mrs. Oh was excoriating the law firm's (more precisely the elite senior partners) campaign to blame law associates with a record of _excellent_ reviews for the associates' firing.
Why? She alleged the law firm was not bringing in sufficient business to grow (a partner's raison d'etre), that the firm did not want to publicly admit the fact, BUT, it wanted to maintain an illusion of grandeur so as to entice new elite-law school graduates to continue to apply as new associates.
The miscarriage, her exemplary reviews, one partner's unsolicited glowing! praise days earlier, his about face, her firing, her presentation of an NDA type document for severance pay at the last minute firing, her emotional rawness, her refusal to be stampeded at such a vulnerable moment, her outrage and refusal to submit to the law firm's fig leaf for its own hiring duplicity, her email to "the" partner, et al all make up the rest of the story.
Last heard, months ago when this broke, she had committed major corporation career suicide but she apparently did not let that stand in her way. She's of Korean ancestry and cute though married.
I hope companies will switch to pay cuts over lay offs like HP did and like some companies in Germany are doing (nice there, you get a pay cut but you also get hours cut so you have more life to enjoy at least).
I'd argue that that is actually necessary to future economic development. As technology advances, it's natural that fewer people can get more done in less time. At some point that means that there's less than 8 hours of work per potential worker to be accomplished. The current scheme of firing some and keeping the rest working 8 hours is obviously not workable unless we want a permanent underclass with more guns than food.
Consider, if everyone in the U.S. took half a day off on Friday (or took every other Friday off), we could go from 10% unemployment to zero in short order.
The employee is the supplier. The employer is the customer.
That's a good point, but I don't think it's the only issue at play. There's also the issue of power, and big companies have much more power than individual people. When I buy something from Best Buy, I'm forced to agree to their terms, take it or leave it. If I work for Best Buy, then I'm pretty much forced to agree to their terms, take it or leave it. It's not a negotiation between equals.
And also businesses can hide behind an organization. When a company acts, it's not always entirely clear whether it's the decision of "the company" or the individual within the company. If I'm a manager and I want to make someone's life miserable, I can do that while justifying it as "policy" or "good for business". I can say, "Sorry, it's out of my hands. It's just policy." If the employee turns around and tries to make my life miserable, he can't hide behind his actions as easily.
That's not to say there's nothing you can do. There are strategies for managing relationships where you're the weaker party. But let's not pretend that power doesn't come into play.
The problem with your logic is that with the economy in the toilet, one never knows which category one falls into. While you could find another job, there's no guarantee you could find one that pays as well for a company that you would be reasonably happy working for that is within a reasonable driving distance from your home. And before you say "move somewhere else", in this economy, being able to sell one's home in a reasonably short amount of time is also not a given.
In short, your notion fails to take into account that some people actually like their jobs and like working for their employer. At some point, after working somewhere for a few years, it is no longer just a job that can be so easily discarded. Where I work, there's a startling tendency for laid off employees to end up working there again for a different team within just a handful of years.
The notion of pay cuts to avoid layoffs seems perfectly reasonable to me. If anything, it means that the company values their employees enough that they hope to keep all of them. In my book, that says a lot about the company and its management. Either it means that they genuinely care about their employees (in which case you'd have a hard time finding a comparably good company to work for) or it means that they are barely able to stay out of bankruptcy and are too scared that the hit on their stock from announcing layoffs will put them over the edge. One is very positive, the other very negative. Use your own judgment on a case-by-case basis. :-)
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Many moons ago, I worked for a consumer hardware/software company that no longer exists...but their mascot was a professor. With an egg-shaped head. Ahem.
Anyhoo...a manager was packaged one day. He was well-liked by his co-workers and employees, but butted heads with the exec team. On his last day he wrote a lengthy email to everyone in the company detailing why he was very sad to see a company with so many good people and good products go to hell because of poor management, and proceeded to detail examples of what he deemed to be poor management. As he was packing up his desk and saying his goodbyes, he was pulled into the Operations Exec's office along with two corporate lawyers, and spent the last three hours of his last day apologizing for sending the email, and pleading his case as to why he should still be allowed a package, and not be fired outright and have any severance payments and benefits denied on the spot.
