Slashdot Mirror
IT Workers To Get Fewer Perks, No Free Coffee
dasButcher writes "While the economy is showing signs of recovery and tech stocks posted double- and triple-digit gains in 2009, IT workers are facing a less hospitable workplace in the coming year. Many employers say they're going to continue trimming budgets, particularly in human resources. Rather than giving up head count, they're planning to trim 401k contributions, eliminate bonuses, curtail travel and, dare we say, shut off the free coffee (it wasn't that good anyway)."
institution purchases even MORE gear because buying is from last years budget.
institution reduces IT staff because salaries are from this years budget.
no coffee? just be happy there even IS an IT position.
THL phish sticks
Every job is different. Every career is different. Things ebb and flow. For a long time, IT workers were spoiled primadonna. Now they're just another cost center. Guess what, the economy is jacked up. Budget cuts have to happen. IT is a necessity, but so is efficiency, cost control, etc. Welcome to the real world you big f'ing crybabies.
What free coffee?
At the shitehole where I work the free coffee is bloody Nescafe instant.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
I know many programmers whose fingers can't move unless well lubricated with caffene :-)
... don't take away the Hot Coffee, I'm fine with it.
--- What?
My company has done all this already except eliminating the free coffee... that will be the last straw. To quote office space "I'll set the building on fire" (not really though)
The more you screw your employees, the more they will find ways to screw you. Turn off Gmail and Slashdot? Fine, I'll take a once-an-hour smoke break. Hack my 401k? I'll sit and stare at the ceiling. Bust by balls about travel costs? See if I don't have a "family thing" next time and can't go. People will take what they feel (rightly or wrongly) is their due, whether you give it to them or not.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
...read your email.
You make some mo'
In my mind at least if the company reduces there contributions to the 401k I would see it as a pay cut. While it would be small I would still take it that way.
Anywhere that would cut out coffee from the budget is quite frankly insane. It's a minuscule expense compared to the HR budget and improves productivity dramatically when people would otherwise be flagging (early mornings for night owls, afternoons for early birds).
The ability to provide free, legal performance enhancing drugs is one of the few negligible-cost productivity boost techniques available. You'd have to be both petty and highly incompetent as a manager to do away with it.
Many people suffer from this phenomenon, not just coders... Your statement is still correct, though.
I haven't received a bonus in about two years. It was a $1000 check. And the only reason I got that little gift is that I MADE money for my company. One of the perks of being a contractor for a small company. Of course, that contract ended, so I went to work for a larger IT company, and haven't received a bonus since. Working directly for a company is nice, but contracting pays better.
Bonuses, what are those? I don't think I have ever seen one of those.
Seriously though, where I work, we get a 401(k), insurance, and free coffee. That is it.
The world is how you make it
Perk decrease has been going for a long time since dotbomb. In my previous company they used to have all kinds of free snacks (bagels, jams, cream cheese, fruits, salads) and happy hour with free hot food every Friday, then one sunny day it all ended abruptly, only caffeinated coffee remained (that reminded me of the practice of banana companies of the XIX century that encouraged workers to chew coca leaves).
I work for government now and we do not have any free food at all. Good thing is that people can bring all kind of personal electric equipment like toasters, microwave ovens, fridges. We have kitchens on each floor where all this stuff is stored. I personally have a tea maker, an espresso maker and a coffee grinder in my office.
It's better this way, guys.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
In a time when IT work for actual money is scarce, jobs outsourced and its easier to buy a new computer than fix the old one, one must look to their other talents for a living. I personally am handcrafting guitars while looking for a b.s. warehouse job. I can turn a jazz archtop over for $5k minimum. Till then I need work to buy my own coffee which is better than coffee service crap anyway.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I would sacrifice all of those perks for more paid time off. HP offers new employees something like 12 days PTO and then it schedules 10 days of forced shutdowns per year to get accumulated PTO off the books. This means any new employee gets 2, count them, 2 days to schedule at their own convenience. That's deeply disrespectful. (I don't work at HP but I have friends that do).
We've long had a person head up a 'coffee club', collecting from the java
junkies on the floor every month. Enough money was left to have a group lunch
at month-end. AFAICT the coffee machine was there long before, industrial type
-- 2 open carafes with an orange one for decaf, you probably saw one in a
diner somewhere -- not the 10 or 12 cup coffeemakers you get from Costco.
401K? Long gone from the employer's side, we're waiting for the first
anniversary announcement, if they will reinstate their contribution. I feel
less of a team player if they did not.
Yup, not just in IT. This was the travel industry. Welcome to the club, gents.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
The easiest way to get a pay rise is to simply cut down time you actually work at work :) Want 10% rise? Then either leave 45 minutes earlier or spend that time browing (if someone is timing your work).
Wait: we don't get pensions anymore. 401k contributions ARE our retirement plans. Cutting 401k is the same as saying "we care about you SO little, that we hope you die hungry and cold in your old age."
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
What really kills me is the REAL perks getting eliminated - bonuses, my whole 401k match is gone now, health insurance cost going through the roof, etc. THAT hurts my bottom line, coffee does not.
I understand that they cut the 401k match and increased the health insurance premium to try to save a few jobs - but jesus, looking at the bloat in some of the organizations here, lay off a few of them (sales, I'm looking at you. You spend ALL DAY on youtube. Yes, I can prove it), you'd think you could cut some of them, and keep the match.
I have worked in a troubled business in which advancement and raises were excessively limited due to economic problems. It auto creates a very hostile and non productive work environment. It is the employees business to do what they are hired to do. It is the businesses obligation to have the money on hand to advance good workers and keep a reasonable work environment. The nickle and dime, Scrooge routine will steer a company right into their own dumpster.
Some company perks that I just don't want and will never use:
- I don't want a company celphone. I have my own phone, I don't want to have to keep track of business and private calls, I don't want my boss to get a list of all the calls I make in a month, and I don't want to have to carry around two phones. The company phone is lying in the closet, unused, the subscription fee is being paid for nothing.
- I don't want a company laptop. I don't need one for my work (customers *naturally* never allow machines on their network that they didn't provide themselves). For private use, it's useless. It does not have the specs I would have chosen for my own laptop, and I'm not free to modify it or change the software on it. It's been lying in the closet, unused. It's worse than useless, as I can't justify buying one for myself as long as I "have a perfectly ok laptop gathering dust in the closet".
- Company presentations preceeded by Paintball or Casino: please keep it serious and treat me like an adult. I don't come to the office to play games with colleagues, just give the presentation.
- Free coffee: I don't care. It's nice if it's there, but it's such a minor issue that if they want to save the shockingly huge amount of money that goes into rent and support of these machines, by all means do so, I'm not going to work less hard if I have to buy my own drinks.
While in larger companies doing away with free coffee could be a sensible alternative to laying off perhaps 0.5% of the work force, you have to wonder about the margins and sustainability of a corporation that actually *needs* to do that. As for smaller companies - if they can't even afford free coffee, it must really suck to work there.
;-)
I can only recommend managers to think about how much free for employees (good) food and drinks actually cost you compared to the part of the salaries that goes towards pizza/drinks at work otherwise, what the benefits are (healthier employees, less time wasted ordering stuff or going out to buy it) and how it may or may not make people feel more attached/loyal to your company. As for coffee - think of the headaches from caffeine deprivation you might induce if you don't provide it.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I used to work in a place where if you worked on you got a free meal in the canteen. People used to work 2 or 3 hours extra and all for the price of a meal. They cut out the practice and guess what the result was?
Twenty years ago, companies jumped-up IT guys and made them "Web Masters" -- coders, server maintainers, content creators and (in their own minds) designers -- giving them six figure salaries. Every company, no matter how small, felt it needed to have a "server room" and maintain their e-mail service locally. The Marketing secretary always needed help figuring out how to print her boss's agenda out of Lotus Organizer.
Times changed.
Now, companies buy website templates for sixty bucks non-exclusive (three grand exclusive) and they're sitting in a server room at a place called Dreamhost or Hostgator. The content is maintained via a CMS run by the Marketing secretary. Employers and employees are using Gmail and other cloud-based e-mail systems because the lines between personal and work IT space have become so blurred. Nobody needs help printing anymore, because an entire generation has been raised on the Internet and personal computer systems.
People will take what they feel (rightly or wrongly) is their due, whether you give it to them or not.
And employers will replace them with 20-something go-getters with better attitudes and more up-to-date skills, and at half the salary.
No bonuses or raises, yet we somehow managed to come up with enough money to pay Oracle for a weblogic license. We don't host any apps that require anything more than jsp and servlets. We use spring instead of j2ee. It's fucking absurd.
The whole reason I'm drinking coffee is to stay awake and work. Caffeinated workers are more productive.
Unionized workers have more benefits. Period.
What are they?
How 1980's. Only incompetent bankers get bonuses these days.
I remember working for some prick who actually said "your bonus is still having a job" in a meeting once; well actually my bonus was leaving them and getting paid 15k more elsewhere.
#include <sig.h>
Fortunately at the promotional products company where I work we still have our machine, it's a good job for us all that the management like the coffee!