Yeah...oops
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Though, to be fair, I think that sort of thing should be saved until retirement.
http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s300/sjclark1967/FarSideLoneRanger.jpg
That which does not kill us makes us... st
You can find a picture here.
You can find the entire email here.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
bgsound and script tags in html emails.
Just saying.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Which every hacker should read.
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I hate people that think like you do.
Was he a good employee at the previous job? Do you know EXACTLY why he REALLY got fired? Did he deserve it?
Being unprofessional is one thing, but sending a pissed off email because you were wronged doesn't really bother me, and 9 times out of 10 due to politics you really don't know why someone was fired. You may hear 'because they did XX', but thats likely just an excuse for 'he made me or my boss look stupid, which we are, but don't want anyone to know'.
So if you guys know for a fact that he was wrong and that he was a bad employee at the previous company, then fine. But giving him a crappy interview for something ten years ago that you don't know the full details of is unprofessional of you. Either way, 10 years is a long time and people do grow up sometimes. You could have just cheated yourself out of an excellent employee because you're unable to look over mistakes people have made in the past.
Like I said though, its entirely dependant on the situation, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume from the way your stating it that you really don't know what truely happened to him.
For the record though, your bragging about handling the interview the way you did, is extremely unprofessional, and pretty damn childish. You didn't even have the balls to tell them why you blew the guy off.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Your boss loves it when you write a stupid, vengeful email after being made redundant.
No-one likes laying someone off, unless they're incompetent or have it coming. So receiving the FU email after breaking the bad news makes the task that bit easier. They can go home thinking "Yeah, we made the right decision there, that guy really was a real douche and we never knew it until now", and sleep guilt-free in their beds.
So go ahead, write that email that tells all your colleges what you really think of them. Your boss will thank you for it and everyone else won't miss you once you're gone.
To be fair.. ...even when the person/company on the receiving end deserves a kick in the arse.
Professionalism is acting with grace and civility...
SO when the boss tells you to unclog the toilet in the bathroom you reply:
"No problem sir. Would you prefer I use a plunger or the toilet brush as I am updating my resume and want a good list of what technologies I use in my work?"
On April 1st a few years ago, my boss and I put together a mass email saying that another member of my team was leaving the company. My boss sent it out to lend it credibility.
My teammate is Italian both in looks and in name. We stated in the email that he was leaving the company to go work for his "family business",etc.etc. and that no one should make inquiries about it since the family was tight-knit and considered their business very personal, etc.etc. could be dangerous,etc.etc.
Thankfully he had a good laugh about it, but he did admit that he had some relatives in Jersey that wouldn't have found it funny.
We didn't make him the butt of any jokes after that.
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The Three Envelopes.
IT manager starts a new position.
All goes well for a few weeks, then something big breaks. Lots of pressure. Rooting around in his desk, he finds 3 envelopes. The first is labeled "Open at the First Crisis". On a whim, he opens it and the note inside reads "Blame it on your Predecessor". He decides to take this advice and to his surprise, it works like a charm, management is satisfied, he is given time to fix things.
A few months go by and a something much bigger breaks, seriously disrupting operations. He is in trouble. At his desk, he decides to open the envelope labeled: "Open at the Second Crisis". He'd been saving it for something big, and this is it. The note inside says: "Form a Committee to Study the Issue". He does just that and, to his surprise, it works great. The committee wastes time and accomplishes nothing, but blame is diffused.
A few years go by. The third and final envelope is labeled: "Open at the Third Crisis". He thinks about opening it many times, but he waits, saving it for a real disaster. One day, it comes. Catastrophic failure. He takes a deep breath, tears the envelope open and inside, finds a note that reads: "Prepare Three Envelopes".
(I liked this story so much that I left a set of envelopes behind at one job.)
Actually, it was two or three years after he left the company to go to a dot.com startup. His email on the way out was something along the lines of 'so long suckers, I'm going to get rich while you idiots work here, you all suck.." and insults to everyone he worked with. It was like he finally got to say what he had been dying to say for years.
Technically, he was competent, but not stellar. He was about average for the role he was applying for, but his past history was a mark against him. There were better candidates.