Coffee produces proven improvements in productivity in the morning. It's well worth the minuscule cost of providing it, especially since it is usually shit (although you can actually get good coffee for the same price, or less. very sad.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We have Starbucks coffee (the ground kind) at my work Verona and Breakfast blend - although our capex and opex expenses were like 40mm last year so I don't think they are too worried about coffee
Making the workplace less pleasant is only going to backfire. If I was running a company I would make the place as nice as possible so my workers would want to stick around for as long as possible. The highest cost to almost any company is labor. Since IT workers are often paid on a salary basis, free coffee and even free dinner is a bargain for the extra work I can get out of them. Many tech companies do this. Cutting 401k, laying off some people, or hiring less people are one thing but making the work environment unpleasant simply has a bad return on "investment". You save peanuts on the actual cost and lose way more on productivity. Also, as another commenter pointed out, people will work as hard as they think is due. When you start nickel and dime-ing your workers, they'll do the same back. Don't expect "above and beyond" type of effort when you don't seem to be doing the same for them.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
If I didn't have free coffee with unlimited and unfiltered access to the Internet at work, I would need to find another job.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
You can always fit a small refrigerator inside of a std. rack (lay a couple of 2x4's across the bottom to hold it up, and make sure the rack doors are on it, front and back). Put your own coffee maker on top of it, and you're set. Tape a few Dell server front panels to the inside of the rack door while you're at it. If you're really into disguises, wire up a few LED's to those panels.
Now if only there was a way to squeeze a big-screen TV in there... and no, not sideways.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Having worked both in large corps and now for myself, it's completely worth it to me to work for myself and try the best I can to provide all those things on my own. I have no worries of stakeholders. Just my family and my clients' happiness.
But, I realize that not everyone likes or is even capable of working for themselves (not a slam - some people jut don't like to/won't/can't do any sort of administrative work that's necessary when you work for yourself).
industrial coffee maker (can make enough coffee, continuously, for at least 20 people) - $242.07
http://www.amazon.com/VPR-Commercial-12-Cup-Pour-Over-Warmers/dp/B000BN7W84/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704523&sr=8-1
cheap coffee (weeks supply for 20 people) - $14.50
http://www.amazon.com/Folgers-Ground-Regular-PAG20015-Category/dp/B00006IDJO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704605&sr=1-2
coffee filters (months supply for 20 people) - $5.23
http://www.amazon.com/BUNN-BCF250-Commercial-Coffee-Filters/dp/B0006VNO7Y/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704669&sr=1-12
so for about 250 initially and a monthly recurring cost of about 50 bucks. hmmm, 20 sleepy employees who are sluggish and inattentive for several hours a day (lets say 2 hours, or 1/4 of their shift). now, per employee that's a monthly cost of $2.50 to not diminish that 1/4 of their shift.
how little would you have to be paying your employees to not think that's a good idea? pennies a day???
furthermore, this isn't much of a cost cutting measure. even if I have 10,000 people working for me, I'm only paying $2500 a month to give them coffee (excluding the cost of the machines, which last a decade) or $30,000 per year, which is nothing for a 10,000 employee company.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
with free Adderall.
Otherwise productivity is going to plummet...
It's called the Juan Valdez Amendment to the Constitution. It's there really. Look it up. It guarantees all workers the right to free coffee during work hours. Ratification of that Amendment has been written into my employment contracts for over 20 years.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
fuk coffee! would you imagine, they REFUSED to return my pinball machine & minibar... started asking me for RECEIPTS - I tried explaining them that call girls erhhhm massage girls & drug dealers erhmm mobile pharmacies don't normally give those out but I don't think the message sunk in well. I'm thinking about retiring @ 35, what is this world coming to :((( i still have SO MUCH to give!
Many employers say they're going to continue trimming budgets, particularly in human resources.
When I read this I thought "Hot damn, they're going to turf a layer or two of HR personnel. Bout time someone put those useless, meddling bastards up against the wall."
But no. The writer meant get rid of bonuses and perks. Life is ephemeral, bureaucracy everlasting.
I'm a firm believer that if a business wants to show it cares, it'll say it with money. Because that's the only thing that matters to a business. if it's parting with cash in ways it does not absolutely have to, that says something. But barring that, there's cashless ways to show care. There's not much you can do if you're doing IT-as-a-service where you need to be available for fixed hours but if you're doing dev work that doesn't go on a fixed schedule, give flex time! You worked late during the week, take a half day Friday. Costs the company nothing, same amount of work is getting done. Need a dr's appointment? For the love of xod, we're not going to ding you four hours of vacation time for it.
I don't really get the silly stuff like pool tables and video games. That just seems like prolonging time spent at work and in a non-productive fashion. I would put more of a premium on getting the max amount of work done in the shortest possible time so people can go home. Quality of life is about having a life outside the office. In-house masseuses, catered lunches every day, that seems a little wasteful. But cutting 401k, cutting fucking coffee? Major dick moves.
Employers are doing it because it's an employer's market out there. But rest assured, these employers will reap what they sow. The best employees are always the most mobile employees. If your best feel dicked over or if there's even the slightest concern about company stability, they will be out the door in a heartbeat. And it's now accepted in IT culture that you will NEVER make more money at the same employer. The only way to raise your pay is to move to another organization because your current one will never justify paying more for the person they already have, no matter if you're learning new skills, taking on more work, or improving the bottom line.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Seriously you guys get perks AND free coffee at work?
The only free coffee I get is what I steal from my co-workers thermos.
The game.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10008505/1.html
It killed office morale quite effectively. Productivity plummeted. And Uncle Bernie still went to Club Fed even if he did save the company several hundred dollars worth of coffee expenses.
We lost free coffee a very long time ago, along with 401k contributions, bonuses, etc. On the cutting block this year besides staff and salary? HEAT. Originally each department was able to manage their own temperature within a 4-5 degree range. That's been taken away and the entire temperature for the company has dropped to the point where virtually everyone is wearing a jacket or thick sweaters in each of the departments. There's a good number of people across the hall wearing fingerless gloves. It's one thing to not be able to work efficiently by not having that caffeine kick, but shivering and not feeling your fingers is a real productivity stopper, let a lone the looming paycut.
We're on year 10 or 11 of the obligatory "Business is GRRRRREEAAAAATTT!, you have to do without and you should be thrilled you have a job at all..." speech. My career plan is mostly made up of planning to listen to management about the importance of career planning. They stopped paying for training years ago, they don't pay for annual certificate membership dues, they don't even pay for broadband for at-home workers.
You insensitive clod! We have to pay for water! but only because the water from the spigot is contaminated from the diesel tanks that used to be here. Petroleum-flavored water? Count me out.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2003-07-11/
we mixed a little dirt in a cup of cold water and called it instant. If you wanted creamer, you added drop or two of Liquid Paper. Tasted like shit, but the extra chemicals and minerals kept you going.
If you post it, they will read.
Work for a company that wasn't so stupid with their money during the gravy years. If they are resorting to such ignorant behavior, then they don't have a clue anyway, so better off getting a better job elsewhere.
Place I work isn't even considering any of these stupid options - employee morale is better than I've seen anywhere else I've ever worked. Still have great insurance with a great match, bonuses, travel, etc. Free coffee is so good here that the Starbucks that used to be in the building closed because nobody was buying their stuff. (And replace the Starbucks area with a FREE arcade!)
Anyone who says the only point of a company is to please their stockholders is a soulless idiot fascist.
Forget Coffee. What about forced overtime with no extra pay. My company required 50 hour work weeks with 40 hours of pay. They claim they will give out a bonus if we hit our milestone, but they set the bar so high it's really just legal cover.
This is the new economy folks -- same as the old economy circa 1914. Get used to it.
By the time this backfires, the MBA cuckoo will be out in search of another nest, having proven his savings to the company.
Taking away the free coffee in my office would be considered a benefit. An act of mercy, really. It is a vile substance that resembles coffee in name only.
I drink it anyway. It's free.
Bennies taken away.... company phones are gone now. Comp time's all but dead. Don't get me started.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
If you review the federal pay laws, most computer based jobs don't receive overtime pay. They call it salaried but states are losing revenue as well as the feds for enacting such an insane law.
If you are worth your salt in IT you can get free coffee and much more...
If you are a GOD you can generate coffee from your ass.
I perk delicious coffee.
Because we've been down this road before. Cutting employee benefits and perks earns you lower productivity, poor morale, a high turnover rate (which will cost a business more than free coffee ever will), the loss of talented workers, and at worst the retention of desperate incompetents who can't find a job anywhere else.
"Every job is different. Every career is different. Things ebb and flow. For a long time, IT workers were spoiled primadonna. Now they're just another cost center. Guess what, the economy is jacked up. Budget cuts have to happen. IT is a necessity, but so is efficiency, cost control, etc. Welcome to the real world you big f'ing crybabies."
I'm dramatically overpaid for what I do if you look at it from a day-to-day effort perspective. I do my work, but my dad is a heavy duty mechanic, and I'm a chair jockey. I make twice what he does, and he puts in an honest day's effort every single day. It's not fair.