You have an odd idea of what professionalism is if you think it relates to perks for the company. Professionalism is not getting angry with people because they disagree with you no matter which method they choose to employ to persuade people. It's arriving at work on time and in proper attire. It means doing what you say you will do and when you say you'll do it. These are not unpaid perks that the company enjoys, they make for a work atmosphere which gets a lot more work done so I guess you could say you are doing more work without getting extra money but its all work you should be doing instead of arguing about stupid things.
Professionalism has a lot of characteristics that obviously vary from profession to profession so I'm mainly focusing on professionalism in an IT position. You need to intelligently be able to defend your position at all times even when someone that has no business making decisions is voicing an opinion and just happens to have the ear of the CTO or CEO in my case. You must be able to illustrate the lack of common sense those that would disagree with you would clearly have through polite means often with careful politicking. You need to be able to demonstrate the business sense in your goals and what you are proposing, how will this help the company make or save money? It's mastery of a craft, confidence that can't be shaken when the wind turns the wrong way which it inevitably does. It almost means consistency in behavior.
In the context of this discussion professionalism is a warm goodbye email that talks about what you enjoyed at the company and most times includes alternate ways to contact you.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Ok so my pay goes down so you can keep these 4 worthless guys. I'm going to only do half the work I did before.
Correction... make that five worthless guys.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
A few years ago I worked for a college at NCSU that hired me to redo their website. Interestingly enough another group at the college did the same and we were told to work together. This guy claimed to have years of experience in designing sites and print media... but couldn't even tell you the basic HTML tags for a webpage.
Long story short, I was fired for not working well with him but hired almost 2 weeks later for more pay at a better job, better office, and all around better situation.
He on the hand, failed to bring their site online, convinced them to implement a CRM that he could manage, deleted the ENTER site (15,000+ pages) not once, not twice but three times.
Applied styles around my SQL code and claimed that I didn't know what I was doing... but the best part...
*Drum roll please*
The person they hired to replace me (wtf did they hire someone to replace me if he was so great)... quit three weeks ago with NO notice with the reason...
"I can't take Tom anymore".
I found this out when that college sent out major SOS requests to any developers who could help them fix their site. Tom had deleted it again...
God I love my life.
I voluntarily left a "back-up" position I was given as an apology for my boss eating my budget and thus having to eliminate my original position in the same-ish department . I was somewhat bitter entering the position, but I knew I could make great changes in my new position. Little did I know that the supervisor was angry, paranoid, irrational, and rather cruel to some people. When I quit, I left her with a long letter detailing each of her major leadership and tact-based mistakes she made in the paltry 3 months I was there. I then told her how disappointing it was that she did not have the necessary leadership skills after 15 years in that position ... also noting that my position having gone through 13 people in 5 years should be a clue.
When I resigned that position, it was required to turn in a copy of my resignation letter to HR. So I gave them a copy. "Somehow" others saw it, too. Those others liked it and expressed their condolences... specifically since the person under whom I was employed is an "untouchable" in our industry. She will always be there because of who she is.
We had a salesman do this after the sales manager told him he was about to get canned before I had been given notice to disable his accounts. He knew the sales manager's password to our CRM application, logged on as him, and attempted to delete every account in the system. Then he switched to the shared file storage and started deleting every file he could get his hands on. That's when my boss called me and we shut down his workstation remotely. Then he started attacking us with a metal yardstick. The receptionist called 911 and the police showed up. He said he wasn't going back to jail and tried to attack the officers, at which point they tazered the hell out of him. Funniest thing I ever saw. We pressed charges for destroying data and assault/battery, and he plead guilty. I forgot what he was sentenced to, but last I heard he was out of jail but still unemployed four years later. Word got around pretty quickly and nobody would have anything to do with him. This is a relatively small town, so I don't understand why anyone would be so stupid as to do something like that.
We ended up needing one all-nighter to recover. Most of it was spend figuring out what exactly he had actually deleted, as lack of permissions had prevented most of it. In any event, I didn't mind, the sight of him doing the tazer dance in front of everyone was totally worth it. I won't advocate tazering people indiscriminately but he totally absolutely deserved it. You had to be there, it defies description how funny it was. He went from attacking people with a yardstick to quivering wreck on the floor in about as fast as you could say "quivering wreck on the floor".
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I've left my job with one company by leaving all of my stuff in the server closet, a piece of paper with the passwords, and a note saying "Good Bye!" They bounced several pay checks, and delayed disbursing paychecks for several months beforehand.