But I'm a troubleshooter by nature, and every once in a while I pull a large rabbit out of the hat and save the day in a big way. I like to think that closes the gap between contribution and compensation a bit.
But I'm posting this from work...
My kids think the day I came home with office furniture, boxes of office supplies, company teeshirts, and random promotional paraphenalia as one of the best days of Daddy's working life. It was like Christmas to the kids for each of them to get a lucite paperweight with our latest chip in it. Of course, unbeknownst to them, it was the day the company folded, and I was laid off. Still kinda cracks me up... it's all about how you look at things, as to whether they're they end of the world, or just a new world of adventure. :)
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Hey CEO, wake up. There is a shortage in new IT workers. Nobody wants to work for you anymore, so they aren't studying for CS. It doesn't appear to be worth the degree. Bad coffee isn't a perk. No retirement fund? They could do better by building roads or being a cop. Studying hard so they can start working for you is not an attractive option. Wake up.
See subject-line, & I have always wondered why this has not occurred. It seems to be the only way that the working fellow has against the "KORPORATE AMERIKA OVERLORDS" really time and again throughout U.S. History.
Well it was a nice run while it lasted. Current cortporate management thinking is that IT positions are now considered clerical, not professional like they used to be.
Don't think so? Then ask yourself this question, "Who do I report to?"
If the answer is a Director or an Officer, then congratulations you are still considered a professional, for now.
If it is a Manager, then you might still be considered a professional, but watch your back.
If it is a Project Manager or a Team Lead, sorry you are clerical.
By lowering your status management can lower your pay, benefits and advancement opportunities.
They also are shooting themselves in the foot since they are probably also sacrificing creativity for slavish adherence to standardized processes.
You will not get rich by working for someone else, but you may be able to live comfortably.
-Xanthos
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
Maybe you are in the wrong sector of IT.
My job --> Identify, evaluate and remove corporate waste with through system integration\migration coupled with automated process engineering (workflow).
I drink coffee at home.
Sr. Software Engineer - 28yrs Exp.
While more companies are coming back to having thier own IT department, many still contract. Shoot, I have to PAY into a benefits package to get sick time, and certainly don't get vacation. The company I am contracting to does not have free coffee - shoot I just paid two bucks down in the cafeteria to get some nasty overcooked Starbucks stuff (hence why it was two bucks instead of $5), and its way better than the toilet water that is in the pay coffee machine in the hall. But I have a job right now in an otherwise troubled economy, so I am not complaining too much. But free caffinee would be AWESOME! That and to get hired on directly so I can get some PTO, Vacation, and some medical benefits that don't cost me half a weeks salery.
We lost free coffee a very long time ago, along with 401k contributions, bonuses, etc. On the cutting block this year besides staff and salary? HEAT. Originally each department was able to manage their own temperature within a 4-5 degree range. That's been taken away and the entire temperature for the company has dropped to the point where virtually everyone is wearing a jacket or thick sweaters in each of the departments. There's a good number of people across the hall wearing fingerless gloves. It's one thing to not be able to work efficiently by not having that caffeine kick, but shivering and not feeling your fingers is a real productivity stopper, let a lone the looming paycut.
I didn't think Scrooge & Marley llp was that big an operation.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If you're an excellent java software engineer in silicon valley, we still have plenty of free coffee, and our perks are on the rise. Get in touch with me if you're interested.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
....I'd be happy with COLA. I have not have one since September 2008, and won't be getting one in 2010 either.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
We've had no training budget for the last 2 years and I don't know that we're getting one this year. That means no real technical training, no certifications, nothing to keep current and improve our skills.
Talk about short sighted. I expect an exodus of the top talent in the near future if there's nothing in the budget this year. They managed tiny raises for us this year and I'm not complaining about that at all. But a third year without any investment in training is going to be hard to overcome.
In my old spot ( a bank), we kept drinks cold under the raised floor, added a tuner card to a server and hijacked cable from the board room. We could view breaking news as needed and football games or whatever during system backups. Armed guards brought us all the coffee we could drink. No one could disturb our habitat without our written permission. Life was good.
Talk about a post that would draw the ire of every IT person that reads /. ...lol
I found myself foaming at the mouth before I even finished it...
If employers treat their employees like sh*t they'll get the resulting amount of loyalty such treatment breeds.
Once the employee is trained and up to speed they start looking for a new job that treats them better and when they leave the short sited
company that they were trained at, that company eats the cost of providing a trained employee to a competitor, it's a brilliant strategy designed to shore up the bottom line while chopping off their own foot/leg (insert corporate bodypart here). Most company management used to be smart enough to look at the big picture not the 1-3yr picture which is about how long a typical CEO's position lasts.