The second time, I dumped my laptop and gear at the data center, and sent an email to the HR drone saying "I can't take this anymore. I'm gone effective now."
This one, we had 3 Canadian contractors who made my life hell, by making it impossible for me to do my work. not giving me access, and fucking with my passwords. They kept their shitty jobs, I got a new one.
After years and years of dedicated service a sysadmin is getting fired. He has one day to train his replacement. He says to the guy taking over his job "This is the only training I think you need. In the file cabinet there are 2 envelopes. The first time you get in trouble bad, open the envelope marked 1. If the crap hits the fan again, open the envelope marked 2. That should be all you need to know."
So months go by and the new guy does his job diligently, but as we all know sometimes things just go wrong. He gets in hot water and fears for his job. Luckily he remembers the envelopes in the cabinet. He grabs the envelope and it just has one slip of paper in it from the old Sysadmin. It reads: "Blame it all on me."
he does, and management buys it. He keeps his job.
Unfortunately later in his career things get bad agian and it looks like he's going to get fired. He remembers envelope number 2 is still in the cabinet. Excited, he get the envelope and tears it open. Another note is in the envelope from the old sysadmin.
It starts : " You will need 2 envelopes and some paper..."
While taking every other Friday off might be beneficial for other reasons, a reduction of worker-hours is unlikely to produce an equal increase in the number of hours available for others. The labor pool is not zero-sum.
See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
One problem is that in many cases two employees working at 50% is less efficient or more expensive than one employee working at 100%.
I really do like the idea of a shortened work week, but the argument that it will reduce employment is a tough sell, and (I believe, but I could be wrong) was tried and failed during the Great Depression.
Falling stock prices often contribute to bankruptcy because of lot of debt structures are at least partly short-term, requiring it to be rolled over from time to time, and creditors are less willing to roll over the debt when the stock price is tanking. They get nervous.
And layoffs announcements often cause a bump in share price when times are good or just okay, because it signals lower future expenses. But in times like these, when investors are nervous, unexpected layoff announcements can be taken as a signal that things are the company are worse than people thought. It signals that management thinks future revenues are likely to be lower, and that they are trying to cut expenses to help compensate.
Dear *your company name here*;
I regret to inform you that your services as employer are no longer required. You position has been terminated effective *your last day at work*.
This decision was not arrived at lightly, and is in no way is a reflection on the performance of your duties as an employer.
Signed,
*your signature*
Date: *today's date*
Print the above out on pink paper, and sign it. Lay off your entire company :-)
Ian Ameline
I knew Carly was bad, but I never know anyone who worked for her personally.
PS - they did finally get rid of her, but I heard she's found an organization which matches her personality. I hope the Republicans have plan to get rid of her.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I left a company about one and a half years ago to move to greener pastures (well to be precise, same global company, different country, but I did still technically quit the old job). I wrote a fairly standard and "nice" goodbye email to everyone and they threw me a nice farewell party.
However, what I found humorous was the emails I RECEIVED as I left. Some were nice ("been a pleasure working with you, blah blah"), a minority were nasty ("finally getting rid of you - fuck off and don't come back"), and some were just incredibly surprising (cute girl: "I'm so disappointed I never got to sleep with you!"... damn, had I only known earlier!).
The best thing though was a large banner that my co-workers printed. As I was the "resident uber-geek", they wanted to try and do something they thought I might appreciate. They used some kind of online tool to convert ASCII to binary, and printed a large poster that was SUPPOSED to say "01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01100010 01111001 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011". Unfortunately, it got truncated somehow and ended up as "01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01100010 01111001 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100111 01101111". Now, they all sort of expected me to decode it in my head instantly, so were a little disappointed when I didn't... but, being the "geek", I did so (slowly, but surely) and about 20 seconds later started laughing... they couldn't figure out why, and so I did have to eventually explain it to them. I do still wonder if someone deliberately truncated it at that point (there were other geeks there after all), but I think it's more than likely just a humorous coincidence.
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Sorry, didn't realize that I left that out. Yes, it was a book on Good Managment Practices, or something to that extent.