At my company, the coffee's still free, and it's still Peet's. (Bay Area readers know what I'm talkin' about: yummy, yummy rocket fuel.)
Contrary to popular belief, a company's sole responsibility is NOT to its shareholders;
In the US, you'd actually be wrong about that. The Supreme Court disagrees with you in Dodge v. Ford Motor Company - funny name, I know. According to Wikipedia:
The Court held that a business corporation is organized primarily for the profit of the stockholders, as opposed to the community or its employees.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Sadly, much of business has become populated by those "educated" (in name only) to understand the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.
"We've had no training budget for the last 2 years and I don't know that we're getting one this year. That means no real technical training, no certifications, nothing to keep current and improve our skills"
..
Have you considered moving to Linux, once you learn the base technology then your skills are virtually futured proof and your certifications don't expire with the next version of whatever
The pendulum swings one way, then back the other...
Side 1: "If I can't wear sweat pants, bring my dog to work, have my own office, telecommute when I feel like it, and drink company-provided beer every day starting at 3:00, then I won't work here."
Side 2: "You're 35 and you haven't had a heart attack yet? Perhaps I should replace you with someone who actually works hard."
TFA is a press hit from a PR firm people. Seriously, "Channel Insider"? They aren't even trying very hard to hide the fact that they are a bullshit marketing rag full of advertising copy, "special advertising sections" (you know the ones that try to disguise themselves as "articles" and actually useful content), and "articles" submitted by PR firms on behalf of paying clients to score a "Press Hit". I would put the credibility of anything coming out of "Channel Insider" at just about zero.
... is a mixture of pure unsupported assertations, and anecdotes pretending to be data. Any evidence to show that "strikes hurt employees more through lost wages than they gain in negotiations"? In fact, there's a lot of history that shows that unions did, in fact, make lives better for not only their own workers, but for everyone - and not only in the form of wages, but also in things like medical benefits and safe working conditions. For example: the five day work week - brought to you by the AFL-CIO.
Enough with the union bashing, already. Read a little history of the labor movement, and then see what you think.
... it workers leave the office to get coffee elsewhere. Figure a refill ever 2 hours and a 15 to 30 minute commute to a coffee shop depending on where you live they could regret that decision.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Management is more likely to subscribe to the Machiavelli Model than Adam Smith. Maybe it's more fun to knock the other guy down than working to build something. I'm pretty sure it pays better, but scruples always seem to get in my way.
Regular filter coffee costs in a dutch chain (AH) about 2,50 for half a kilo. 400 euro would therefor buy you 80kg of coffee (ignoring for the moment bulk-discounts).
There are on average 260 workdays in a year (not excluding holidays) 80/260 gives you three ounces of coffee a day. (And that is during working hours, an addict like this would drink all day)
I think you would bounce.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
... I could either get issued a company phone, or the company would pay my cell bill. There was no way I was carrying around two phones, and the company issued one was a giant clunky Blackberry, whereas my own was an iPhone. The choice was easy.
Yeah our company downgraded our coffee vendor and now it's not even worth going to the coffee room. Looks like a lot more Keurig sales and 'illegal' coffee machines in cubicles if you ask me...
Unions work great in the rest of the world.
Americans seem to have to wrong idea about what Unions are about. It has become a lethal fight in a system that basically says: The worker has no rights.
In Holland unions work together and it is not unusual for the unions AND the employers to unite and tell the government to go screw it self. Like on wage freezes recently. The government said all wages (except its own oddly enough, an oversight I am sure) should be frozen and in some sectors employees and unions said that they had already sorted things out and wouldn't do it.
ideally, government, employers and unions/workers should all work together to create a working society with give and take and the realization that just because you are on opposites ends of the negotiation table, that doesn't mean you have to be enemies with no common goals.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
shut off the free coffee (it wasn't that good anyway)
Bad coffee is just an intermediate step. I worked at one Big Dot Com 11 years ago where the free coffee was Peet's, with the beans ground just before brewing. Came back to the same BDC 3 years ago, and they'd switched to the Sara Lee Coffee Service, which provides coffee not quite as good as what you get at a seedy donut shop. Then they replaced that with this obscene little single-serving dispenser that "brewed" something about as drinkable as instant.
They can have my coffee when they take if from my cold dead trembling hands ! Seriously, in my workplace if they stopped supplying coffee there would be an immediate staff reduction due to the inevitable murderous rampage. I'd suspect it as a self enforcing workforce reduction plan, but I seriously doubt the bean counters are smart enough for a plan that cunning
come to the dark side, we have penguins.
the ignorance of how the brain responds to caffeine is mind boggling stupid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Mac coders are centaurs that convert plant matter to mac code and horse shit...but I repeat myself~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I am currently in a new position with some juniors and... JUST WHAT DO THEY TEACH THEM IN SCHOOL THESE DAYS?