I think this all started with Neutron Jack Welch. The thing about good ole Jack is that his purpose, basically was to eliminate American manufacturing jobs and turn his company into something else that didn't do manufacturing. In fact, he turned it, General Electric, into yet another useless financial company, while the jobs that generated the real national wealth shifted overseas. In the future, I think he'll be seen for what he was, a parasite who reduced America to third world status and made billions doing it.
The thing is, if you are essentially just cutting your losses and planning on eliminating business divisions completely, you have no reason to care about the years of experience walking out the door. He's considered a success because he "made money," but he didn't make G. E. competitive with the Japanese. Here's a quote from an article, "I came into a company that had at least an extra 100,000, maybe 150,000 extra people. It was the early '80s. We were making television sets in Syracuse, N.Y., and the Japanese were selling them at the mall cheaper than we were making them." Jack Welch: 'I Fell In Love' So, essentially, he made money from failure.
Well, we've had years of this as the U. S. transformed into a nation of middlemen, shady accountants, lawyers, and "would you like fries with that" type jobs. The U. S. is basically the B-Ark from Life, the Universe, and Everything, with all the thinkers and doers being in the Eastern part of the world now. Good for them, not so good for us.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
the "lump of labor fallacy" is somewhat controversial (even the article you point to suggests that). While the pool of labor to be done is not zero sum, it is not fully elastic either.
Between the efficiency gains to be had through better rested employees and the reduced health care costs from insufficiently rested workers, and eliminating the inefficiency of taxing the employed to keep the unemployed from starving, it's quite likely that the increased administrative overhead is a wash.
Let's not forget that laying people off carries a significant administrative overhead as well.
Further, unemployment will have a negative impact on elastic demand (even those that remain employed will often cut back on non-essentials when pink slips are flying, they fear they might be next). The lack of unemployment will have a positive impact. Increased demand results in increased production demands.
Two employees working 50% will be less efficient at the task than 1 working 100%, but in the latter scenario, it's quite likely that taxing the one working 100% in order to support the one working at 0 will be less efficient than each working at 50%. It will certainly be less healthy for society
While economics can't be ignored, we must recognize that a perfectly efficient hell world isn't at all sustainable no matter how economically sound it might be.
It's worth noting that when it was being considered initially, many claimed that the 8 hour workday (and 40 hour work week) would be the doom of the economy.
I have found that big companies are just as likely to treat you decently and give you a fair shake if they have to let you go. I've heard plenty of stories from people who have worked at small businesses (such as start ups) who were at the mercy of personality wars and psycho owners.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Goodbye and good luck
Goodbye and go
I would rather not burn bridges - you never know if you may want to work at a company where a previous co-worker is employed at.
I agree somewhat. It all depends on the situation though. Some places need a response. You don't need to be nasty (for the very reasons you mention), but sometimes you do need to do something. If only to keep your sanity.
Last place I left was so bad I left without putting in a two week notice. Only time I've ever done that. Showed up late, walked around and personally told everyone I cared about goodbye. Handed my boss typed up instructions on my project and how to use it so the next guy won't be screwed. Gave him my passwords and all that.
Then loaded up my PC, turned on active desktop, set my desktop to Badger Badger Mushroom, and walked out.
BTW the place was a madhouse. This was entirely appropriate behavior. The HR lady who did my exit interview? She was terribly unhappy about my unprofessional exit and lectured me about the appropriate way to quit a job. But. Two months later she went out drinking margaritas at lunchtime with the CFO. And ...never came back. Neither of 'em.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It happened once for me, and everyone deserves one chance to burn bridges.
I was living in in the USA, there on a work visa. Unfortunately, my manager was letting power go to his head, making life a living hell for the entire lab. He had it in for me, and I just wanted to finish up some things before quitting (and leaving the country), so it was a race and we both knew it.
JUST before he was about to fire me, I handed in my notice--four weeks, to ensure time to complete or transition my work tasks properly. He promptly told me to clean my workspace and avoid touching the lab equipment or computers, so within a few days, I was forced to sit at my desk, feet up, reading Hugh Johnson's wine Encyclopedia.
When it came time for my exit interview, I was asked if something could have been done differently to make me stay. I pointed out that every person in my group had a secret file in the bottom of their desk drawer, detailing the times our manager had been abusive, unreasonable, or unfair to them.
Management eventually saw those files, and "promoted" the manager to a desk position with no staff or responsibilities--just paperwork.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Too short, wrong tone. Any "Farewell" e-mail should be looked at as advertising for your now forced move to self-employment (I don't care if you're officially laid-off and unemployed, everybody on slashdot has skills that friends and family use for free that can be marketed to strangers to meet the difference between paying the mortgage and eating). It should be relatively upbeat, thank people for the privilege of working on their team, contain a very short skills list of what you did for the team to remind them to think of you in the future, then include all appropriate private contact information and/or your contracting company's contact information.
Here's my last one (with some redactions):
[redacted, project and engagement specific info]
However, it has been great working with all of you. Keep [Consulting company] and myself in mind for future projects, we are an [big company] Partner Vendor and we have contracts with other companies outside of [big company], so I am sure we are not going anywhere soon. My services should be available through [big company] IT Flex & [Consulting company]- contact [big company liaison] or [consulting company manager].
[redacted, introductions for people who have never met or communicated with liaison or manager & more project related resource management stuff]
Once again, it was nice working with all of you, and hopefully I will get to work with you again in the future.
[redacted, contact info]
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Looks like you've run into each other again!
I practice the art of saying goodbye via e-mail without e-mail. The people who care already know, or will find out soon enough. If I liked them and had a personal relationship I say goodbye in person, or failing that call them within a reasonable time frame. Almost every global goodbye letter I ever got left me scratching my head: Who is this person, and why do they think I care? I suppose it is different for a CEO or very high level executive, but the marketing folks really don't care if an embedded Linux engineer left the company. I definately don't want to waste my time sifting through E-Mails from people I have never met who have confused themselves into thinking their personal life is somehow important to me.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
My appologies for not being clear, but the SA in question was not fired, he quit to go work for a dot com startup.The email he sent out was basically bragging about how great his new company was going to be, how we all sucked and were stupid, and he listed every slight and fault everyone on his team had. About two or three years later (2001 I think) is when I was on the interview team with another ex employee. He was not a bad SA, but he was not a fantastic one either.
So he burned his bridges and paid the price for it. Do I regret it? Not one bit.
How is it "failure" that he stopped making TVs that were overpriced and fired people who were not adding value? Where I come from that's called "success."
everything in moderation
Does it matter? Is the globally-sent rude email ever justified?
Professionals can resist the urge to vent publicly.
And he told the guy the reason they blew him off -- he acted unprofessionally in a previous position. That's a real insight to an applicant's character that is rarely available. They'd bee idiots to ignore it.
everything in moderation
If you're suggesting that had GE stayed in the TV business their stock would not have fallen recently (unlike just about every other stock in this depression/recession) then you're pretty ignorant.
Riiiight. Massive failure there.
everything in moderation
How is it "failure" that he stopped making TVs that were overpriced and fired people who were not adding value? Where I come from that's called "success."
Hence, you're part of the problem.
This sig. intentionally left blank.
Early in my career I held a 'part time, hourly' job as a tech in a smallish company. It quickly became apparent that I was more knowledgeable in systems than their full time admin, who coincidentally was also very lazy (had no intention of increasing his knowledge). During my time there, I implemented a lot of systems which were frankly quite a bit above my pay grade. For a while, I didn't care, because it was good experience for me. However, as time wore on, the laziness of the full time SA, and the micromanagement of our CIO boss really started to wear on me, and I started looking. I had asked for a promotion, citing my skill, the very technical projects I had accomplished, and specified areas where I could augment the existing SA's lack of experience with my own, in a full time capacity. These were denied due to the size of the company, yada yada...
It didn't take me long to find another job, I had a couple of different offers to choose from, but I was really quite young and still bitter about the way things had gone. The denial of promotion after I had done so much, and the SA had done so little, and knew so little. I didn't send a nasty email my boss, the company or its owners, although the thought had crossed my mind several times. I sent a thank you note to the CEO, and received a gracious reply. However, I couldn't let it go, it kept grinding on me. It was fresh in my mind. So, when I learned that my re-hire was about to be hired, I acquired his email address from a friend still with the company, and sent him a very detailed email, outlining (and probably exaggerating) all of the personal and professional deficiencies of the CIO. Trust me, there were many to choose from, it was a long email. It was unprofessional and mean spirited.