I feared that as I got older I would find it harder as web developer. It has gotten easier. All I basically got to say is how many years I worked in IT as a programmer and I am on to the last round.
Granted I live in europe and the recession is mostly limited to the US but still.
People that say they will just replace experience with a trainee have never actually watched the results of such a move.
Computers have in a way become so easy, often at school pre-installed with the tools that they got no clue what to do. Even simple things like installing an archive utility is beyond them. It is not so much that they are stupid, they just never had to think about it, and so never did.
Because of my job switch I spoke to various recruiters and employers and they just can't find enough people right now. Even medior functions are hard to fill.
Basically, in IT (at least the web development part of it), the recession just hasn't happened. If you are any good, there are plenty of jobs. Sadly, a lot of people just ain't any good. I see it all the time, web developers who still haven't caught the difference between frontend and backend. And who think Java is a browser language... and the same as javascript. Or that XML is HTTP.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Funny, I just replenished the pot before I read that.
Not including official holidays.
You want better working conditions? Then stop kowtowing to the man every chance you get.
US (and british) companies have become VERY good at making employees think they are doing them a favor by employing them. It works great for them and allows them to fire people and make the rest glad they got a job in a recession that is SO bad not a SINGLE big company executive has had his/her bonuses cut. Odd that. 10% unemployment yet the bonuses for the top happen the same as before. Gosh I wonder where they got the money from. And all the rest of the sheep think is "well thank god it isn't my flesh the farmer is getting fat on". Probably because no sheep can think ahead to next year.
You are willing to trade "perks" like free coffee (and really, if that is a perk you got amazingly low standards, is free toilet paper a perk as well? Free tap water?) for real free days. Great, that is smart thinking sheep. Just what they want, and next year, they change the traded for days back to forced days again.
Years ago, when the company in the 21st century thought it was okay to turn vacation days into forced vacations, people should have walked out. They didn't.
Oh and for a history lesson, find a SINGLE year in history in which companies have NOT had an excuse to make cutbacks on personal. The recession, 9/11, the bubble, Y2K expenses, crash of the yen, cost of the dollar... there is always a reason. Now find a SINGLE year in which any of these reasons have led to a salary reduction for the people deciding that their should be money saved.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Let me see if I understand this: The company in question is getting rid of the ability to give it's employee's productivity enhancing drugs (which they are taking willingly) so that they can trim a little off the overhead? Times are tough, sure, but you would think management would want their employee's to work harder and longer, yes?
Hey, this reminds me of another brilliant idea. Let's only hire inexperienced developers, network engineers, DBAs, and sysadmins. We'll save thousands of dollars a year on their salaries! Then, when the company implodes into the black hole created by an overwhelming mass of incompetence, executives can use their golden parachutes to land at a new company and do it all over again. Genius!
Coffee not good? Not at the company I worked for. We had an espresso machine and it was wonderful. The company had one of the secretaries clean it and they bought coffee at the grocery store on their way in to work. But this was a small company. YMMV at large corps.
One other point, while it may seem quite a small thing, it was a large recruitment incentive. Any company that cared enough to provide free espresso seemed like it might be a nice place to work. This turned out to be true for this company. I'm sure it got them better people than they might be able to attract with salary alone.
But that would be mean.
It is funny, whenever you ask an American about their life style, they claim it is the highest in the world, that nobody got it as good as them.
So please explain, what is so good about living like this? The hope that one day you will make it big? Amazing really. I honestly had this conversation with an American who worked 80 or so hours a week, so did his wife but they had this GREAT house with a big luxury home cinema setup... it never really entered his mind why I found it odd he wanted this, as I talked to him in Arnhem (holland) where he was stationed in an decent hotel but still a hotel for over a year now with only a short holiday around Christmas...
Anyway, if you are contracting don't you just put all the expenses like medical benefits in your hourly rate? Or do you actually think it is smart to contract for the same hourly wage that regular workers make? That doesn't sound like a long term plan.
Sing along now:
All I am saying, is give socialism a chance.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
IF they were so up tight about cutting costs why not cut $4000+ annually by not buying sales reps and executives gym memberships, green fees, and other "networking essentials". The $500 they spend on Folgers coffee annually is rather spurious since dozens if not hundreds of staff members can at least enjoy a cup of coffee. This cost cutting is bullshit every time. The first bonuses to go are at the bottom, the last ones to go are at the top. When I go to a staff meeting, there is work to be done. When senior management goes to a meeting, there's bottled water, soda, coffee, Di' Amico catered lunch, EVERY FUCKING WEEK. Absolute bullshit every time. It just another measure to drive people out of IT so they can leverage a self-created job shortage to exploit cheap labor. Nothing like pioneering the digital sweat shop.