What I didn't ponder at the time is what trouble this could get my friend who was still with the company into. I felt horrible after sending it, I worried about his job (since he gave me the contact info, etc). As it turns out, the new prospect forwarded the email to his future employer, which is not really what I anticipated. He was able to use the email as leverage to negotiate a higher wage (good for him), and decided to take the job anyway. (For what its worth, I had lunch with my replacement less than a year after he had taken the job, and was moving on to another. He confirmed that everything I had said was true...)
All said, it was a very stupid thing for me to do, and I certainly will not do anything like that in the future. Now I am hesitant to even list that company on my resume, as I'm certain that CIO will not give me a good reference or even a stable reference. I certainly wouldn't if I were him. So rather than having a good solid reference employer, where I had accomplished a lot of good things, and left in a reasonably gracious fashion, now I have a past that I have to stay clear of and basically throw away that experience.
My advice is to just leave graciously. All of the annoyances you suffer currently, will seem increasingly less as time goes on. Especially if you find a company (as I did) which recognizes your talent and advances you quickly.
Hi, big strong alpha Silverback male, father of large family, here. Have work gloves, will lift heavy things.
Sorry to put it this way -- cruel to be kind and all that -- but if you're sacrificing family for your career, you're a damn fool. If you're living to work -- and your job doesn't involve healing the sick, feeding the hungry, saving children, etc. --
then you have missed the point.
Your job title will not cry with you in the night. It won't watch the sun with you in the morning. The company car won't care that your parents just died. Your subordinates won't look up to you, and the responsibility you have for them won't grow your soul.
Apart from that, I'm shocked at the callousness of the some of the posters here. Sometimes, it's just a matter of basic humanity. I'm a big strong guy. I don't mind pulling a double-shift if someone's wife just went into labor. I'm not made of spun sugar. Some poor woman has a miscarriage, I don't mind covering for her until she can get her head back together, and yeah, that might take a while. Some single Mom's kid falls out of a tree and breaks his arm, I don't mind watching her keeping her network in one piece while she runs to the emergency room. I'm not a helpless little girl -- I can carry a little bit more of a load for a good cause.
Listening to some of the thin reedy voices of the Ayn Rand acolytes on this board, I can tell they're just not ready to be husbands and fathers. I pity them for their loneliness, and I know if they don't dig deeper and find their hearts and testosterone, they'll never be ready.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Why is a picture of Ron Paul being used? He's not gone, and we're not finished with what he started.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Who cares if he's competent? Nobody wants to work with a jackass.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
No, a good portion of people haven't had one, but unless the same good portion of people find it within themselves to *decide* to make their family lives better than the ones they were not-so-blessed with growing up, we'll continue the cycle of abuse, hatred, callousness and violence, and ensure that the next generation of people also have shitty family lives, and the next generation after that. Stand up and break it whenever you want. It takes more guts if you don't have a role-model, for sure, but that makes it even *more* rewarding in the end :)
-=[You cannot consistently judge this statement to be true.]=-
Oh absolutely! I greatly enjoyed detailing everything I've seen and heard while I was there. Threats, extortion, theft, espionage - all of it.
People would steal product off the lines and use it to bribe/payoff people outside the company for other services. The head of engineering would show up and park his car by the owner's car. Then sneak in back and take a company car back home. Show back up at 4:30 and check to see if everyone was at their desk. And if the owner would go looking for him, he had a patsy in our department that would call him at home and tell him to haul ass back to the office. Sales would rifle through our desks after hours to see what we were working on so they could take credit. We tested that once by making up a bogus project to see how far up the ladder it'd go. The engineering manager had people in his department work on his house for him, after reminding them that he was the final voice of approval for approving all vacation leave.
I could go on and on. And I did to HR - just before I left.
Oh yeah, one more thing I did on my PC. I had a poorly hidden folder named "private stuff". It had thousands of pictures of shovels in it. Thousands. Arranged by type and color and length.
With no explanation.
Just shovels.
That'll leave 'em guessing if they find it. Is it porn? Is it a hobby? Who collects shovels? Is it like Jack Nicholson in The Shining? A modern day internet equivalent of "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy"?
They'll be talking about me for years.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.