Get some air and sunshine. Have a smoke.
Take the Hot Chick from accounting with me.
I'm not seeing the down side.
In all honesty, with the quality of free coffee one would find in IT departments, I'd rather have no free coffee - I'm always buying or bringing my own coffee anyways. On the other hand - no free coffee means lower productivity. No really, it does. Ask Wally.
Bow before me, for I am root.
Here in California, it's a misdemeanor to register for a Party that you disagree with. So if you want to change your party's platform, you must register as non-partisan.
I worked for US Bank as a consultant at one of their *gigantic* warehouse cube-farms. They had stopped providing free coffee at the many "coffee centers" in the building, which I found incredibly short-sighted. Coffee is fuel. Programmer + Coffee = Productivity. To acquire said fuel, it was necessary to take a 15 minute round trip hike to the cafeteria on the other side of the building - for which I, of course, charged the time. $100/hr x .25 = $25. I made money going to buy coffee.
Canceling the Griswald X-mas bonus level stupidity - you're just going to end up kidnapped, tied up with a dog chain and presented to your employee wrapped in a ribbon. Everyone knows that.
This'll encourage all kinds of talented people to stay in IT, that's for sure. This combined with the bad pay and near infinite stress, and being woken up at 3AM become some developer was fiddling where he shouldn't be... Yeah, who wouldn't want to work in this field?
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
No no. I think 20k is great. 70+k over the poverty though... that is why this industry is getting outsourced to other countries. Hell, if anything you can't flip burgers in India for Americans. That almost makes that job more valuable.
Is there any particular reason that article was put in an annoying flash component?
I get free coffee, did at last job too MB
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
They cut our coffee service at the end of the year, and the coffee makers have been hauled away.
I had a promo vacuum bottle that I got at a sales meeting, and now I'll be carrying home coffee to the office.
I want them to cut as many things as they can. It will make it easier to feel good about leaving when something better comes along.
Back when I had Goodall Computer Systems on 24th Street in San Francisco, I kept the freezer stocked with Jamaican Blue Mountain beans for the employees. I admit it was a little extreme, but the employees looked forward to coffee time, and knew I valued their work. Those were good times I remember fondly. Later when the company was run by an anal bean-counter, work was no longer fun. I guess it is what you value. If every penny is counted, and paper clips are inventoried weekly, that is going to be less fun. When there is a liberal supply of colored sharpies and tapeflags, it makes me happy. Each person finds satisfaction at work in different ways. If management wants software engineers to be exempt, and work 60 hours a week, the free coffee helps a lot.
Can a single bottle of soda decimate your company? Absolutely.
when I was a student engineer I worked at a division of Philips Electronics where no drinks were provided for free except water, there was a drink machine which wasn't too expensive (presumably to deter waste) - about 4 cents or 2 UKpence a cup. in one of the secure labs where only authorised people were allowed (high voltage and RF power) there was a clandestine kettle and tea/coffee kit, as kettles were not normally allowed due to "safety".
A lot of time was lost due to engineers interrupting each other to change money for the machines, and quite frequently whole groups of people would gather to chat for quite a while. One day when the company passed an important test of quality (ISO9000 IIRC) the machines were set to "free" for a week as a reward. I noticed the number of people chatting dropped and productivity must have risen, far in advance of the cost of the coffee.
I commented to a senior manager about that, and he somewhat agreed, but I don't think anything changed.
I had a job where I got 25 days PTO, plus the standard holidays. I walked away from it to go become a government contractor.
The problem was that I could barely take any of it. Six week-long software deployments each year, and effectively being unable to take time off for 2 weeks after each deployment (in case something went HORRIBLY WRONG), or the 2 weeks before the deployment (make sure that nothing affects the coders' ability to get their code changes in!)...do the math, that's 30 weeks that were pretty much unavailable. For the last 2 years I was there, I was pretty much capped out at 35 days of accumulated PTO and even started taking every other Friday off to stay under the cap. Finally after about 3 months of this, my manager practically ordered me to just take a week off and be done with it.
In my exit interview, I named this as one of the primary reasons I was leaving. If companies are treating employees as "resources", then they need to properly schedule "maintenance downtime" for those "resources" just like they do for the servers and the switches.
We can believe in you for 3 minutes, but beyond that, even the King of All Cosmos can't be expected to wait.